Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing" discriminatory?

Hugh Freaking Dillon
Hugh Freaking Dillon Posts: 14,010
edited January 2011 in A Moving Train
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...."
Gimli 1993
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments

  • BinauralJam
    BinauralJam Posts: 14,158
    On N.Y. radio's they have been muting "faggot" line for years now. I was singing it once along with the radio and included the Faggot part and got a dirty look from my wife, i had to explain the whole story. She had no idea, but i was still somehow in the doghouse with her. Women.
  • keeponrockin
    keeponrockin Posts: 7,446
    Like I've said earlier, I don't like censorship. But if we're gonna censor rap lyrics for the word 'nigger', what's good for the goose...
    Believe me, when I was growin up, I thought the worst thing you could turn out to be was normal, So I say freaks in the most complementary way. Here's a song by a fellow freak - E.V
  • eyedclaar
    eyedclaar Posts: 6,980
    keeponrockin wrote:
    Like I've said earlier, I don't like censorship. But if we're gonna censor rap lyrics for the word 'nigger', what's good for the goose...

    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.
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  • CAVSTARR313
    CAVSTARR313 Posts: 8,756
    This is ridiculous.. People need to toughen up.. If a word in a song bothers you that much, you probubly have problems that censorship can't fix..
    None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe that they are free.
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  • mysticweed
    mysticweed Posts: 3,710
    BinauralJam wrote:
    On N.Y. radio's they have been muting "faggot" line for years now. I was singing it once along with the radio and included the Faggot part and got a dirty look from my wife, i had to explain the whole story. She had no idea, but i was still somehow in the doghouse with her. Women.


    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
    fuck 'em if they can't take a joke

    "what a long, strange trip it's been"
  • norm
    norm Posts: 31,146
    that verse has been edited out for radio play since the 80's
  • BinauralJam
    BinauralJam Posts: 14,158
    chickweed wrote:
    BinauralJam wrote:
    On N.Y. radio's they have been muting "faggot" line for years now. I was singing it once along with the radio and included the Faggot part and got a dirty look from my wife, i had to explain the whole story. She had no idea, but i was still somehow in the doghouse with her. Women.


    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


    hey it's hard when i'm never right
  • Godfather.
    Godfather. Posts: 12,504
    FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT ! :lol: ......this has got to be a joke I agree with guy a few posts ago that said something about deeper issues that censoring will not fix. man talk about thin skin,what a bunch of bullshit.

    Godfather.
  • guitar59
    guitar59 Posts: 1,221
    First Mark Twain, now Mark Knopfler...this censorship stuff bites! ;)
  • Byrnzie
    Byrnzie Posts: 21,037
    I got banned from the board for a couple of weeks for using the word 'faggot', so it's only fair that Mark Knopfler gets the same kind of treatment. :shh:
  • JonnyPistachio
    JonnyPistachio Florida Posts: 10,219
    Byrnzie wrote:
    I got banned from the board for a couple of weeks for using the word 'faggot', so it's only fair that Mark Knopfler gets the same kind of treatment. :shh:

    I'l bet he'd get banned from this PJ site all the time. He's one controversial mofo. :D
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  • 81
    81 Needing a ride to Forest Hills and a ounce of weed. Please inquire within. Thanks. Or not. Posts: 58,276
    lets roll anouther narst
    81 is now off the air

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  • Phantom Pain
    Phantom Pain Posts: 9,876
    Canada complains about that and Nickelback gets a free a pass ?

    :D :problem: :wtf:
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  • Hugh Freaking Dillon
    Hugh Freaking Dillon Posts: 14,010
    :lol:
    Phantom Pain wrote:
    Canada complains about that and Nickelback gets a free a pass ?

    :D :problem: :wtf:
    Gimli 1993
    Fargo 2003
    Winnipeg 2005
    Winnipeg 2011
    St. Paul 2014
  • Hugh Freaking Dillon
    Hugh Freaking Dillon Posts: 14,010
    not in Canada. this is new.
    norm wrote:
    that verse has been edited out for radio play since the 80's
    Gimli 1993
    Fargo 2003
    Winnipeg 2005
    Winnipeg 2011
    St. Paul 2014
  • wolfamongwolves
    wolfamongwolves Posts: 2,414
    Same thing happened with Fairytale of New York a few years' back:

    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!
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  • keeponrockin
    keeponrockin Posts: 7,446
    eyedclaar wrote:
    keeponrockin wrote:
    Like I've said earlier, I don't like censorship. But if we're gonna censor rap lyrics for the word 'nigger', what's good for the goose...

    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.
    I agree with you, and personally, I'd rather we not censor anything and let the public decide with their radio dial/remote/etc... But if we are censoring, classic rock shouldn't be treated any differently than rap IMO.
    Believe me, when I was growin up, I thought the worst thing you could turn out to be was normal, So I say freaks in the most complementary way. Here's a song by a fellow freak - E.V
  • mysticweed
    mysticweed Posts: 3,710
    Byrnzie wrote:
    I got banned from the board for a couple of weeks for using the word 'faggot', so it's only fair that Mark Knopfler gets the same kind of treatment. :shh:

    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
    fuck 'em if they can't take a joke

    "what a long, strange trip it's been"
  • Byrnzie
    Byrnzie Posts: 21,037
    chickweed wrote:
    Byrnzie wrote:
    I got banned from the board for a couple of weeks for using the word 'faggot', so it's only fair that Mark Knopfler gets the same kind of treatment. :shh:

    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

    http://forums.pearljam.com/viewtopic.ph ... s#p2347472
  • Jason P
    Jason P Posts: 19,309
    The Canadian government nipped this one in the bud. They were Jonny-on-the-spot in taking care of this issue. That’s what I like in a government, they see a problem and immediately address it.

    But seriously, shouldn’t they be banning songs that are much more offensive like Man Eater, Abracadabra???
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