Niggers, Faggots and Chicks, Oh My! by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #205

January 17, 2011 Mike Gold 23 Comments

And now, the top two questions of the week: just what is offensive … and why should anybody give a fuck?

Last week, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council banned the Dire Straights song Money For Nothing because of the following lyric:

See the little faggot with the earring and the makeup
Yeah buddy, that’s his own hair
That little faggot got his own jet airplane
That little faggot, he’s a millionaire

This action was based upon a complainant that claimed the lyrics were extremely offensive to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. I do not doubt that in the least. But in the context of the song, the word was uttered by a complete jerk, a guy who is truly offensive talking to his buddy about:

And he’s up there, what’s that? Hawaiian noises?
Bangin’ on the bongos like a chimpanzee
That ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it
Get your money for nothin’ get your chicks for free.

So why is this guy a jerk, why is the word offensive, and how do we deal with people like this? What’s the current cultural context? What’s the historical context? Is language simply fashion?

Look at the new castrated version of Mark Twain’s classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the one that removes the words nigger and Injun. Writer/performer Larry Wilmore asked “would you rather be a nigger or a slave?” Now we can’t talk about these issues in context because the issues have been taken off the table. It hasn’t been resolved; it’s simply not there anymore. We changed the history, so bigotry never existed.

Yes, words hurt. Absolutely. Words can cause harm. Absolutely. But words like faggot, nigger, Injun, and chick are not the disease, they’re symptoms. Bigotry is the disease. Work on the problem and the symptoms will be relegated to the historical archives.

Offensive language in context allows us to talk about the issues… as long as nobody bans the discussion just because you’re talking about the issues. Context is critical. So is dialogue. So is education.

By the way, when are they going to remove that cigarette from Huck Finn’s lips?

Look a’ here
That ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it.

Obnoxious gadfly and www.ComicMix.com editor-in-Chief Mike Gold plays a lot of offensive music on his weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music radio show on America’s pop culture channel The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website above for times). Likewise, his hilariously offensive Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind political and cultural rants are unleashed every day at the same venue.

Comments

Marc Alan Fishman
January 17, 2011 - 10:23 am

And the kids will still find that song. Just like they found Cee-Lo’s FUCK YOU. The FCC and government will continue to wash the country’s mouth out with soap… but unlucky for them… only truly the mindless of us will mind it.

I guess I’m beyond hoping ‘the machine’ can be toppled through debate and legislature. Fact of the matter as it is: If ‘Money For Nothing’ debuted TODAY on top 40? A. It wouldn’t because of the lyrics. B. No one under 30 would get it anyways. Kids don’t pay attention to the pop drivel they cram into their phone-o-trons. And this song’s point isn’t as clear as Cee-Los. C. It’d become a youtube sensation overnight, and they’d end up touring with Cake and OK GO.
Rick Oliver
January 17, 2011 - 10:56 am

I’m looking forward to the next revised edition of Huck Finn, in which everybody speaks in proper King’s English, since we don’t want to give the impression that there were ever any racial or regional dialect differences. And maybe Jim isn’t a slave anymore, since he’s no longer black. Or maybe he is black, but maybe so it Huck, but we won’t know because there is no reference to skin color. (Don’t laugh, I had to do that once for an editor.)
Mike Gold
January 17, 2011 - 11:00 am

Rick —

What? Do you mean The Hardy Boys are really black?

Or… maybe just one of them.
Mike Gold
January 17, 2011 - 11:05 am

Marc, I don’t think Money For Nothin’ would get commercial airplay today outside of CBS because the song plugs MTV and Viacom owns CBS Radio and commercial radio is that petty and more. Just ask THE POINT’S own Mike Raub, who’s been long lost in the dungeons of Cox Broadcasting.

I really enjoyed (and probably still would) listening to Canadian radio because it was far more open than US radio. I did four fill-in shows in Windsor Ontario (right before I pissed off a 16 year old cow girl at a downtown Detroit Roy Rogers) and I was like a six year old farting in the pool — as long as I had 25% Canadian content, I could play anything.

Wouldn’t it be great if Dick Gregory did an audiobook of his auto-biography?
Reg
January 17, 2011 - 12:09 pm

Mike said “Wouldn’t it be great if Dick Gregory did an audiobook of his auto-biography?”

