Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing" discriminatory?
Hugh Freaking Dillon
Posts: 14,010
Now I've heard it all. :roll:
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/entert ... 26509.html
OTTAWA - The 1980s song "Money for Nothing" by the British rock band Dire Straits has been deemed unacceptable for play on Canadian radio.
In a ruling released Wednesday, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council says the song contravenes the human rights clauses of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters' Code of Ethics and Equitable Portrayal Code.
A listener to radio station CHOZ-FM in St. John's, N.L., complained last year that the song includes the word "faggot" in its lyrics and is discriminatory to gays.
The broadcaster argued that the song had been played countless times since its release decades ago and has won music industry awards.
A CBSC panel concluded that the word "faggot," even if once acceptable, has evolved to become unacceptable in most circumstances.
The panel noted that "Money for Nothing" would be acceptable for broadcast if suitably edited.
How ridiculous. It's not even the singer "saying" it. It's a song about a character that works in a hardware store.
Mark Knopfler himself explains:
"The lead character in "Money for Nothing" is a guy who works in the hardware department in a television/custom kitchen/refrigerator/microwave appliance store. He's singing the song. I wrote the song when I was actually in the store. I borrowed a bit of paper and started to write the song down in the store. I wanted to use a lot of the language that the real guy actually used when I heard him, because it was more real...."
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/entert ... 26509.html
OTTAWA - The 1980s song "Money for Nothing" by the British rock band Dire Straits has been deemed unacceptable for play on Canadian radio.
In a ruling released Wednesday, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council says the song contravenes the human rights clauses of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters' Code of Ethics and Equitable Portrayal Code.
A listener to radio station CHOZ-FM in St. John's, N.L., complained last year that the song includes the word "faggot" in its lyrics and is discriminatory to gays.
The broadcaster argued that the song had been played countless times since its release decades ago and has won music industry awards.
A CBSC panel concluded that the word "faggot," even if once acceptable, has evolved to become unacceptable in most circumstances.
The panel noted that "Money for Nothing" would be acceptable for broadcast if suitably edited.
How ridiculous. It's not even the singer "saying" it. It's a song about a character that works in a hardware store.
Mark Knopfler himself explains:
"The lead character in "Money for Nothing" is a guy who works in the hardware department in a television/custom kitchen/refrigerator/microwave appliance store. He's singing the song. I wrote the song when I was actually in the store. I borrowed a bit of paper and started to write the song down in the store. I wanted to use a lot of the language that the real guy actually used when I heard him, because it was more real...."
Gimli 1993
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
But it does a disservice to reality when we pretend these things aren't being said...
When I create a fictional character, I don't make them politically correct, I try to make them real and real people say and believe unpleasant things.
Please Support My Writing Habit By Purchasing A Book:
https://www.createspace.com/3437020
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000663025696
http://earthtremors.blogspot.com/
Abrn Hlls '98 - Clarkston 2 '03 - Grd Rpds '06 - Abrn Hlls '06 - Clvd '10 - PJ20 - Berlin 1+2 '12 - Wrigley '13 - Pitt '13- buff '13- Philly 1+2 '13 - Seattle '13
hey hey easy on the "women" stuff now
i wrote our local stations because they took the whole fucking verse out
lately now it is played with all verses and words
i said fag all the time when i was in england
fun times
course i said
fuck the queen
fuck soccer
and
fuck bp
a lot over there, too
"what a long, strange trip it's been"
hey it's hard when i'm never right
Godfather.
I'l bet he'd get banned from this PJ site all the time. He's one controversial mofo.
Mark are you here?!
The ONLY thing better than a glass of beer is tea with Miss McGill
A protuberance of flesh above the waistband of a tight pair of trousers
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
On December 18, 2007, BBC Radio 1 put a ban on the words "faggot" and "slut" from "Fairytale of New York" to "avoid offence". The words, sung as Kirsty MacColl and MacGowan trade insults, were dubbed out. MacColl's mother, Jean, called the ban "too ridiculous", while the Pogues said they found it "amusing". The BBC said: "We are playing an edited version because some members of the audience might find it offensive". Later that evening Radio 1 backed down and said that after a day of criticism from listeners, the band, and MacColl's mother, they reversed the decision. The unedited version was then played later on that day. Other BBC radio stations, including the typically conservative Radio 2, had continued to play the original version throughout this period, the ban having applied to Radio 1 only. The MTV channels in the UK also subject the song to censorship by removing and scrambling the words "slut", "faggot" and "arse".
In his Christmas podcast, musical comedian Mitch Benn commented that "faggot" was Irish and Liverpudlian slang for a lazy person, and was unrelated to the derogatory term for homosexuals.
Context is essential in these kind of debates, and in these cases, it's pretty clear that the song and the band are not being discriminatory. Just like the Huck Finn thing last week. If it was in a context where they were making a derogatory or inflammatory statement about homosexuals, then maybe there'd be a case. But knee-jerk reactions to a word out of the context in which it was used are silly. All the sillier to decide to censor songs that have been around for decades, and are monumentally famous. Surely if they were going to be so offensive, we would've heard about it by now!
