ASPartOfMe wrote:
BillyTree wrote:
^Bob Dylan is by many people suspected to be autistic (in 2009 he was actually arrested on that suspicion). In his younger days he was a great live performer that knew how to handle a crowd. Greta Thunberg is unquestinable autistic and she is a charismatic public speaker.
Dylan was arrested on suspicion of being autistic? When was being autistic ever illegal?
Sorry, I got it wrong. Held for questioning not arrested.
Fordham Urban Law Journal Volume 38 Number 5 Symposium - Bob Dylan and the Law Article 8 2012 Arrested Development: Bob Dylan, Held For Questioning Under Suspicion of "Autism"Excerpt from the article:
This Article discusses an encounter Bob Dylan had with the law
and its meaning in the context of the social constructions of mental
disability, in general, and on autism in particular. I do not, need not,
and should not speculate on Dylan’s autism status—something few
people could possibly know and that is a private matter.
On July 23, 2009, Bob Dylan was taken into custody by police in
Long Branch, New Jersey, after complaints from residents that he was
“suspicious” and perhaps “homeless.”1 According to arresting officer,
Kristie Buble (twenty-two years old at the time of the incident), “We
see a lot of people on our beat, and I wasn’t sure if he came from one
of our hospitals or something.”2
Buble’s remark implies that Dylan had a mental disability, rather
than a physical disease. She continued, however, “He was acting very
suspicious . . . . Not delusional, just suspicious. You know, it was
pouring rain and everything.”3
While Buble claimed later to have known who Bob Dylan was and
simply not to have recognized him from photos she had seen, one of
her colleagues offered a different account. After Buble asked Dylan
for identification, which he was not carrying./.../
Dylan was driven to his hotel, identified, and released without
charges being filed. Many reporters, readers, and commentators on
the numerous online accounts of this incident were outraged that an-
yone could be arrested and asked for identification simply for taking
a walk in the rain and being unusual or even shabby looking. It seems
that Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart would have concurred.
In a landmark decision concerning the forced confinement of the men-
tally disabled, Justice Stewart wrote for a unanimous court:
"May the State fence in the harmless mentally ill solely to save its cit-
izens from exposure to those whose ways are different? One might
as well ask if the State, to avoid public unease, could incarcerate all
who are physically unattractive or socially eccentric. Mere public in-
tolerance or animosity cannot constitutionally justify the deprivation
of a person’s physical liberty."
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English is not my first language.
05 Oct 2025, 12:04 pm