Deserving of a slap on your a$$cheeks for that one, bro!
Mike Gold
January 17, 2011 - 12:27 pm

Hey, Reg, I’d buy it in a heartbeat. HUGE Dick Gregory fan. Well, not so much on the “health” front — even for a health nut, he’s pretty weird.
JosephW
January 17, 2011 - 2:41 pm

It might be worth pointing out (in all the confusion about “Money for Nothing”) but when the song first came out–way back in 1985–the overwhelming majority of Top 40 radio stations played the EDITED version which completely left out the whole “faggot” verse. Even MTV aired an edited version of the video which left out the “faggot” verse, usually for daytime airing. Of course, with the video, the lyric was actually LESS offensive since the viewer saw the “faggot” in question (the fictitious band First Floor and its George Michael-looking lead singer; in real life the group was a Hungarian pop band called Elso Emelet) and with that context available, the working-class guy’s comment didn’t seem all that out of place. Considering that many real-life men who would’ve been in the same age range as Knopfler’s video stand-in looked at many of the 1980s male pop and rock singers with the same wary eye that those men’s own parents viewed the male pop and rock stars of the mid 1960s and early 1970s.

The word was a bit unsettling to hear in the song, especially from heterosexuals whose usage was always intended as a slur, but I’d grown up listening to George Jefferson use the word “nigger” quite often and Archie Bunker was known to drop some pretty offensive words (and yes, they were offensive even when the viewers realized that the Archie Bunker mindset didn’t necessarily MEAN to be offensive) so I did get where the character was coming from. Knopfler might could have used another word like “fruitcake” or “fairy” (or even Stanley Roper’s favorite, “tinkerbell”) and caused less offense and pain to gay listeners and fans but Knopfler’s claimed his inspiration came from a real working-class person who’d used most of the phrases that made it into the song.

On the other hand, Knopfler really didn’t earn many Brownie points on the sensitivity front, even with his claim of borrowing phrases he’d actually heard, since the lyrics of “Les Boys” (from the 1980 album, “Making Movies”) don’t exactly convey a pro-gay attitude (actually, that song is a pretty bitter pill to take as two of my favorite Dire Straits songs come from that album–“Skateaway” and “Romeo and Juliet”).
Mike Gold
January 17, 2011 - 3:23 pm

Joseph, I’m surprised Top 40 played it at all, but certainly if they would ban The Ballad of John and Yoko, they’d castrate Money For Nothing. But my issue wasn’t whether Knopfler is anti-gay or a certifiable asshole or a swell guy. My issue here is retro-censorship and how white-washing history denies important opportunities for teaching and discussion. Like their shows or not, George Jefferson and Archie Bunker did spark a great deal of conversation during their original runs.

And I’m with you 100% on “Romeo and Juliet.” There’s a “solo” version going around from a German concert last year that is nothing short of completely amazing. I’m trying to figure out a way to fit it in on Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind for, ummmm, the week after next. That’s ‘cuz next week we go to war!
Martha Thomases
January 17, 2011 - 4:35 pm

Censorship is not the answer to the problem of offensive/racist/sexist/agist language – conversation is. Also, empathy. I mean, there were people who didn’t like Randy Newman’s SHORT PEOPLE, and, clearly, they were the same people who flunked English literature 101.
pennie
January 17, 2011 - 6:05 pm

In one of my favorite Lenny Bruce routines he sometimes opened chanting every racial, ethnic, sexual and religious slur in rapidfire fashion. All of the popular ones. Given the context of the late 1950s/early 1960s, the shocked audiences met this toxic diatribe with a mixture of silence, nervous laughter and stares.
This was followed by Bruce stating, “Now that we’ve gotten all that out of the way, can we go on?”
Mike Gold
January 17, 2011 - 6:08 pm

Martha — They also flunked Listening 101, a course they should be teaching in grammar school.
Felix Serrano
January 17, 2011 - 6:33 pm

Mike – Listening 101 was thrown out of the curriculum and replaced with texting 101. maybe we should invest in mobile education…hmmm.
MOTU
January 17, 2011 - 8:40 pm

‘Niggers, Faggots and Chicks’, eh?

Add ‘NO’ in front of that and you have the 2012 Tea Party Presidential Platform.
Steven Atkins
January 17, 2011 - 8:56 pm

Perhaps I am engaging in rectal ventriloquism, but I think that Americans (and humans, in general) have a habit of ignoring things. The whole “Let’s-Pretend-It-Doesn’t-Exist-And-It-Will-Go-Away” tactic has NEVER worked, but it is always used.

In my opinion, which you can take as you will, the problem is fear. When you eliminate the fear of language, you eliminate it’s power over people.

“Nigger” is only as offensive as YOU want it to be. “Faggot” is only an insult if YOU allow it to be. YOU, which is defined as all people from all walks of life, are the ones who define life, society, and culture. YOU create and maintain languages and their meaning.

