2008 Woodie Awards
Galaxy profanity rules sideline music with complicated messages
By: Mallory Skinner
Issue date: 5/3/07 Section: Opinion/Editorial
The "right" of free speech makes about as much sense as the "right" to free air. So, while being grateful the government gives you the right to speak, be sure to also thank it for letting you breathe. Oh yes, thank heaven the government is so generous as to allow its citizens to speak - sometimes and only if it approves of what they are saying.
Rights can't be given, but they can be stolen. Anyone who has ever placed so much as a toe outside the line knows this. Because rights can be taken away, there is the tendency to approach every situation with the utmost caution, handle it with the utmost delicacy.
This is why some people are so quick to stifle anything that may offend others' sensibilities. The only ones abusing the First Amendment are those who try to find loopholes around the mandate "Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, nor of the press," who seek to rope it in with makeshift rules about obscenity.
In the 1960s, folk anthems denouncing the government-sanctioned Vietnam War offered more intellectual stimulus than ditties about hand-holding and surfing safaris. Yet sanitized, bubble gum pop songs prevailed.
Popular music should be challenging. It should pose difficult questions. So long as music that challenges the status quo is kept off the air, it will never get the exposure it needs to become popular.
Rights can't be given, but they can be stolen. Anyone who has ever placed so much as a toe outside the line knows this. Because rights can be taken away, there is the tendency to approach every situation with the utmost caution, handle it with the utmost delicacy.
This is why some people are so quick to stifle anything that may offend others' sensibilities. The only ones abusing the First Amendment are those who try to find loopholes around the mandate "Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, nor of the press," who seek to rope it in with makeshift rules about obscenity.
In the 1960s, folk anthems denouncing the government-sanctioned Vietnam War offered more intellectual stimulus than ditties about hand-holding and surfing safaris. Yet sanitized, bubble gum pop songs prevailed.
Popular music should be challenging. It should pose difficult questions. So long as music that challenges the status quo is kept off the air, it will never get the exposure it needs to become popular.
Viewing Comments 1 - 5 of 5
Albert Brooks
posted 5/22/07 @ 7:01 PM CST
Just maybe it's a question of tact, sensibility, and decorum. I personally think you should put on your Che Guevara shirt and march down to that old office and procede to fight the power, Mallory. (Continued…)
Ben Simon
posted 11/14/07 @ 11:33 AM CST
Jim "created" the rules so the station wasn't a freakin' zoo. We're in college so it's time to learn how people do things in the professional realm of radio. (Continued…)
Brian Mueller
posted 11/15/07 @ 8:41 AM CST
"If someone is able to form words and spit them out of his or her mouth, then obviously nature has endowed that person with the right of free speech" (Mallory Skinner). (Continued…)
Bertrand Russell
posted 12/02/07 @ 11:57 PM CST
But what isssssssss God?!!!??????????
Jim Goad
posted 10/16/08 @ 10:14 PM CST
Haha, you guys are so highbrow with your jazz standards and your social contract. (Wasting hours of your life gabbing about professional wrestling, that's not so highbrow. (Continued…)
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