85 Replies to “In A Ruling On A Complaint Made By The Song’s Publisher”

  1. See the little faggot with the earring and the make-up
    Yeah buddy that’s his own hair
    That little faggot got his own jet airplane
    That little faggot he’s a millionaire
    I don’t suppose it matters that the singer/song writer was describing himself.
    What I’m wondering is when Stephen Harper’s government is going to take a stand for free speech in this country before there isn’t any left.

  3. It looks like I’ve never listened closely enough to the lyrics, because I didn’t know that word that one person found offensive 25 years after the song came out was in there. I like the song, but it’s far from my favourite.
    As one of the early Globe commenters asked, “What about ‘Fairytale of New York’ by The Pogues?”
    And as another one said, almost anything will be found offensive by someone somewhere (and not necessarily in summertime).
    Time to scrap the broadcast standards council methinks? And take the frigging CRTC with it!

  4. wow, WTF is the world coming to? I’m finding I agree with some of the regular commentators on the G&M!

  5. The one gay dude in Newfoundland without a sense of humour or irony complains and they cave?
    They can swing there dicks and shake their asses in your face down crowded boulevards during pride(?) while the police stand idly by.
    That’s government sanctioned degeneracy of which we dare not complain for fear of reprisal by the ruling class & the state.
    But some unintelligible naughty lyrics in a pop song that, that my fellow Canadians, that we can’t abide.

  6. Joe Jackson, “Real Men” from the album “Night and Day” which placed 5th in both the UK and the USA in about the same time frame as “Money for Nothing”. … Tori Amos has done it as too, quite well I think.
    “You don’t want to sound dumb, don’t want to offend,
    So don’t call me a faggot,
    Not unless you are a friend,
    Then if you’re tall and handsome and strong,
    You can wear the uniform and I could play along” … 4th verse.
    Here’s a live version, and yes, he’s looking very much the part…
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj9yd-LdLCM
    Joe Jackson has campaigned against non-smoking laws, and the idea of the nanny state, even in his wikipedia write-up it’s mentioned how in in his autobiography he said at one point that his story was about his life, prior to being a famous type musician, because there’s nothing really worth noting after that point. Good stuff when they see they’re just, “entertainers”.
    This is part of the great push. The government decides what’s offensive, then tells you to stop using those words. Offensive to who? If it’s Mark Knopfler / DIre Straits or a very “out” Joe Jackson, it doesn’t really matter, just stop hating you haters, and get in line.
    The government decides what’s offensive? Really?
    To some of us, the government stealing 50% of our honest wages is offensive.

  7. Well, it is par for the course that the complaint was made from Newfoundland; they don’t have any Dree grants and they have to do something for a living. Where was everyone in Ontario when the Catholic School boards were told they were not allowed to tell students that sodomy and the like was sinful, lest they hurt the feelings of the…well, sodomites?

  8. I find the Canadian broadcast council and the CRTC very offensive and I’ve sustained irreparable emotional damage from seeing this story. Does this mean that these organizations will disappear as a result or should I just sue?
    I happen to like Dire Straights and I’ve just been given one more reason to not listen to the radio in Canada. I stopped listening to the radio when moron Suzuki would come on with his “environmental” messages periodically and I’d immediately turn the radio off and it’s stayed off for the last couple of years. Now I have gigabytes of mp3’s on SD cards that I carry with me and listen to the music I want on my Palm.

  11. The best part is that it’s a favorite song of the gays “in the know” to play. Kind of like YMCA by the Village People.
    They’re walking suicides on many levels.

  14. Saw Satriani last week, nice to go to a concert and hear one of the best guitar players in the world play non-stop for 2 hours and only a short bit of singing done by Joe. All through a synthesizer so you couldn’t really hear the words anyway.
    Freakin’ awesome!!!!

  15. “Who are the brain police”… Another example of the State imposing the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end. Let’s get rid of these harbingers of culture and expression. Broadcast standard’s council, CRTC are all relics of the Trudeauvian ideology, and are about as useful as a poopy flavoured lolly pop.

