I watched it after all (damn you, Super A.!), to see how Stewart would insert Dylan into the discussion. O'Reilly claimed Common shouldn't have been allowed a visit the white house, because he "championed" a convicted cop killer. Stewart corrected him and stated Common simply believed she was innocent. Then he brought up Bob Dylan, who performed at the White House for Obama and his family, yet he also wrote the song 'Hurricane', one of his biggest hits, about heavyweight champion Rubin Carter, who was convicted for triple homicide --Dylan believed he had been framed by the police and DA and that's expressed explicitly in the song.
O'Reilly then quickly changed his argument. He now said Common was not only in the wrong for "championing" the convicted cop killer, but also for visiting her in prison. Stewart pointed out his sudden shift in argumentation, but failed to point out that Dylan had visited Carter several times in prison. Also, on the same record as 'Hurricane' (
Desire, 1976), there's also a 12 minute song called 'Joey', which glorifies maffia killer Joey Gallo.
The song treats Gallo sympathetically, despite his violent history. Gallo had been accused of at least two murders and had been convicted of several felonies. But in the song he is given credit for distrusting guns, being reluctant to kill hostages and for shielding his family when he was being killed, and makes him appear to be an unwilling participant in the crimes of his henchmen, thus not deserving his fate.
As a result of the sympathetic treatment, critics such as Lester Bangs harshly criticized Dylan and the song. Bangs described it as "repellent romanticist bullshit." However, Dylan claims that he always thought of Gallo as a kind of hero and an underdog fighting against the elements. Besides his status as an outsider, Dylan was likely also drawn to the fact that Gallo's best friends in prison were black men. In addition Gallo was able to gain sympathy in artistic circles by passing himself off as a cultured person victimized by the "system".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joey_%28Bob_Dylan_song%29
Dylan had previously glorified Wild West oulaw John Wesley Hardin in the song 'John Wesley Harding' on the album of the same title (1967).
John Wesley Hardin (May 26, 1853—August 19, 1895) was an outlaw and gunfighter of the American Old West. He was born in Bonham, Fannin County, Texas. When Hardin went to prison in 1878, he claimed to have killed 42 men, but a considerably lesser number of these killings have been documented as actually attributable to him. Hardin's criminal career resulted not only in the deaths of his victims but also in the deaths of his brother Joe and two cousins who were hanged by a lynch mob seeking revenge for a Hardin killing.
Folk rocker Bob Dylan named his 1967 album John Wesley Harding after the outlaw, albeit the name was misspelled. The title track depicted Hardin as "a friend to the poor" who "was never known to hurt an honest man.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley_Hardin
On last monday's episode of
The Daily Show, Stewart showed footage of Fox News' Mike Huckabee, who greeted on his show Ted Nugent and even played a bit of guitar with him. Then Stewart showed footage of Nugent at a concert, where he draws a (fake?) gun and screams, cheered on by the audience: "why don't you suck on this, Obama?" and then he pretends to fire the gun. He then continues with: "Ride this one, Hillary!", while the crowd goes wild.
So why are the good people on Fox News happy to invite a singer who's advocating violence against public officials, but are they doing everything they can to take a rapper's lyrics out of context to make them look appear to be the exact opposite of what the rapper meant, turning a message of peace into a message of violence? And why are the good people on Fox News upset Common got invited to the White House over his lyrics and prison visits, but didn't say a word when Dylan went?
Common is black.