The responsibility to change and evolve beyond all this petty nonsense belongs to YOU. The choice to continue engaging in these pointless endeavors also belongs to YOU.
Vinnie Bartilucci
January 18, 2011 - 3:04 pm

“Writer/performer Larry Wilmore asked “would you rather be a nigger or a slave?” ”

Roger Ebert tried to make such a comment, and got SOUNDLY thrashed by the Internet.

The song did not change. The jokes have not changed. The people listening to them did.

We now “understand” that these things are wrong, or at least we’re supposed to have been taught as such. Skins have gotten thinner, the ability and willingness to wave things off as “just words” has diminished.

I still want that Song of the South re-release.
MOTU
January 18, 2011 - 3:59 pm

“Writer/performer Larry Wilmore asked “would you rather be a nigger or a slave?” ”

Neither.

Only a nigger would answer that question.
Rick Oliver
January 20, 2011 - 12:13 pm

I remember the first time I heard the sanitized version of Lawyers, Guns, and Money, in which the verse with “The shit has hit the fan” had been removed — and I think that was on a “best of” compilation CD, not the public airwaves.
Russ Rogers
January 21, 2011 - 8:35 am

My mother taught middle school English and Social Studies. She used “To Kill a Mockingbird” in her curriculum for decades. In one of her last years of teaching, a student said that she refused to read the book because it contained the word, “Nigger,” and they were offended. My mother assigned that student an alternate book, “Black Boy,” by Richard Wright. The student didn’t like the alternative.

The student claimed that my mother was racist. The student and her mother found some law student to file an official complaint with the school and the school board. In the complaint they said that my mom had assigned “Little Black Boy” as the alternate. I think they were confusing a classic of American Literature with “Little Black Sambo.”

The long and short of it was that my mother had been using “To Kill a Mockingbird” for years as a doorway to teaching and talking about racism and America’s cultural history. My mother had gone out of her way to try to teach understanding and promote diversity. But because some kid didn’t want to do any reading in her class, my mother was dragged through hours of meetings and letters and filings and briefings.

If having an expurgated version of Huck Finn can keep the book in some classrooms, where teachers aren’t prepared to have long battles with students (and their Law Student Representatives), because they’ve been accused a racism, I say, “Go ahead!” If it’s a choice between substituting two words or not having it in class at all, I’ll take the word substitution.

I’m not saying that the expurgated version of Huck Finn should be the only version or the defining version. But I’m happy that it’s available for those teachers who feel they need it to keep it in the class.

Do I think that it’s silly and wrong that the version of “Money for Nothing,” with the word “faggot” has been banned on Canadian Radio, in favor of a version substituting the word, “Mother”? Yes. But I’m only slightly offended. I’m less offended by the Cee Lo Green song, “Fuck You,” than I am of other songs, where the offensive words have been pulled, but the blatant sexism, racism or homophobia still pollute my head-space. I just can’t change the channel fast enough.

And, as a tiny side-note, I think the Faggot/Mother substitution is more artful and maintains the meaning of the song better than the Fuck You/Forget You exchange.
Mike Gold
January 21, 2011 - 8:45 am

Russ, I’m not surprised by your mother’s experience. Astonished, but not surprised. I’d love to teach and I think I have a lot to offer; you just explained why I haven’t pursued it.

As for substituting “mother” for “faggot,” shit, what do this scumbags have against mothers?

See the little mother with the earring and the makeup
Yeah buddy, that’s his own hair
That little mother got his own jet airplane
That little mother, he’s a millionaire

See? It dumps on mothers. Fuck ’em all.
John Tebbel
January 21, 2011 - 3:10 pm

And “slaves,” the noun, implying a permanent condition, is being replaced by constructions using the adjective “enslaved” (such as “enslaved blacks” or “enslaved Africans”) to indicate that slavery is an attribute of the noun in question, not an innate quality. I love my language. The guy who came up with the slaves/Nthing equivalency is whack, a good marketer, but whack. Don’t like a novel? Write a better one.
mike weber
January 23, 2011 - 1:25 pm

Talking about cleaning up the English used by the characters being something for the next edition of “Huckleberry Finn” put me in mind of “Elderly Man River“…
Steven Atkins
January 23, 2011 - 5:18 pm

@ Mike Gold
That reminds me of the old George Carlin bit about switching the words “fuck” and “kill”.

“We’re being paid to fuck you, sheriff. But, we’re gonna fuck you slow.”

It has such great potential.

Here are some movie titles off the top of my head:

“To Fuck A Mockingbird”
“The Replacement Fuckers”
“Fucking Me Softly With His Kiss”
“License To Fuck”
MOTU
January 24, 2011 - 1:02 am

Steven,

LOL!!!!

Comments are closed.