Defend the indefensible - Bob Dylan.

It seems like the lawyer — at least — is a skeeveball and the timeline — at least — doesn’t add up. Is it ok to say that, if this is just some stunt, then it is very unfortunate that Dylan has had his name linked with child molestation in the popular imagination? Or are we not supposed to take that into account?

Again, who knows what information the client put before the lawyer. Maybe this is a stronger case than it seems. But if so, this is a bad lawyer.

just to be clear, i'm very much in the "wait for more info" camp. it doesn't appear to be a strong case. the lawyer seems dumb, but so do a lot of lawyers. you can be an extremely dumb lawyer and make it to the top of your field. you can even run for president or land on the supreme court, it doesn't fucking matter. maybe it never did.

but i'm not going to be in the captain save a bob camp and freak out either. we don't know anything yet. bob dylan attended roughly 134014 parties in the 1960s, and this was during a time when virtually all rock bands and singers were talking about having the hots for teenagers. who knows what the fuck he did.

Aye, the entire range of possibilities is there, from "totally made up" to "totally true" with a ton of other scenarios between. On the surface it looks and sounds like a shakedown where someone's hoping for nuisance money, if you broaden this from sex-abuse allegations to complaints filed 55 years after the fact about behavior by rich people in general. But we don't have to make any assumptions, it can play out or evaporate as it will.

how much lifting is "and all that" doing

xxpost it is absolutely unfortunate if it proves to be groundless, as that kind of sleaze tends not to rub off. I don't think any justification is necessary.

Hard as it is for me to picture Dylan indulging in the same kind of behaviour as his rock star contemporaries(he always seemed, I dunno, a bit too aloof for that), I would also be in the wait and see camp. If there's anything more than gossip and hearsay to implicate him then it needs to be heard.

Yeah, I don’t mean to totally dismiss it, and I’m obviously biased in hoping it’s not true. There’s just a lot that makes me dubious - Dylan in mid-65 was one of the most in-the-spotlight people you could imagine, and seemed to have an entourage with him all the time. And I think the view of Dylan in 1965 was fairly different than, say, Led Zeppelin in 1970. I’d say that “holier-than-thou protest singer is secretly degenerate pervert” would be a big story if a reporter got wind of it, it wasn’t like much of the press was worshipful of him.

But, y’know, I don’t know, he certainly had a lot of power within his scene and could probably get away with a lot. Just seems hard to believe that with all the turns in his career and all the people he pissed off at one point or another that this would never be mentioned.

The Dylan who emerges in Heylin's first oral history was a real asshole to women, going so far as to steal his best friend's wife during a sodden period in the mid '80s. Like tipsy, I can believe all manner of behavior, though his MO is not sexual predator/stalker.

G.E. Smith comments as character witness

not with that hair he won't

I'm sure you could get lots of people who worked with [fill in well-known sexual predator here] to give similar testimony as GE's. obviously I would prefer for this allegation not to be true, and it does seem *very* shaky at the moment, but yeah, we'll have to wait for more info.

Sleeping with another man’s wife is nothing like being a pedophile. Xp

Not looking forward to the defense that reveals what Dylan *is* into.

jugglers and clowns iirc

Yeah I think Phylicia Rashad shows the limits of co-worker testimonials.

Sleeping with another man’s wife is nothing like being a pedophile. Xp

― treeship.

I implied otherwise?

It just seems like an irrelevant data point

if you sayso

i always kind of assumed he was a womanizer, but not really the predatory type. just kind of had all the right moves; free love, so to speak. so idk, maybe he did.

but, that being said, the initial accusation as we know it now doesn't seem very plausible.

Not looking forward to the defense that reveals what Dylan *is* into.

Poor old Dylan fans, how you must be suffering.

imagine the corns

In this thread I discovered people way too much about Bob Dylan.

Something I've never been able to forget was this brief gossip item that ran in Spin around '99 about Dylan's people reaching out to Elastica's management about bringing them aboard as a support act on the Never Ending Tour, with the ulterior motive that Dylan had seen some photos of Justine Frischmann and got really hot for her.

None of these other gossip items = child abuse, and the fact we're discussing them illustrates why the G.E. Smith testimonial is as valid as anything else right now (apparently Dylan's first manager, from the early '60s, spoke up too). That isn't anything like Phylicia Rashad standing by Cosby despite everything we know to be true in his case. All we have is a civil complaint with a shocking claim and no other real details, and the lawyers who filed it speaking to anyone who contacts them, saying (in effect) "Trust us." They're using the press to their advantage (and no doubt increase pressure for a settlement, which is their right), so it's reasonable for those whose initial reaction is doubt to respond to questions as well.

