“These are the same people that tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you’ve been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? For playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified. All those evil motherfuckers can rot in hell.”—
If “Judas” is the worst name you’ve ever been called, you are probably a rich, white, heterosexual dude.
(via judyxberman)
Yeah, I sure can’t think of anything in Dylan’s personal background that would give him cause to take great offense at being called a Christ-killer.
In terms of actual personal names, he’s probably right (for Western history, anyway… and over the past millenia; I’d say Hitler - or Stalin, or Mao - for the last century). ‘Jezebel’ is the nearest equivalent for female names that I can think of, although look how that has turned out lately.
Oh boy. I started it, so I’ll take responsibility, but now we’re all taking this quote too seriously. So, while we’re here, what actually bothers me more than the particulars of Dylan’s privilege is the limitless self-righteous anger of a person who has been deified — not to mention made ridiculously wealthy — by a huge proportion of the population at an (admittedly very stupid) incident that happened roughly half a century ago. He has never seemed particularly grateful for his success or to his fans, and that’s part of what makes me so unsympathetic to fulminations like this.
