Is" Money for Nothing" offensive?

[housesparrow]

I picked this up from a BBC board, where a few of us are scratching their heads in disbelief. I do hope the Beeb doesn't find it necessary to follow suit:



The song was ruled too offensive for the airwaves in Canada because it contains the word 'f****t' and can now no longer be played in its original form.

Any station that wants to play the song will have to edit it or disguise the word, according to a ruling by the Canadian Broadcasts Standards Council.

The decision came after a listener complained that the broadcast of unedited version of the song – which mentions the word three times – was 'extremely offensive' to gay, lesbian and bisexual people.



Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1347030/Homophobic-Dire-Straits-hit-Money-For-Nothing-banned-radio--26-years-release.html#ixzz1B0BxSdvj






But a quick search of You Tube discovered a 1985 recording of Dire Straits playing live where they seem to have replaced the offending word with "queenie"...scroll to three minutes in if you like but you will miss a great intro.

[Weyland]

Jan 14, 2011 10:07:32 GMT housesparrow said:

I picked this up from a BBC board, where a few of us are scratching their heads in disbelief.

Jean! Jean! Come back! Things are falling apart here!

Unless . . . whose head(s) are you scratching, Sparra?

Circumstantial Evidence Department: Do you think JeanJeanie has run off with CostCosty?

Dire Straits Department: Last June. Sublime. Mark Knopfler grew up in the place where I was born, and went to the local Grammar School. A Local Hero.

[everso]

Jan 14, 2011 10:07:32 GMT housesparrow said:

I picked this up from a BBC board, where a few of us are scratching their heads in disbelief. I do hope the Beeb doesn't find it necessary to follow suit:



The song was ruled too offensive for the airwaves in Canada because it contains the word 'f****t' and can now no longer be played in its original form.

Any station that wants to play the song will have to edit it or disguise the word, according to a ruling by the Canadian Broadcasts Standards Council.

The decision came after a listener complained that the broadcast of unedited version of the song – which mentions the word three times – was 'extremely offensive' to gay, lesbian and bisexual people.



Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1347030/Homophobic-Dire-Straits-hit-Money-For-Nothing-banned-radio--26-years-release.html#ixzz1B0BxSdvj






But a quick search of You Tube discovered a 1985 recording of Dire Straits playing live where they seem to have replaced the offending word with "queenie"...scroll to three minutes in if you like but you will miss a great intro.

I shouldn't think the BBC would follow suit - we don't really use the word "faggot" over here, except when we're referring to Mr. Brain's "delicious" concoctions.

Do you know, I've never really listened to the words to that song. All I used to hear was "microwave ovens....custom kitchen deliveries...refrigerators...colour t.v.s" I just checked out the lyrics and it's a bloke moaning about the money bands make for doing nothing, and regretting that he never learned to play the guitar or drums. He says "faggot" 3 times.

Dire Straits - good band. One of Mr. E's favourites.

[sesley]

the faggot he was refering to i believed was Elton John wasn't it?

[Weyland]

Jan 15, 2011 19:58:47 GMT sesley said:

the faggot he was refering to i believed was Elton John wasn't it?

Possibly. Though I reckon turd is a more fitting description of Elton John.

[housesparrow]

Jan 15, 2011 19:58:47 GMT sesley said:

the faggot he was refering to i believed was Elton John wasn't it?

I hadn't heard that. I always thought it might be referring to Dire Straits itself, in a kind of self mockery, but perhaps they weren't rich enough yet.

Wiki says:


Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx, in an interview with Blender Magazine, claimed that the song is actually about his band's excessive lifestyle, and that he heard the clerks in the store were commenting on Mötley Crüe videos shown on the in-store television sets.[5]



The entry explains how the song came to be written; the "faggot" complaints apparantly date back to 1985.

[Weyland]

Jan 16, 2011 7:03:23 GMT housesparrow said:

I hadn't heard that. I always thought it might be referring to Dire Straits itself, in a kind of self mockery, but perhaps they weren't rich enough yet.

By then I expect they'd already made quite a pile. I think they were the first (major) band to release a CD.

(We were using data CDs -- actually somewhat bigger discs, same (Philips) technology -- in 1979 at Philips in Holland to carry back-ups of computer systems.)

I think you're right about the self-reference. MTV is mentioned in the lyrics, and MTV was wall-to-wall band videos then, and that song had its own excellent animation vid. And it fits Knopfler's lovely, gentle, laid-back, self-deprecating Geordie personality.

[riotgrrl]

It's a funny one, this 'faggot' word. It's not in use so much in the UK, but I'm told that in the USA it's a really offensive word for homosexuals, the equivalent of the n word for black people.

[Weyland]

Jan 16, 2011 11:17:13 GMT @riotgrrl said:

It's a funny one, this 'faggot' word. It's not in use so much in the UK, but I'm told that in the USA it's a really offensive word for homosexuals, the equivalent of the n word for black people.

I dare say it's not seen as particularly offensive in this Sceptred Isle.

The big Oxford just says (male) homosexual, US slang, earliest recorded use 1914.

