E-mail van Floater

Beste Tom,

Ik wil toch even reageren op jouw bericht naar aanleiding van de “teruggevonden aantekening”, waar je Jimmy Carter niet helemaal recht doet.
Letterlijk zei Carter in die toespraak namelijk het volgende:
My vision of this nation and its future has been deepened and matured during the nineteen months that I have campaigned among you for President. I have never had more faith in America than I do today. We have an America that, in Bob Dylan's phrase, is busy being born, not busy dying.
Carter had grote bewondering voor Dylan, en Dylan op zijn beurt was erg gesteld op Carter.
In het beroemde Playboy interview met Ron Rosenbaum uit 1977 vertelt Dylan onder meer:

PLAYBOY: Jimmy Carter has said that listening to your songs, he learned to see in a new way the relationship between landlord and tenant, farmer and sharecropper and things like that. He also said that you were his friend. What do you think of all that?
DYLAN: I am his friend.PLAYBOY: A personal friend?
DYLAN: I know him personally.
PLAYBOY: Do you like him?
DYLAN: Yeah, I think his heart's in the right place.
PLAYBOY: How would you describe that place?
DYLAN: The place of destiny. You know, I hope the magazine won't take all this stuff and edit-like, Carter's heart's in the right place of destiny, because it's going to really sound
PLAYBOY: No, it would lose the sense of conversation. The magazine's pretty good about that.
DYLAN: Carter has his heart in the right place. He has a sense of who he is. That's what I felt, anyway, when I met him.
PLAYBOY: Have you met him many times?
DYLAN: Only once.
PLAYBOY: Stayed at his house?
DYLAN: No. But anybody who's a governor or a Senate leader or in a position of authority who finds time to invite a folkrock singer and his band out to his place has got to have . . . a sense of humor . . . and a feeling of the pulse of the people. Why does he have to do it? Most people in those kinds of positions can't relate at all to people in the music field unless it's for some selfish purpose.
PLAYBOY: Did you talk about music or politics?DYLAN: Music. Very little politics. The conversation was kept in pretty general areas.
PLAYBOY: Does he have any favorite Dylan songs?
DYLAN: I didn't ask him if he had any favorite Dylan songs. He didn't say that he did. I think he liked Ballad of a Thin Man, really.
PLAYBOY: Did you think that Carter might have been using you by inviting you there?
DYLAN: No, I believe that he was a decent, untainted man and he just wanted to check me out. Actually, as Presidents go, I liked Truman.

Dat wilde ik toch even rechtzetten!

Groeten,
Floater