Money For Nothing Is The Thin Edge Of The Wedge Of Mind Cntrol...

...here's my Top 10 Moses. Not a single song on the list but just wait.

Matt Gurney: If we’re banning songs, let’s ban these too

On Wednesday, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council released a decision banning original versions of Dire Strait’s 1985 smash hit Money for Nothing from our radio waves due to the use of the word “faggot” in the song. The CBSC opened their investigation after a complaint from a listener in Newfoundland, and concluded the song breaches several of its policies designed to protect Canadians from “abusive or unduly discriminatory material.” Bizarrely, though the CBSC permits the use of offensive language if it has fictional merit (for example, racist language in a movie set during the South during the Civil War), it did not apply this exemption to Money for Nothing, despite its use in the song being self-evidently not an example of prejudice, but of commentary on a prejudiced person who would use such a term. Given the precedent set by the CBSC, will the following songs be next?

The Beatles, Happiness is a Warm Gun (1968): It hardly seems necessary to explain this one. Happiness is a warm gun, bang bang, shoot shoot? Yikes. Can we say “incitement to violence?” What’s the point in registering guns if the Fab Four can just go out and call them neato? Better get this off the air, pronto, before some poor gentle soul happens to be listening to it while surfing Sarah Palin’s Facebook page, leading instantaneously to a violent rampage.

Jimmy Hendrix, Hey Joe (1966): A man finds out that his wife has been having an affair (running all over town), so logically, he goes after her with a gun in his hand, and plans to flee to Mexico after murdering her. So that’s violence against woman, unsafe use of a firearm and illegal immigration all in one. Sorry, Jimmy. You’re banned.

Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues (1955): It doesn’t matter if you regret what you did and hang your head and cry when all the rich folk ride past in a train, drinking coffee and smoking big cigars. You should have listened when your mom told you to always be a good boy and never play with guns, but instead, you shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die. Sorry, Johnny. No way we can expose Canadians to this. Banned.

Frank Loesser, Baby, It’s Cold Outside (1944): This song can be summed up in two words: Illegal confinement. Date rape. Banned!

Collective Soul, The World I Know (1995): Look, I don’t really know what this song is about, just that I listened to it a lot during high school, and it talks about a guy who’s crying, walking up on high and stepping to the edge. Where is he walking? What edge is he at? Who knows? If it prevents one crying man from jumping off a bridge (or a cliff, or a balcony, or a roof), though, this song has got to go.

Elton John, Jamaica Jerk-Off (1973): Again, not really sure what’s going on in this song, but let’s just deem it both racist and overtly sexual and call it a day. It’s not exactly I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues, anyway, so no big loss.

Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht, The Ballad of Mack the Knife (1928): Mack is a bad dude, guys. In the English version of the German ballad first popularized by Bobby Darin, Mack stabs a guy, robs another, and is seen possibly throwing a body into the river. And that’s tame compared to the original version, where he rapes a widow and commits arson. How can we be a progressive nation when we let filth like this play on easy listening and swinging standards stations? Old people are impressionable too, you know.

Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You (1967): Is this a love song, or a song about an obsessive man stalking a woman who, as he readily admits, is too good be to true, thus suggesting some degree of mental illness? I’m not sure, and you can’t be either, so, sorry, cast of Jersey Boys. You’ve been promoting criminal behaviour all along.

Huey Lewis and the News, I Want a New Drug (1984): No explanation required. But at least it gave the Ghostbusters theme something to work with.



National Post

mgurney@nationalpost.com

Nothing has Changed...

...politicians, beauracrats and social in-activists are still trying to sanitize the world to meet their personalities; ie: no choc. milk in schools, etc.

Comment: How the Toronto school board sterilized Halloween


Posted: October 29, 2008, 3:43 PM by Rob Roberts

Comment by David Menzies

Forget about the War on Christmas. The mavens of political correctness have a new target in their crosshairs: Halloween.

A case in point: the Toronto District School Board has several “concerns” with respect to the imagery – and even the foodstuffs – associated with All Hallow’s Eve. In fact, some schools in Toronto and elsewhere now refer to Halloween as “Black and Orange Day,” fearing the H-word itself will be as potentially offensive to certain groups as Christmas may be for some non-Christians. The TDSB’s Halloween policy is outlined in its 2008 Teaching Resource for Dealing with Controversial and Sensitive Issues in Toronto District School Board Classrooms. This document, dripping with spine-tingling bureaucratese, outlines six reasons why Halloween isn’t as fun as you might think.

For instance:

1. “Halloween is a religious day of significance for Wiccans and therefore should be treated respectfully.”

According to Kurt MacIntosh, the TDSB’s supervising principal of equity and inner city, nobody knows how many students of the Wiccan faith attend Toronto schools. Nor have complaints been quantified.

2. “Peer and social/media consumer pressures target all children and their families as consumers of costumes, makeup, food products, etc. Many students and their families can feel this socio-economic marginalization keenly.”

The TDSB is on to something here. Indeed, my six-year-old son, Sean, was planning on dressing up as Iron Man this year. But since money is too tight to mention, Sean realized Dad wouldn’t be able to afford repulsor ray gloves or a pair of jet-propulsion boots. “Daddy, forget about buying me a costume this year,” Sean said the other day. “I just realized social/media consumer pressures are fueling my desire to dress-up as a superhero. I’ll stay at home on Black and Orange Day this year so that you don’t feel any socio-economic marginalization, keenly or otherwise.”

3. “The images and icons associated with consumer-oriented Halloween can come into conflict with some students’ and their families’ religious beliefs.”

Does dressing up as a zombie mock the resurrection of Christ? In any event, the TSDB’s MacIntosh notes that “tombstones, the trivialization of death, and gore” are offensive to both Christians and Muslims. Still, if a devout [fill in religion here] student was offended by Halloween celebrations – or, more accurately, if the parents of that student were offended – wouldn’t it make more sense for that pupil to stay home on Oct. 31 rather than alter Halloween celebrations for the entire student body?

4. “The food products that are marketed heavily during the Halloween period can come into conflict with students’ and their families’ dietary habits.”

Certainly this is the biggest red herring put forth by the anti-Halloween camp. Since “offensive” food products are marketed all year long, surely it is within the bailiwick of parents to control such foodstuffs. Besides, Halloween fun at our strictly peanut-free schools involves dressing up, not consuming copious quantities of conflicting candies.

5. “Some students have had first-hand traumatic experiences of violence that make talking about death, ghosts, etc., extremely alienating.”

The TDSB has no tangible evidence to support the position that a rubber werewolf mask might “alienate” or “traumatize” a child who has previously experienced violence. Are we to assume children who have experienced trauma are forever incapable of embracing make-believe fun on Halloween?

6. “Many recently arrived students in our schools share no background cultural knowledge of trick-or-treating or the commercialization of death as ‘fun.’”

Forget Halloween. Surely “recently arrived students” have no cultural knowledge of Canadian history, the lyrics to the national anthem, or for that matter, the delayed offside rule in hockey. Isn’t it incumbent upon teachers to, well, teach the kids about Canadian culture?

Halloween is all about kids from all cultures and faiths dressing up and having fun. The TDSB appears to be basing its policy paper more on phantom concerns than quantifiable complaints.

Happy Black and Orange Day, nevertheless.

COMMENTS

READ MORE: Toronto schools chief defends board’s Halloween sensitivity policy.