It was only a few days ago, at Sunday’s town hall–style presidential debate, that a nerdy, undecided voter in a red sweater became a meme-ified Twitter heartthrob after asking a wonky question about energy policy, jobs, and climate change (and later taking pictures with a disposable camera—with flash, no less). Bone was “the undisputed winner” of the debate, a “normcore” “internet hero” who “gives Americans hope” while also solving their Halloween costume conundrums. Also: LOL that surname.

But now Ken Bone is leveraging his fame for profit...

...and the meme police on Twitter will have none of it.

Now, a few relevant facts about Bone:

• He is 34 years old.
• He has a 12-year-old son.
• He is an operator at a coal power plant.
• He is auctioning his red sweater for charity.

Wrong. Twitter did.

No one has ever known what to do with Dylan, not really. For whatever reason—and maybe it’s because he pioneered the breed—“songwriter” never seemed like it was enough. So, for the last 50 years, people have been embarrassing themselves by throwing all manner of descriptors at Dylan to capture what he does. “Poet” is the one that’s been most overused, but he’s been called a “bard” and a “troubadour,” and probably much worse—though it’s hard to imagine what’s worse than being called a “troubadour.”

That people have such a hard time labeling Dylan is not just funny, it’s anachronistic. The “Dylan is a poet” idea started in the 1960s, when there was still doubt that songwriting—particularly pop songwriting—was an art. There’s no doubt about that now, and we have Dylan (among many others) to thank for that. But it’s silly to see this get re-litigated just because Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The prize has gone to playwrights and Winston Churchill (Winston Churchill!).

Of course, the problem with giving the Nobel Prize to Dylan is that it’s unclear what the Swedish Academy is giving it to him for. By comparing him to Sappho and Homer, they seem to be suggesting it’s mostly for the lyrics, but that would be a mistake—a point proven by this tweet, which the Nobel Prize sent out after Dylan won.

This is a funny tweet for a lot of reasons. The biggest being that the lyrics come from “Pretty Saro,” which is a traditional song, though Dylan certainly puts his own spin on it. The video they link to, however, is “Thunder on the Mountain,” in which Dylan sings about wanting to bone Alicia Keys. But, if we stick with “Pretty Saro,” the point is made. Those lyrics aren’t very good—they read like a 19th-century Hallmark card. But my god, the song itself is stunning. For decades people have been devoting way too much attention to Dylan’s lyrics, and not enough to his songwriting and even his production (and “Pretty Saro” is a subtle masterpiece on this count).

My colleague Ryu Spaeth is right insofar as giving the Nobel to Dylan is a departure—there isn’t really a comparable Laureate, except maybe Churchill, and only then because he’s the exception to the rule. But Dylan is also exemplary—comparing Philip Roth to him on this count is not fair to either, but Dylan is certainly the more important artist. And he’s a worthy Nobel Laureate.

The primary colors of art are music, painting, and poetry. There are overlaps and offshoots, but these are the fundamental media, traveling via sound, sight, and language to reside in that numinous inner place that we could roughly translate as the soul. To award Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature—“for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” according to the Swedish Academy—is, in the most basic sense, a category error. However you might feel about Dylan’s prowess as a wordsmith and poet, there is no denying that the emotional heft of his work comes not from language, but from music. His one great achievement as a writer—his memoir Chronicles—isn’t even cited by the Swedish Academy.

While some will celebrate the fact that an American has finally won this coveted prize after a decades-long drought, I read it as a troll of the American writers and poets who could actually lay claim to the award. Everyone has their preferred American Nobel Laureate—from William H. Gass to Marilynne Robinson to John Ashbery to, yes, Philip Roth—all of whom have been disrespected by the Academy this morning.

Finally, there are two kinds of Nobel Prizes in Literature. One bestows the ultimate literary honor on a writer with a substantial body of work who is universally respected and admired—think Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Toni Morrison or Derek Walcott or Samuel Beckett. The other rewards a great writer who has gone largely unnoticed: Svetlana Alexievich and Imre Kertesz fall into this category. Dylan cannot be put into either, and it’s hard to see what point there is in awarding this prize to someone as famous as Dylan.

