Secret Service visit to Boulder High over Bob Dylan song

[Lilli]

Secret Service pays visit to Boulder High

By Hector Gutierrez, Rocky Mountain News
November 12, 2004

Bob Dylan's Masters of War is a hard-hitting, anti-war song produced more than 20 years before any current Boulder High School student was born.

More than 40 years after its release, the song has been resurrected at Boulder High with huge and confusing repercussions that prompted Secret Service agents to pay the campus a visit Thursday.


Some students and parents apparently let the Secret Service and talk-radio stations know they were unhappy with the plan of a trio of students to do a poetry reading of the song, accompanied by background music, according to Ron Cabrera, the school's principal.

Rumors were rampant that during an audition and rehearsal for today's talent show, the students changed Dylan's powerful last verse at the end of the song to say that they
hoped that President Bush was going to die.

The last verse begins: "And I hope that you die; And your death'll come soon."

Secret Service agents interviewed Cabrera on Thursday to determine what all the uproar was about and whether any threats were being made against the president's life.

"They were following up and doing their due diligence," Cabrera said of the agents' visit. "They had been receiving calls from the community and, in the course of the talk show, felt like they had heard (the students) inciting physical harm to the president."

Cabrera said he talked to the students and teachers who have been working with them, and he was told the group, which calls itself the Coalition of the Willing, made no reference to Bush.

"I don't know why it surfaced," Cabrera said of the complaints. "I think they're surprised by all the allegations."

Cabrera said he also showed the agents the lyrics of the entire song. The agents appeared to have left satisfied that no bona-fide threat was being directed at the president, he said.

The principal said the students' performance of the song at the talent show upholds their right to express themselves, and he did not think it was inappropriate in a campus setting.

A Secret Service spokesman could not be reached for comment.

Cabrera acknowledged that the group did consider at one time naming itself the "Tali-banned." A teacher persuaded the teens to drop the title because it was offensive, he said."

Heres the lyrics

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead
_________________

I pass to you the torch that Christ once passed to me.
Others are still in the dark and need
the light to see.
"I AM"
"Gathering the fragments so that
none are lost"
His Shepherdess
http://missouri.thcministry.org/

[Kate]

i think that i would be alittle nervous and extra cautious too, if half the country hated me.
and besides, someone has to earn those tax dollars that we paid to the government.
_________________
Make the most you can of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it everywhere. -Pres.George Washington