Feb. 16th, 2011

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I didn't watch the Grammys last weekend. Awards shows aren't my thing at all, and besides I've got mysterious problems with my cable. (As far as I know, it's still stuck on channel 43.) But when I found out that Cee-Lo Green's performance of "Fuck You" was a tribute to one of my all-time favourite Muppet Show skits, I just had to check it out. It was my first time hearing the bowdlerised radio edit and, man, am I ever glad I've steered clear of it. The entire joy of that song is hearing mellow Motown sounds married to outrageous lyrics. Cee-Lo himself had so much trouble remembering what he could and couldn't sing that he forgot an entire line.

I really don't have the patience for mindless taboo avoidance that I once did. Not only are all the expletives excised but the last word is hacked off the fantastic couplet "Oh shit, she's a golddigger / Just thought you should know, nigger", taking the rhyme with it. Seriously? "Nigger" is only offensive insofar as it's used by non-blacks to denigrate them; between black men, it's a signal of solidarity. But I guess like "faggot" it's been deemed "word that has no place today on the airwaves" regardless of context or intention.

And that's still not the limits of outrageousness. A day earlier, I decided I wanted to watch the video to Lily Allen's "Alfie", but YouTube only offered me a choice between (1) full lyrics with no video or (2) full video with censored lyrics. Incredibly, the radio edit lacks not only the words "twat" and "weed" but even "THC". That's right, you can't even have a drug reference in a song criticising the use of this drug.

I remember what a big deal it was when you could finally say "bitch" on broadcast television. It made me think I might finally see the day when it would catch up to cable. Watching British panel shows online, with their liberal use of not only "arse" and "shit" but "cunt" and "fuck", has only underlined for me how bizarrely bluenosed we are in this country. And I find it even more bizarre to see that, if anything, radio (and, by extension, online services like YouTube) is moving the other way, becoming more censorious than it was when I was young and Prince's "masturbating" became "mastur*BEEP*".
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