Actually, there is a third category of Nobel Prize: the farce. Every so often the Academy embarrasses itself (see: Dario Fo), a good reminder that we should not take the business of award-giving seriously at all.

An American has won the Nobel Prize in Literature for the first time in 23 years—but in a shocking decision, songwriter Bob Dylan—not novelists Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, or Thomas Pynchon—won “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” Dylan’s citation also compared him to Homer—the Swedish Academy had to reach back 3,000 years to find a precedent.

Born Robert Zimmerman in 1941, Dylan was the enfant terrible of the New York City folk scene—a impish trickster who annoyed (and stole from) many of his elders, particularly Dave Van Ronk and Pete Seger. Dylan first broke out in the early 1960s as a part of a growing movement of songwriters who were writing and performing topical material about the Civil Rights Movement and other current events. Dylan has been labeled a “topical songwriter” since that period, but he spent only a short period writing songs like “When The Ship Comes In” and “The Times They Are A Changin’”

Instead, Dylan quickly became annoyed by the constraints of folk music and pushed into other areas, writing more poetic and psychedelic material and less overtly political songs. This culminated when he famously “went electric,” with the Paul Butterfield Blues band in 1965, an event that split the folk movement down the center. During that period, Dylan was also incredibly inspired, churning out cutting edge music on Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde.

But in 1966 Dylan was in a motorcycle accident (allegedly), and quit it all. He spent the rest of the 1960s holed up in Woodstock with the musicians who would become The Band churning out traditional music. When he returned, he was always noticeably out of fashion (or maybe just ahead of it) until the mid-70s: In 1967, he released an album of very traditional-sounding folk music, John Wesley Harding, in 1969 he made Nashville Skyline, a country album, and in 1970, he released Self-Portrait, one of the most beguiling albums ever made. (The outtakes from it are extraordinary. The album is not.)

Dylan’s last great album, Blood on the Tracks, which was inspired by his divorce from model Sara Lowndes, came in 1975. Dylan spent the next two decades as a kind of musical wanderer: He flirted, over the course of three mostly terrible albums, with Christianity; he toured with Tom Petty and joined the Traveling Wilburys.

In 1997, Dylan entered another extraordinary period, releasing three of his best albums—Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, and Modern Times—over a nine year period. His last two albums have been covers of Frank Sinatra songs.

It turns out that when Trump told Anderson Cooper at the second presidential debate that he had never acted on his “locker room talk,” several women watching at home pointed at the screen and said, “Liar.” They included, according to The New York Times, Jessica Leeds and Rachel Crooks, who say Trump groped and kissed them, respectively, without their consent. Also Mindy McGillivray, who told The Palm Beach Post that Trump groped her at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida some 13 years ago.

Meanwhile, Yahoo reports that Cassandra Searles, who competed in the 2013 Miss USA pageant, said on Facebook that Trump “continually grabbed my ass.” CBS has uncovered footage from 1992 of Trump surveying a group of 10-year-olds participating in a Christmas television feature and declaring of one of them, “I am going to be dating her in 10 years. Can you believe it?”

Trump, in response, is promising to unveil new accusations of sexual assault involving Bill Clinton. “We’re going to turn him into Bill Cosby,” Steve Bannon, the head of Trump’s campaign, told Bloomberg Businessweek. Trump also denied the accusations contained in the Times story, telling one of the reporters, “You are a disgusting human being.” This campaign has been pretty ugly so far, but it looks like it’s only going to get uglier.

On Wednesday #repealthe19th started trending among male Trump supporters, after an article by FiveThirtyEight observed that if women didn’t vote, Trump would have a far better chance of winning the presidential election.

That led to tweets like these:

Unfortunately, these turds don’t understand that, to repeal the Nineteenth Amendment, you’d almost certainly need the support of women.