  16. “But its ART”
    That is the defense for all kinds of vulgar displays from the artsy fartsy set.
    Wonder how they are gonna react to this……heads exploding? Are they gonna defend art or being called a name?
    Yeah its all kind of ridiculous isn’t it? The song has received heavy heavy fuel….errr….airplay for 25 years or so, now it’s just an occasional, wistful review of my (often wasted) youth.
    “I want my MTV”

  17. Funny thing is I used to listen to that song as a teenager and I didn’t even know it had the word faggot in it.
    As was usually the case, I was more interested in the music and rhythms in a song than the lyrics.
    Not sure if my previous post will be put up because I used the “n” word in it, but my earlier point was should they not also then ban many of the rap songs that refer to blacks using the “n” word?
    Maybe to make a point we should try and see how many songs we can get banned.
    World is mad, that’s for sure.

  19. sorry they can shove a guitar up their greedy asses
    Kate, snip me if you have to, as always
    dwright

  20. Yup, this is what happens when you have an organization declare you must see only Canadian content. Meaning liberal Toronto culture.
    I see the work of Hall & Lynch is happily chugging along in a Pseudo-Democracy.
    I mean the State can’t have us think for ourselves, they must toil to make us as close to perfect as they figure there Elitists asses are. Being infallible is tiring work. So is destroying personnel liberty in the name of social fads. No wonder they paid so well.
    When will Canadians realize these monsters are bleeding us, making us slaves, than feeding us garbage 24/7. All for a social class invented 40 years ago in a Marxist temple, that is instable for power, money with prestige for nothing.
    Time to let our politicians know the time of this type of outrage is over.
    We want our Country back from the censors!!!
    JMO

  23. It will be interesting to hear what Mark Knoppfler has t say about this….given that he wrote the lyrics and that he is ulm….”a faggot” himself.

  24. I find it funny that the G&M would link to the offending video on youtube. Not very PC of them. 🙂

  25. I don’t suppose it matters that the singer/song writer was describing himself.
    Actually, he was repeating the words others said about musicians, words he overheard.
    Guess that’s a hate crime now.
    What the heck is wrong with Canada?

  26. I saw Mark Knoephler (sp?) play at Massey Hall last year. He played some old Dire Straits stuff but not “money for nothing”. Its a good thing he didn’t. It was an awesome show and I would have hate to see the police drag him off stage half way though it.

  27. Welcome to Canada, where the CRTC makes sure we don’t hear too much foreign-created music, the CHRC regulates what we can say and write, and the CBSC makes sure we don’t hear any naughty words that might offend anyone.
    Fire Them All.

  28. Will some of you people please wake up and smell the coffee?
    This was NOT the CRTC. This was done by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. It’s an independent, non-governmental body for standards for private broadcasters. It is entirely independent of federal government control. This is the private broadcasters’ organization doing it on their own.
    The object lesson here presumably is why assume that private broadcasters are going to be any less censorious than public ones?

  29. “The panel noted that Money for Nothing would be acceptable for broadcast if suitably edited.”
    This is exactly the same situation as what happened with “Highschool Confidential” by Rough Trade. For years, the word “screwing” was edited out of the radio broadcast of the song because it was deemed obscene.

  31. Editing the song is completely inadequate!!
    Who is going to come and blank my mind so that I do not continually offend myself everytime I remember the song.
    Who is going to pay me for my offensive memories??

  32. Well then.
    The gay commnity can no longer say the word faggot.
    Nor can they claim ownership to the word. It was created by the straight community many many many years ago.
    Webster’s has a politically correct and scrubbed definition. It seems that Webster’s wants to play the “1984” game.
    A faggot is an archaic English unit applied to various-sized collections of sticks:
    1 short faggot of sticks = 2 ft girth × 32 in long bundle of short wood sticks/billets
    1 long faggot of sticks = 2 ft girth × 4 ft long bundle of long wood sticks/billets
    1 faggot of iron = 2 ft girth × 1 ft long bundle of iron/steel rods/bars
    http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Faggot+(unit+of+measurement)
    Noun 1. faggot stitch – the stitch that ties a group of parallel threads together in fagoting
    fagot stitch
    faggoting, fagoting – embroidery in which groups of parallel threads are tied together with fagot stitches
    embroidery stitch, sewing stitch – a stitch made with thread and a threaded sewing needle through fabric or leather
    http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Faggot+(epithet)