I can remember when I first encountered it -- in Midnight Cowboy. Late 60s, I guess. An excellent film, by the way.



(On a bad day I looked a bit like John Voight Dustin Hoffman in those days.)

[aubrey]

I once got told off on a US messageboard for saying that I was going out for a fag. (I knew what I was doing: there is a Fall lyric about someone who is so daft he would ask for a fag in Texas).


I never took to Dire Straits; thought I thought that Tommy Vance was a bit daft introducing the song by reciting "Money for Nothing, Chicks for Free" with great relish and no irony (or maybe that reading was ironic?). Silly banning it, though.

With most decent songwriters, the initial statement of the song is what the song is going to arguing against, or taking the piss out of, etc

When I first heard the first line of Hammill's song 4 Pails

"Four Pails of water and a bag full of salts;
That is all we are...",

I thought, oh no, he's got religion...

(Actually, the song is more about doubt.)

[everso]

Jan 16, 2011 11:32:47 GMT Weyland said:

Jan 16, 2011 11:17:13 GMT @riotgrrl said:

It's a funny one, this 'faggot' word. It's not in use so much in the UK, but I'm told that in the USA it's a really offensive word for homosexuals, the equivalent of the n word for black people.

I dare say it's not seen as particularly offensive in this Sceptred Isle.

The big Oxford just says (male) homosexual, US slang, earliest recorded use 1914.

I can remember when I first encountered it -- in Midnight Cowboy. Late 60s, I guess. An excellent film, by the way.



(On a bad day I looked a bit like John Voight Dustin Hoffman in those days.)

Ah, Midnight Cowboy (1969). They don't show it enough on t.v. A great film. Mr. E. and I saw it at the Cine Centre in London, just off Leicester Square. It was the first multiplex cinema I ever went in. In those days (don't know if they still do it) they used to sell cheaper tickets for a midnight matinee. The film started around 11 pm. We used to drive up to London, park the car along the Embankment and go for a drink, then end up at a cinema. In those days films stayed on show in London for ages before going on general release.

[Weyland]

Jan 16, 2011 16:32:16 GMT everso said:

We used to drive up to London, park the car along the Embankment and go for a drink, then end up at a cinema.

At the back, double seats? <wink, wink, nudge, nudge>







I know -- "Don't start." . . . I'll get me pacamac.

[aubrey]

[Alpha Hooligan]

Mark Knopfler's(sp) bad 80's hair band is offensive, the song is marginally okay.


AH

[trubble]

Jan 18, 2011 17:38:31 GMT Alpha Hooligan said:

Mark Knopfler's(sp) bad 80's hair band is offensive, the song is marginally okay.


AH

;D ;D ;D

....although.... I loved the song at the time, really loved it and bought the album. And then when they performed it at Live Aid with Sting I thought I would explode with excitement.

I'm sorry.

[Weyland]

Jan 18, 2011 17:59:46 GMT trubble said:

Jan 18, 2011 17:38:31 GMT Alpha Hooligan said:

Mark Knopfler's(sp) bad 80's hair band is offensive, the song is marginally okay.

AH

;D ;D ;D

....although.... I loved the song at the time, really loved it and bought the album. And then when they performed it at Live Aid with Sting I thought I would explode with excitement.

I'm sorry.

Nothing to be ashamed of, Trubs. Best band in the history of the Galaxy, was Dire Straits. Apart from (original) Fleetwood Mac, of course. (The MK headband was icky. I think he was going bald at the time.)

Lovely to see you here again, by the way.

[trubble]

Hai. I don't think I was gone that long, was I? Still here anyway. Always here. Just in quiet mode.

[Weyland]

Andthen when they performed it at Live Aid with Sting I thought I would explode with excitement.

I only just digested that, Trubs.

Both of the Knopflers and Sting lived in the suburb of Newcastle where I was born and lived until 1970 (moved in with Mrs YI then, before she was awarded the title).

The Knopflers lived and went to school there, and Sting moved there from Wallsend when he was a teacher. He had digs near my primary school. He went to my grammar school, but he never managed to meet me, poor soul. Just as well -- I was older and a Prefect. There might've been blood and snots.

Just thought you should be told. Small world.

I loved the way MK introduced another musician at one of the Live Aid concerts. "My brother isn't here tonight, but please welcome . . . he hasn't played at Wembley before . . . <pause> . . . but he has played before . . . Eric Clapton!"

[aubrey]

Reason prevails.

Now, let's see if Heart FM will lift their ban on every record that isn't Simply Red or UB40 or Abba or Lionel Richie...

[Weyland]

Jan 22, 2011 13:50:49 GMT aubrey said:

Reason prevails.

Good. But the item contains some gibberish I don't understand:

The CRTC did not parse its decision Friday, unlike the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, which listened to the 1980s Dire Straits hit song and concluded the use of the anti-gay slur faggot three times in its lyrics breached industry codes on human rights.

Very strange word to use in that context at all, and definitely the wrong word the way they've used it. As I said, gibberish.