96: Cork, Dublin
00: Dublin
06: London, Dublin
07: London, Copenhagen, Nijmegen
09: Manchester, London
10: Dublin, Belfast, London & Berlin
11: San José
12: Isle of Wight, Copenhagen, Ed in Manchester & London x2
really now
faggot got you banned?
how many times did you say it?
did you use it with a whole bunch of other bad words?
i'm only asking because as of late, i do not understand exactly what triggers a ban
"what a long, strange trip it's been"
http://forums.pearljam.com/viewtopic.ph ... s#p2347472
But seriously, shouldn’t they be banning songs that are much more offensive like Man Eater, Abracadabra???
fucking hell
are you fucking kidding me?
you are in china?
fag could mean cigarette or some other inane thing
holy shit
one little fag-got you banned
unbelievable
"what a long, strange trip it's been"
i was about to post this,
might i just say this is probably the best Christmas song ever
Halifax, Edmonton stations to play unedited version of 'Money for Nothing'
TORONTO - Classic rock fans and radio stations across Canada have decided that a ruling against Dire Straits' 1985 hit "Money For Nothing" simply ain't workin'.
Days after the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council ruled the song unfit for radio because of a gay slur in its lyrics, radio stations in Halifax and Edmonton planned to rebel by playing an unedited version of the song on repeat for a full hour.
Meanwhile, an outcry from fans continued to reverberate through the Internet, with commentators debating the decision furiously across various formats — "Dire Straits" and "CBSC" were both still trending topics on Twitter in Canada.
Even Dire Straits keyboardist Guy Fletcher weighed in on his personal website, responding to fans' questions by calling the decision "unbelievable" and relaying a message from the song's writer, Mark Knopfler.
"Mark tells me that due to the ban, he has now substituted the word faggot for 'fudger'.... for Canada," Fletcher wrote.
The council ruled on Wednesday that the tune violates the industry's code of ethics because its lyrics include the word "faggot" three times.
While the decision was applauded by gay rights group Egale Canada, the program director for Halifax rock station Q104 said the station is concerned with the precedent set by the decision, calling it a "tragic error in judgment."
The station said it will have members of the gay and lesbian community on hand for its marathon, scheduled to run between 9 and 10 p.m. local time.
"We believe that this decision may trivialize the meaningful work done to further the cause of the LGBT community and could actually work against them by creating a sense of excessive political correctness at the cost of the fundamental freedom of speech," Q104's J.C. Douglas said in a statement.
Edmonton classic rock station K-97 — which, like Q104, is owned by NewCap Radio — also planned a one-hour marathon, according to a note on the station's website.
The scrutiny of the song was prompted by a complaint from a listener of radio station CHOZ-FM in St. John's, N.L.
The panel noted that "Money for Nothing" would be acceptable for broadcast if suitably edited.
The ban applies to every Canadian radio station. But when reached Friday, Canadian Broadcast Standards Council national chairman Ron Cohen said the independent watchdog organization wouldn't take action against the stations airing the unedited version of the song unless another listener complained.
"It's very important that even things that we may 'know' in quotation marks are happening, that we don't deal with them unless there's a complaint," he said in a telephone interview.
"Our issue is that we're responsive to the public — if the public doesn't have a problem, we don't have a problem."
Still, he noted that such defiance was, as far as he could remember, unprecedented.
The controversy over "Money for Nothing" isn't, however.
Ever since the song was released in '85 — when it hit No. 1 in Canada and the U.S. and spawned a memorable music video for then-fledgling music network MTV — songwriter Mark Knopfler has defended himself from accusations of homophobia.
He has said the song was written from the perspective of a working-class man who was unimpressed by the millionaire rock stars he saw jumping about on MTV.
The story was still receiving international press on Friday, with London tabloid the Daily Mail running the story under in its "Don't Miss" banner and Fox News using the headline "No Way, Eh!" for its take on the situation, which earned 150-plus comments from readers.
Much of the outrage seems to be centred on the fact that the song was meant with irony. But Cohen has said that the council usually considers such distinctions in context less relevant in short pop songs than in TV dramas or documentaries.
That didn't satisfy Douglas, who compared the character in the song to Archie Bunker — the irascible bigot in the 1970s sitcom, "All in the Family."
"(Bunker is) one of the great fictional characters of our time, and one who illustrated how completely absurd a bigot can be," he said.
"To deny radio the right to reveal that character, warts and all, is a tragic error in judgment and puts the (council) on the slippery slope to censorship."
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
I have a history of upsetting people :oops:
But I'm working on it. :angel:
Or how about this gem from Glass Tiger?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx6_-urg5fo&ob=av3nm
Editing the N word out of Huck Finn is just re-writing history. And we know what happens when man forgets history.........
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014