No one should feel bad for Bob. He's rich and barring any revelations he and his reputation will come through this fine. What Weberman did to him was probably worse.

Is it possible that they are going to allege some kind of long-distance phone abuse?

Someone I know (not well, my wife know her better) had fairly recent experience of him being into watching other people have sex (she didn’t oblige).
― Alba, Wednesday, 18 August 2021 18:28 (one hour ago) link

Yeah we've heard "Visions of Johanna"

The one thing the lawyers seem really specific about is "we know she was with him at the Chelsea" — so that suggests some kind of documentary evidence, a photo or something, or corroborating testimony. Unless they're Sidney Powell-ing it, in which case it could all be imaginary.

Sidney Powell-ing it,

For the times, they are a Kraken

Maybe you guys could all do a podcast about each time a beloved popular male artist was accused of rape, and you could use all the evidence you've found on the internet to vindicate them and call their accusers liars. I mean 90% of the episodes would eventually need to come down but it would be fun for awhile

Maybe 100% really but who's counting

No one's really swinging evidence around, other than the fact that it's a super well known time of his history, where he was, what he was doing, etc. If it was during his time when he didn't tour after his motorcycle crash I could see it being more believable for sure.

Also not sure 100% is accurate here, here's one famous example of a false accusation.

https://pitchfork.com/news/55965-conor-oberst-drops-libel-suit-over-rape-accusation/

I guess that podcast about Conor wouldn't have to get taken down.

Dylan's also been famous for 60 years of his life. It's a shocking claim. There also may be truth to it, which is why at least I'm so concerned about / engaged with the topic. Also, no one here (afaik) has called his accuser a liar. We do not know the accuser's story, we only how it is sketchily presented in the legal brief.

Carry on then

Like I said, just wait for more evidence to be presented. The claim gave very few details and since they don't line up with what's known, obviously there has to be more to get this to trial - so wait for more and go from there. It doesn't help that the lawyers have bad reputations, sure, but let them present their argument first.

FFS, "of course he's guilty, he's an old white guy" is NAGL either

Death to Europe and Bob Dylan.

Have you guys ever wondered why so few women post here anymore?

If so - wonder no longer!

Fuck you for that. What a disingenuous prick you are.

?? I think i’ve been pretty forthright!

In fact I’d call that accusation…. baseless!

I like Dylan enough to privately hope this isn't true, because it's deeply horrible and I hope it didn't happen for reasons selfish and not. But since it obviously *could be* true, I wonder why people engaged in sleuthing this out don't hesitate to leave this trail of posts? On a micro level, won't you feel terrible? On a macro level, he fact that a powerful, famous, and well-liked man has a legion of fans (not just here obvs) immediately on the case trying to disprove the charge without him having to do a thing sends a disturbing message to anyone thinking about coming forward with their own story.

I don't know any departed women posters, so I can't speak to their reasons, but a few have in the past explicitly posted similar sentiments to Tracer

No one here has called the accusation "baseless" (afaik). Why would we hesitate to leave this "trail of posts"? I will feel terrible if it's true, not because I discussed the charge on a board.

personally i feel terrible either way

You guys realize this is not a criminal case where authorities have investigated and decided there is enough evidence for a case, correct? It's a civil claim with a vague but devastating charge, filed by lawyers who have then been up in the press every day. If your position is that the details of the charge should not be discussed out of some sense of decorum, I strongly disagree.

Why would we hesitate to leave this "trail of posts"?

Because it will retroactively make it look like your first instinct was to side with an abuser. I guess that isn't fair, but I'm surprised it doesn't factor into people's behavior nonetheless.

I don't think you can neutrally "discuss" this charge. Or if that's too broad: I think it sends a message that people react to this news by, on their own time, searching for and posting exculpatory evidence.

It's not a "criminal case" but you thought this was a good post to make:

G.E. Smith comments as character witness

― Shallot Shortage 2021 (morrisp), Wednesday, August 18, 2021 1:37 PM (yesterday)

If he had said, "I'm not surprised, Dylan's always kind of been a creep," I would have posted that too.

When accusations about famous people surface in this day & age, they're often followed by others reporting similarly bad experiences. If that doesn't happen here, it doesn't mean there couldn't still truth to the charge. But I'd be more concerned if people *weren't* saying "that doesn't sound like the Bob I know."