Farm Aid word salad

Jim Withers

As one who is hard of hearing, I often wonder if deaf people get miffed by all the gobbledegook and non sequiturs spewed by closed-captioning when they’re watching TV. I hope they’re as amused as I often am, especially by the weird juxtapositions and inadvertent double entendres.

I regularly rely on closed-captioning and was particularly delighted by the ALL-CAPS word salad that accompanied Bob Dylan’s “appearance” at this year’s Farm Aid concert in Minneapolis. (Dylan, decked out in black and wearing a hoodie, was barely visible as he performed behind a piano on a darkened stage.) And while his ever-changing arrangements haven’t added lustre to his greatest hits, I’ve been a Dylan fan for so long I know the lyrics by heart. But what would a deaf person make of reading these words while Dylan performed All Along the Watchtower:

“… YOU WOMEN CAME AND WENT KASH PATEL TO OUTSIDE IN A DUSTY …”

Kash Patel? Trump’s totally unqualified FBI director? How did he get into Dylan’s 58-year-old song?

The real lyrics: “… While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.”

Other closed-captioning gems:

“THERE’S A MAN WHO TOOK MY WIFE …”

(Real lyrics: “Businessmen, they drink my wine.”

“BOY HE’LL AMONG THOSE WHO BANJO YOU AND I WENT THROUGH …”

(Actual lyrics: “There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.”

In Dylan’s rendition of To Ramona, Jen Psaki, the TV host and former Biden White House press secretary, somehow makes an appearance in the closed captions:

“GIVE IT TO JEN PSAKI THAT THE FISHING INDUSTRY HAD IT THERE’S NO ONE TO BEAT YOU …

(Actual lyrics: “You’ve been fooled into thinking that the finishin’ end is at hand …”)

Dylan’s idiosyncratic, mumbling deliveries would be a challenge to decipher, but whether the closed-captioning was done by human stenographers or AI software, THEY/IT MISSED THE MARK BY A BANJO.