When he retired in 2012, it was widely assumed that Philip Roth had given up his chance of winning the Nobel Prize. Although the Swedish Academy doesn’t require authors to be active—they just have to be not dead—it is generally believed that the academy privileges working authors over retired ones.

Roth is arguably America’s most deserving Nobel laureate. He’s probably first among equals, at least as far as Nobel Prize speculation is concerned, beside Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon. (I’d argue that William Gass belongs in that company as well, but no matter.) But America’s relatively deep bench has also probably hurt it in the past–it’s hard to argue why DeLillo is more deserving than Roth, or vice versa. On Wednesday, I wrote that DeLillo was the leading American contender—and perhaps the leading contender for the Nobel itself—but I also assumed that the conventional wisdom was correct and that the academy would not award a retired author.

I’ve spoken to a couple of Swedish people today who seem to be confident that an American will win the prize on Thursday morning. But one told me a rumor that’s too good not to broadcast: that the academy received a proposal to honor DeLillo and Roth at the same time, a kind of catch-all Nobel for Great American Novelists. Furthermore, the two people who received the proposal seemed receptive to the idea. The person who relayed the rumor did not seem particularly confident—he called it a “joke”—but as a rumor, it is very good stuff, especially in Nobel-starved America.

Giving the prize to two writers is not unprecedented (they would each get half of the prize’s sweet $1.4 million bounty). It’s happened three times: In 1904, when Frédéric Mistral and José Echegaray y Eizaguirre won; in 1966, when Shmuel Yosef Agnon and Miguel Angel Asturias won; and, most recently, in 1974, when Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson shared the prize.

So it’s plausible that Roth and DeLillo could share the Nobel, even if it’s unlikely. But it’s an outcome we all should be rooting for, especially because it would presumably make Roth—who reportedly waits for the call every year at his agent’s office—very mad.

Dozens of Republican lawmakers publicly rescinded their endorsements over the weekend, because that’s what you do after a tape of your nominee bragging about sexual assault drops. But the constituents of many of these Republicans weren’t happy at all.

After South Dakota Senator John Thune called on Trump to drop out and let his running mate Mike Pence take over the ticket, the backlash was swift and severe. According to the Argus Leader (a truly great name for a newspaper), some in South Dakota were calling for Thune to resign because of his anti-Trump comments. “I think he needs to go about the people of South Dakota’s wishes,” Bob Guhin, who created a Facebook group calling for Thune to get out of the race, told the Leader. “And yes, what Trump said was bad, but it’s not his job to tell him to drop out. He should have kept quiet about it.”

So it should come as no surprise that, only five days after Trump’s comments first surfaced, Republicans are already running back to him.

To be fair, of these Republicans, only Byrne officially said he was withdrawing his support, though others like Thune called for Trump to abandon his bid. But it’s clear that some Republicans were actually unprepared to deal with the impact these defections would have on base voters, who are wreaking havoc down-ballot across the country. Some now apparently believe it’s better to hold on to Trump and hope for the best.

In the battleground state, the prospect of mass voter disenfranchisement loomed over the election when the governor last week refused to extend the voter registration deadline as Hurricane Matthew made its way towards the state. Despite the fact that government offices had closed, postal services were shut down, and Scott had urged residents to leave because “this storm will kill you,” he denied the need for an extension, stating, “Everybody has had a lot of time to register.” However, his denial threatened to disenfranchise thousands, especially young, low-income, and minority voters who tend to register at the last minute (and happen to lean Democratic).

In response, the Florida Democratic Party sued the governor and his top election official and asked the courts for a one-week extension, which a federal judge has just granted. The deadline for voter registration is now October 18.  However key public websites, such as that of the Florida Division of Elections and the Florida Department of State, have yet to update their sites and still list October 11 as the deadline. 

Scott, who also chairs a national super PAC committed to electing Trump, is under pressure to help put Florida in the Republican win column, considering the GOP candidate has little chance of winning the election without the state. However, with this latest decision, he has been denied one avenue towards this goal. Unfortunately, if the state’s long history of voter disenfranchisement is any indicator, the need to keep a close watch on Florida remains paramount.