Earlier this week I was listening to the radio when the song "I Put Your Picture Away" came on. The song is performed by Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow, lyrics can be found here and a music video can be found here (video starts playing automatically, so use care in a work environment). I've always thought the song was a good one. Kid Rock could make a good country singer if his songs contained trucks, trains or references to Willie Nelson (which this song almost does).
While listening, I realized that the station bleeped out (or more accurately wiped out) one word. In the song, Kid Rock sings about needing "a good girl to miss me" and being away from the one he loves. To get through the pain, he's with a "different girl every night at the hotel" and he's "been fuelin' up on cocaine and whiskey." The word cocaine was wiped out so that he says he's "been fuelin' up on whiskey." Ahh the beauty of digital editing.
Now I do believe promoting drug use in a song is a bad idea, but I also noticed that there were some four letter words that were not clipped. Admittedly, the two words that are used are words you could hear in church Sunday morning, even from the pulpit (but probably with different intent). But these aren't words I would use in front of my mother or my children - and that's the standard I try to use.
I confess that I tend to be more sensitive to four letter words than the average American. But it made me wonder - what words do you bleep out? No I'm not asking you to post them here, my mother and my children read my blog. But if you have any bleeping comments I'd like to hear them.
7 comments:
Funny.
It kind of reminds me when a city in California was going to do a public screening of Scarface and decided to bleep the F-word to avoid offense... But they weren't worried about the drugs, organized crime and prostitution.
I've found it interesting that in a society where profanity is "just part of the vocabulary" that the television stations choose to bleep out certain words but leave other words in. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for the ones they bleep out vs the ones they leave in. Although I've always been sensitive to the 4-letter words, having a child has made me more sensitive to them. And it's made me watch what is shown on television and in movies more closely.
Funny post, Randy.
No problem with fueling up on whiskey, right?
We started listening to contemporary Christian music when the kids were little. One of the top 40 stations had a song playing that mentioned the "B" word and my wife lunged for the radio dial.
Brooke, and now we seem to have gone the other way. You can use all the profanity you want, but don't mention drugs...
Kayte, ain't it funny how kids can change your life?
Neil, I fueled up on whiskey way too many times in my college days. Sometimes, for the same reason as Kid Rock sings about, to forget about something. I finally realized that next morning the same problem was there, only now it was worse..
I just thought it was a little hypocritical to bleep out references to drugs and leave profanity.
Back in the day (when I was more "DJ" and less "Black Adam", I used to listen to some Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. I noticed on my local radio straion (the "urban" one) when they played their songs they would bleep out the N-word, whereas on some of the non-"urban" station sthey didn't. This went on for about a year until a few people noticed, then all the stations bleeped the N-word, which in my opinion, was and is a good word to bleep.
DJBA, I find it interesting that the black community gets so upset when a white person uses this term but ignores it when a black person does the same thing.
One needs to understand that the term was not always used to disparage and demean. Did you know it was used on an episode of Star Trek? There was an episode with Abraham Lincoln and he used the term referring to Lt. Uhura. He apoligized, explaining that the term was common in his day. Her response was that in her day, it was not looked on badly (or some such).
Also, the term was used in Mark Twain's writings. I would suspect Huck Finn is banished from some schools because of this.
One of the things I have been impressed to remark in mant conversations for the past several years is that we cannot hold "non-Christians" to a "Christian" standard. Now what does this mean, exactly? To me, it means "they" are not under grace, but under the law. And as the law does not do anything except prove you cannot keep it, it kinda leaves us with no choice but to let them curse up a storm. Now, personally, I do not swear - never have - ask my family, friends, co-workers, whatever. Never been a part of who I was or who I wanted to be. Admittedly, I have gotten mad enough to curse at times. But it's never something I wanted personally to do, especially in mixed company or around children. And It pains me when adults have such little consideration but to curse in front of kids - sometimes their own kids. It just isn't right. No wonder they think that some words which are common today are "no big deal"....personally, I think radio has gone WAYYYYYYY to far in what they allow. There used to be a common decency factor prior to certain hours like 10 PM. That's pretty much gone with the advent of cable and satellite. Personally, I'd even like to see a ban on personal hygene products (including tampons, contraceptives, anti-contraceptives, personal gels not sold for use on teeth, and advertising related to adult bookstores, catalogs, mail-order websites, and conferences) until after kids bedtimes' (10 PM). I've heard way too many Adam-and-Eve ads on my local ESPN radio station lately (in the morning on the way to work), and it drives me up a wall.....
Post a Comment