Shawnee Love   •  
January 14, 2011

Is anyone else struggling with the CBSC’s censorship on the Dire Straits song “Money For Nothing”?

I get the fact that the word is derogatory and demeaning in today’s English, and if someone assaulted me with that word, I would be offended. I feel the same way about the n-word that people are struggling over in Mark Twain. Horrible, derogatory, demeaning, offensive and as such, shouldn’t be used in today’s world.

In both cases, those words have arisen out of a different time and place. While I am glad to live in more moderate and tolerant times, I don’t think erasing the words is a way to prevent such things from happening again. When I hear a nasty word in a song or read it in a book, it reminds me to reflect on what it must have been like to experience that kind of intolerance, harassment and discrimination. I believe that “people who forget history are doomed to repeat it” (George Santayana).

I remember reading a book a long time ago in which the young boy was asked to go out and get a f_gg_t for the fire. I had to look it up to learn that a f_gg_t used to mean a bundle of wood.  I wonder what words we think are acceptable today will be bad tomorrow?

More importantly, I wonder what you think?