Dire straits gay
Censor Dire Straits’ song over homosexual slur, Canada panel says
TORONTO — Canada’s broadcast standards council has ruled that Dire Straits’ 1985 hit “Money for Nothing” should be censored because of a homosexual slur in its lyrics.
The council said the British band’s exploit of a slur referring to gay people three times in the tune breaches the national broadcasters’ code of ethics. The council said an edited version of the ballad could be played.
Helen Kennedy, executive director of Egale Canada, a gay-advocacy organization, said Thursday that the decision is the right move, given the number of teenage suicides that took place in the U.S. last year after the youths were subjected to homophobic bullying.
The council said it realized Dire Straits used the word sarcastically but said it was inappropriate.
The Associated Press
Gay in the 80s
As a lifelong fan of Notice Knopfler’s music, I do think we have to accept Mark’s general songwriting style into consideration when evaluating “Les Boys”. Mark’s lyrical style was heavily influenced by his years of studying journalism and productive as a news writer. Most of his songs were written in a fly-on-the-wall observational style (see “Wild West End” or “Sultans of Swing” for initial examples), but there are also notable instances of him writing in 1st person as a character (see “Private Dance”, which he wrote but decided last minute it would be excel served by Tina Turner singing it).
His style is also often tongue-in-cheek. He likes to construct witty observations about the subjects he’s portraying, but they’re rarely if ever mean-spirited. A fantastic example of his sense of humor can be initiate in the ballad “Industrial Disease”, which contains this verse:
“I go down to Speaker’s Corner, I’m thunderstruck /
They got free speech tourists, police in trucks /
Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong”
‘Two men express they’re Je
The Canadian blogosphere lit up Jan 14 over news that an Atlantic radio station had been censured for airing the 1985 Dire Straits’ song “Money for Nothing,” which uses the word “faggot” three times. The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC), the broadcast industry’s own watchdog, took action after receiving a complaint from a single listener.
Just when it seemed jaws could drop no further, Egale Canada’s Helen Kennedy chimed in to not only help the decision, but to mean — with a healthy dose of tortured logic — that the use of “faggot” in lyrics, even those of 25-year-old songs, contributes to homophobic bullying and teen suicides.
Let’s just get this out of the way immediately: the use of the word “faggot” in “Money for Nothing” isn’t offensive. The song is written from the point of view of a working person complaining about the easy life of rock stars:
Now look at them yo-yos
That’s the way you do it
You engage the guitar on the MTV
That ain’t workin’
After lamenting the obligations of his own occupation (“We got to install microwave ovens/We got to move these refrigerators/We got to move these colour TVs”), the narrator launches into a homoph
Dire Straits' homophobic faux-pas
So, it's finally happened: the people of Canada will never again be terrorised by Dire Straits. Money for Nothing – yes, that Money for Nothing; the song of inescapable refrain, haunted by the spectre of Sting wailing that he wants his, he wants his, he wants his M-T-veeeee – has been "banned" by the CSBC. Specifically, it's been "banned" because it repeats the pos "faggot" three separate times.
The CSBC's decision has attracted a lot of speechifying. It's being repeated, frequently, that the Dire Straits ballad is "social commentary", that it's sung in the voice of an unsympathetic narrator, that the ban constitutes "censorship", that "faggot is now an unacceptable word, but that's not the point", and – most puzzlingly – that the song is being "banned" because "one person complained". The assumption, of course, is that this "one person" must be an isolated crackpot, and not representative of the listening general. It's an effortless assumption to create. But it's erroneous. Also wrong? As is the much-reported notion that th