I haven't thought of listening to "Money for Nothing" for quite a while. It runs a delicious 8 minutes and 24 seconds on the Brothers in Arms album. It's much shorter on Sultans of Swing, but still good. I'm glad my wife is out on snowshoes, so I can turn the volume up.
-Joe-
Here's the full text of the Montreal Gazette article:
Canadian censors are in Dire Straits themselves
Read more: (click)
By MARK LEPAGE, The Gazette January 14, 2011
Congratulations, Mark Knopfler. You are the new Eminem.
You, balding Glaswegian fingerpicker, headbanded Stratmaster from another age, have been retrofitted as the scourge of the Canadian airwaves.
When you heard that the Canadian Broadcast Standards Commission had censored the song Money for Nothing for containing the word "faggot," I'm sure you experienced the same fuddled reaction -people listen to radio? The CBSC ruled on Wednesday in response to a written complaint from a listener to CHOZ-FM in St. John's, Nfld., who either doesn't have iTunes or whose parents had no CD collection.
The suddenly-discovered lyric was deemed "extremely offensive" to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Canadians, falling afoul of the Canadian Association of Broadcaster's Code of Ethics: "broadcasters shall ensure that their programming contains no abusive or unduly discriminatory material or comment which is based on matters of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status or physical or mental disability."
Marital status? This may draw Beyonce's Single Ladies into the crosshairs. But it also sparks an idea -rather than the entirely plausible outrage and anarchy we can expect in the wake of this ruling. (They've banned Knopfler, let's hit the #!!*@& streets!) let's help the CBSC with this BS. Round up the usual suspects.)
For space purposes, we'd leave aside the global library of songs with foul language -including Who Are You, Working Class Hero (F-word), Pink Floyd's Money (b. s.) - and concentrate on those that violate the CBSC code.
Line up Dylan's Hurricane, who "to the black folks was just a crazy nigger" and Walk on the Wild Side's "coloured girls." Add the Rolling Stones in Miss You, grading the ladies by ethnicity. In Every Picture Tells a Story, Rod Stewart is taken with his "slit eyed lady." Born in the USA - the "yellow man," that could cause problems. Michael Jackson? "Jew me, sue me / Kick me, kike me." Oliver's Army mentions the n-word. Woman is the Nigger of the World would be self-explanatory, Mr. Lennon, as would the Stones' Bitch, in their very titles. As is Lennon's Crippled Inside, of issue to the handicapped, and Aqualung, for its ageist portrait, and 19th Nervous Breakdown and Brain Damage, for mocking mental instability. And we'll leave aside Short People.
But no, let's be "fag"-specific here. The Stones' are reliably back again with When the Whip Comes Down and the "fag in L.A.", The Who's Helpless Dancer calls out "the lesbians and queers." There was once a rumour that the Beatles sang "baby you're a rich fag Jew" ... but we digress. Green Day's Holiday may be a little obscure, but the Tom Robbins anthem Glad to Be Gay mentions "queer." And Merry Christmas: Fairytale of New York runs "You scumbag, you maggot / You cheap lousy faggot / Happy Christmas your arse I pray god it's our last."
You can add American Triangle and its "God hates fags where we come from." That was written by Elton John in the wake of Matthew Shepard's murder in Wyoming.
One would like to point out to the CBSC that the vexation took fully 25 years to register, as Money for Nothing has been floating around appalling the airwaves offensively since 1985. In any case, even back then, the song was committing something more dangerous than a purported anti-gay slur. It was almost committing satire.
At the time, I remember being annoyed on behalf of the group actually targeted by the song -blue-collar workers, the kind who would supposedly mock rock stars with that Other F Word while humping your new fridge up a flight of stairs -and who were apparently being lampooned for their envy and lowbrow prejudice. Was this homophobia ... or was it classism? Or was it simply "quotation in character"? Either way, I was pissed.
But let's "get real." The genuine fear isn't of a country becoming the Ministry Of Managing Permanently Offended People (MOMPOP), but that this tempest calls into question the meaning and intent of words themselves.
Words -they're problematic. So many interpretations! And so many opportunities to leave in a huff. One man's "I love the dead before they're cold" is another's "lady is a tramp." The censoring of Money For Nothing for its use of a slur for gays, despite the obvious absence of any real attempt to injure that group, calls into question the meaning of another word: standard.
A standard would imply a judgment based on a set of feelings and opinions and moral codes, the latter two themselves based on consideration, understanding of context, and something we might call "wisdom." The CBSC would respond that they were responding to a complaint -so let's get it right, and rename them the Canadian Broadcast Reflex Council. One complaint by one person in Newfoundland, and someone in Victoria 7,300 kilometres away can't hear a song on the radio. One letter, and one new judgment for 32 million people.
There are no real "standards" there at all -certainly none that are consistent, balanced or sensible. Both Gord Downie and Eazy-E have been censored in the past, and one of those guys might receive the Order of Canada one day. And if we have regulatory bodies, why is radio favoured with so much attention? Never mind films, which in theory have age ratings, whereas radio offends across the very air we breathe, passing its filth into every innocent passing ear. What about newspapers? Absent wise decisions on context, we will need a stronger body to censor articles like this one, in which you will now have read the word "faggot" a half-dozen times.
Now, while you watch Frank Zappa own James Lofton in this 25-year-old 1986 Crossfire debate www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ISil7IHzxc), and while Mark Knopfler laughs and laughs on his way to the Bank of Scotland, let's get back to considering that Old Woman who lived in a shoe, whipping her starving children.
markjlepage@yahoo.com
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
I moved the thread to the Music Section. Seems to belong there, doesn't it?