It’s somewhat ironic that Simon Cowell of American Idol… uh, notoriety, has stated that Bob Dylan’s music “bores him to tears.” Moreover, “…the Bob Dylans of this world would (not) make American Idol a better show.” Cowell went on to say he preferred Kelly Clarkson and that he had “never bought a Dylan record.”

Well, wow. You see, I have the opposite, uhm, problem. I’ve never bought a Kelly Clarkson record – not because I think she is talentless, she’s just not my cup of fur, but I own practically every single Dylan record in both vinyl and disc and every bootleg and film available and not available but obtainable through certain channels.

Yes, that’s a bit obsessive and likely why Cowell’s comments pissed me off so much, admittedly, but then, Cowell pissed me off long before this with his oh-so-desperately wanting to be ironic and pity sense of “humor.” His “more-British-than-thou” attitude, as if he were the only person from Britain in America, which frankly, is America’s fault in part because we treat Cowell as a novelty. He is ‘different’, he ‘speaks his mind, he is ‘direct’, all of which they say is ‘typically English.’

A. I didn’t know there was anything ‘typical’ about any country’s citizens or B.  That there was a kind of homogenization, and this in itself is a stereotype and prejudice that America seems to love at the moment for it’s reality shows, many of which feature a “call it like I see it” English man or woman who is at the center of the show and on which the programme hinges. Score one for Cowell for breaking the ice. Nobody said he was stupid;  I’m just saying he’s a flim-flam artists; different thing.

Should we all be devastated by the king of — how shall we put this gently? — mediocre pop that vanishes in a poof when the show ends? (most of the time, there are some exceptions, but for the most part, although I’ve yet to hear “Fantasia”s major breakthrough.  And what about Clive Akin – is he here to last as well? Kelly Clarkson is the most visible but she sounds just like every other pop singer her age with her vibratto-from-the-gut teenage girl singing along to the radio like I used to in junior high.  Maybe that’s her appeal. To the “tween” market, which is ever-growing.

As Dylan would say, and I really couldn’t say it better, “The radio makes hideous sounds.” (Disclaimer: not always, certainly, but as a general rule, I don’t see much evidence of a major social change or movement the way Bob Dylan influenced us at any time during these days. Dylan was a part of a movement – not standing on the sidelines singing. He never claimed to be “a protest singer” – what he said was, “All I ever do is protest…” Different thing. Songs like “A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall” were prescient, predicting what would happen during the Vietnam War and how we would get there. On one bootleg I have he speaks of “Goliaths” and if you chop off their head then there are “Greater Goliaths who replace them.”  Right.

One cannot take Cowell’s comments regarding Dylan as any serious criticism or something to be considered as other than what they really are beneath the surface - this is just another boring barb and snipe from the ever-so boring pithy and pissy and predictable Cowell who likely just said it to garner more publicity for himself riding on the coat-tails of a big name like Bob Dylan, knowing that it would make the news (which is disgusting — shame, shame Simon) .

After all, this is Simon Cowell for heaven’s sake — he who sits with his growingly flabby cheek propped on one elbow and his super-size Coke on the table before him.  BTW, How are the endorsements coming along, Simon? Have you made your millions? Certainly you have by now. You have sold your soul, sold yourself to the masses by being a pissed off ex-pat, which is easy because even I can do that as I’m proving right now, but then, I’m Scottish and so I’m still under your thumb, aren’t I?

It must be nice always having the upper-hand, hanging out in Northern Ireland, claiming Scotland and Wales where we hardly speak the same language, but that’s not Cowell’s fault, by any means I digress because we spoke of pissed off ex-pats to which I too can sometimes belong, I just don’t usually gripe about it or take it out on someone else and I certainly don’t do it for a publicity stunt. I’ll never make my millions by just being pithy and pissed. That’s just stupid. I didn’t go through years of education so that i could waste my life by playing a stereotype - i like to think.

How much talent does it take to be pissed-off and pithy all of the time and to turn your cup so that it reads Coca-Cola in very clear, front and center, letters? But then, you never claimed to have talent, did you, Simon . . . or did you? If you did, boy, would that take balls. But just being a pissed off ex-pat? That part’s easy – I can do that. Simon, you suck. Voila! Show me the money. See how easy that was?

Back to this Coke endorsement thing (Is it Coke? Pepsi? Did they make you take a challenge?) — is that feeding you well? And how about other endorsements? Surely there are some. Are you asking yourself yet, “This is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife, how did I get here…?” And the days go by…

Well, you dug your own grave, Simon. As Bob might say of you Simon, “People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.” But I doubt very much Cowell would repent. I cannot see Simon Cowell down on his knees, humbling himself for anyone because he’s just too high and mighty for that.

He’s a brick-house as they say. He likes that song. As I recall, a contestant sang that last season and it seemed to fly pretty well with Simon. Is he a solid brick shithouse himself? Yes, that’s a compliment. He’s solid and strong. A regular rock of Gibraltar. A man who is an island entire of himself… John Donne was wrong. How about that? Simon knows more than not only Bob Dylan, but John Donne as well. He’s an island, Dylan is a poet, another thing Dylan never claimed to be. He humbly referred to himself as a “song and dance man” yet he is clearly so much more. Even if Dylan himself won’t or does not recognize it (and I feel he must in part know…) then the rest of us, most of us, seem to know it. No, he’s not Yeats, but neither was Dylan’s friend Allen Ginsberg. There are different types of poetry. Of course, all of this seems self-evident to me.

As for Dylan, if a singing ‘poet’ bores you to tears, consider that it’s something that Dylan constantly claimed not to be — he never liked being defined. “I define nothing. I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.”

The thing about Simon Cowell is that he keeps boring us with the same thing from season to season: sure, of course, disagree. You may not like Dylan. Or, you may like American Idol, or you may like both, and frankly, I had no issue with both and found Cowell rather amusing until he made this snipe which is not only boring in and of itself, it’s just plain nasty and I’ll say it again – a publicity stunt.

And all of this coming from the man who brings us the same wavering voice, the same songs, the same ‘minxes’ season after season. Ah, what he likes; Nabokov would have a field day. Is this ‘nympholepsy’ as Vladimir might say, or just what turns Cowell on or what he likes to tell us, because that is boring and perhaps we, the viewers, could care less about a judge who has a certain thing for a singer who is a ‘minx,’ so when you talk to me, Simon, about a “singing poet” who bores you, sure, express your opinion - welcome to America, by the way - but let me tell you, you are not only dead wrong in your description and definition of where you so neatly want to fit Dylan, like a child incessantly banging a square peg into a round hole because Dylan defies your social register — which must be frustrating as hell because everybody wants to neatly box and define everybody else for reasons that are beyond me — but remember Simon, that you bore many of us as well.

Your recent comments regarding Dylan? Dead boring.

You may be in Hollywood now, baby blue, but you’ll be forgotten. Next…