What is going on with Bob Dylan these days? First, he was in that freaky Victoria’s Secret commercial (he’s NEVER done commercials before), and now I hear that he’s going to be a guest judge for American Idol. What happened to Mr. Antiestablishment? I confess, I feel hurt and betrayed. I feel like shouting "Judas!" just like at that Manchester concert where Dylan switched to electric guitar, and his gentle folk fans were driven into a foaming, self-righteous rage.

Don’t get me wrong, here. I love Dylan. I love the tangled beauty of his lyrics and the unexpected chord progressions and that scratchy, gloriously imperfect voice (which has only gotten more glorious and imperfect through the years, like an old-as-dirt Delta blues singer). His protest songs are compelling, and he has penned some of the most original lyrics about love and longing I’ve ever heard:

"Your cracked country lips, I still wish to kiss, As to be by the strength of your skin. Your magnetic movements still capture the minutes I’m in."

I also know that Dylan’s greatest strength is that he has never allowed himself to be pigeon-holed—he’s always reinventing himself and his music. If you’ve ever been to one of his concerts, you know that each song is less a fixed blueprint and more an organic entity that is transformed from show to show. But it’s this very transience that gives the songs a depth and a corporeality that they would never have otherwise, because what you’re hearing is being done for the first time. It has never existed before that night. One night he may play a slow bluesy version of "Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right," and the next night it may sound like Jerry Lee Lewis. Yes, reinvention is the name of the game for Bob. But why, I wonder, would he want to reinvent himself as another box of sugar in the cotton-candy mainstream? Is it because it’s the last thing we would expect?

After all these years of railing against the soullessness of commercialism, why is he suddenly so eager to scrap his hard-won credibility and promote crappy ladies’ underwear? I’ve heard that he’s dating one of the VS models (this is the kind of age spread I’d love to see in reverse—not the paltry few years Demi has on Ashton, we’re talking Judi Dench and that kid from Malcolm in the Middle), but could he really turn his back so easily on 40+ years of being an anti-corporate maverick? And while I’m loth to blame the woman (please stop this nonsense about Yoko—she was an artist in her own right, and John would have left the band even without her influence), I’m hard pressed to imagine another explanation for this weirdness. Unless, of course, what we’re seeing is the first evidence of senility.

Perhaps this American Idol thing is an attempt to re-establish his relevance in today’s musical scene. I won’t begrudge him that, but I think it’s profoundly misguided. He’s always been relevant—ask any musician who was inspired by him (and most of them were at some point). I do understand that to be considered an icon is to be limited by that label. That was the chief message of Masked and Anonymous, after all. It’s as if Dylan has been given the lifetime achievement award by the music world, and he’d just like to remind us that his life and achievements are not all in the past, thank you very much. But to stray so far from those radical roots that you end up back at the conformist plantation, sitting on the porch and drinking mint juleps with The Man . . . well then . . . I just don’t get the point of having left in the first place.

Maybe at this point in his life, these kinds of career moves simply feel more honest to Dylan. (Like he said, "you gotta serve somebody.") Maybe commercialism is an inescapable, Iago-style ghoul that hounds you and whispers in your ear until you are in thrall to it. Or maybe—just maybe—all the man needs is a good acetylcholinesterase inhibitor to straighten out those funky brain waves.

Just kidding, Bob. You know I love you. But seriously—what gives? Is this sky, too, folding under you? Is it all over now, Baby Blue?