  34. Next on the chopping block..
    You can no longer plant pansies in the garden.
    (No double entendre intended so as not to provoke violence in my rhetoric)

  35. Another grotesque censorship body imposes its PC insanity upon a free society – and another civil abomination that fly past Harper without a comment.
    The man is useless in this war against left wing authoritarianism. Fire the wuss and get a Conservative leader with a nut sack!

  36. Have you seen their ads? “The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council adheres to the…..blah,blah,blah” CLICK

  37. Wierd. I don’t like that song because it portrays the working men as shitheads, and it’s just another in the long line of narcissistic musician self indulgences. “poor me I gotta practice my instrument, sleep in a hotel and bang groupies”
    To their credit, working men in the 80’s actually did often call musicians faggots, in this regard censoring this song is no different from censoring Huck Finn.

  38. Here’s my letter of this morning to the CBSC.
    To Whom****ingever
    What the f___k can I say about this f***in’ idiotic and dastardly decision? Are you little f____ts f***ing kidding me? Hey morons, I’m going to go put the f’n CD on and play it really loud right now. Will that constitute an f’n broadcast?
    Wait a frickin’ minute! BROADcast? Isn’t that a slur against women? A$$holes! Money for nothing might describe your jobs. None of you little f—–ts could carry one of Mark Knopfler’s picks to the stage.
    That felt good.
    Sincerley
    Thomas F***in’ L……
    Thunder Bay Ontario

  40. Huh. I wouldn’t have noticed if this hadn’t been linked to as I haven’t listened to Canuck radio for years. If I listen to radio, it’s some foreign station via Shoutcast. Can’t be bothered with the crap offerings in my own country.

  41. funny that, being I’m not a rock guy, this is one of my favs but I wasn’t aware of the f’word in the lyrics. instinctively I thought that the ‘grievance’ would have to do with the sluts (oops I meant ‘chicks’) giving it up for “free”.
    Now hopefully I haven’t offended any sluts.

  42. I do in fact listen to quite a bit of reggae where the ‘bati-boy’ is often made fun of and denigrated. I’d call for a ban of Reggae but for the risk of being labeled ‘racist’. Again.

  43. also, I suppose that as a Canadian I have some issue with the “I want my MTV” line.

  45. The public library here has copies of the original movie M*A*S*H, not the wussie TV version. I wonder what the censors think of the ‘black capsule’ episode. Actually, I’ve never heard of any Christian group objecting to the Last Supper parody in the same episode. I have my own copy of the DVD just in case the PC police raid the library.

  46. Yes, like Doug in PA notes, an edited version of that song has been on sale for a long time; I’ve got a Dire Straits best-of album at least a decade old that includes the edited version. Can you even buy the original any more?

  47. I find the editing option intriguing. Would replacing faggot with another word be acceptable? Faerie, fairy, queer, pontz? Does the CBSC have a pre-approved list of homosexual slang words?
    Another option may be the Seinfeld gambit.
    See the little faggot (not that there’s anything wrong with that) with the earring and the make-up
    Yeah buddy that’s his own hair
    That little faggot (not that there’s anything wrong with that) got his own jet airplane
    That little faggot (not that there’s anything wrong with that) he’s a millionaire
    It’s so hard to know what’s right here.

  48. Frank Zappa, anyone?
    “Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?”
    “Disco Boy”?
    etc. etc. etc.
    PS: it took them this long to figure out that Mrs. Grundy wouldn’t approve?

  50. All these years I thought they were referring to Michael Jackson. No one complained when Billy Joel complained that Catholic girls start much too late. What, the rest are a bunch of sluts?

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