Opinion

Bob Dylan: car salesman

How does it feel?

Bob Dylan has — gasp! — sold out to big, bad American capitalism. That, at least, was the buzz after Dylan appeared in one of those Super Bowl ads touting the new Chrysler 200.

One problem: Chrysler is less an example of pure capitalism than crony capitalism.

“Is there anything more American than America?” Dylan asks. Good question.

Leave aside that Chrysler is owned by ­Italy’s Fiat, which bought the company at a fire sale from John and Mary Taxpayer, who owned it because of a bailout from the United States Treasury.

Though Chrysler has paid back much of the direct costs of the bailout, the full indirect costs will never be known. High at the top of this list is the way Chrysler was essentially nationalized via the politicization of our bankruptcy laws. In this ugly process, the United Auto Workers were simply given a stake in the company while other secured creditors — e.g., pension funds for retired teachers and policemen — were left to pick over the remnants.

When it comes to his own career, Bob Dylan certainly knows which way the dollars are blowing. After all, he’s done big-time ads in the past for Pepsi and Victoria’s Secret. And on Super Bowl Sunday, an ad for Chobani yogurt featured one of his songs in the background.

But Dylan’s critics have it only half right on Chrysler. If he were really lending his name to good old American capitalism, he would have done an ad for the automaker that didn’t take a bailout: Ford.