Dec 17, 2013 2 min read

For the half-century he has been in the public eye, Bob Dylan has been known for his facility with words.

When he was awarded an honorary Pulitzer Prize in 2008, the composer of such undying classics as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They are a-Changin'” and “All Along the Watchtower” was praised for the “extraordinary poetic power” of his songs.

But words that Dylan spoke in Rolling Stone magazine last year have gotten him in trouble in France.

The 72-year-old has been accused of inciting racial hatred by a Croatian community organization in that country for an offhand comment he made during one of his rare interviews about the long-standing strains between Serbs and Croats. In a discussion of racism in America, Dylan, a civil rights advocate who performed at the March on Washington in 1963, mused that discrimination has held America back and “If you got a slave master or (Ku Klux) Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood.”

Dylan’s comments may have been inartful, but the whole notion of them stirring racial animosity is absurd. And, to us, it makes little sense that comments made by an American citizen to an American magazine about an Eastern Europe ethnic feud are subject to litigation in France. But European free-speech laws are more stringent than they are in the United States, so Dylan is now under investigation by French prosecutors. The Croatian community group, however, said they would not press their case if Dylan apologized.

Let’s hope the French authorities make an apology or any other gesture unnecessary and dismiss this frivolous case with haste.