Banned for nothing

Banned for nothing
Censors came up with a novel excuse ­­for axing a 26-year-old Dire Straits hit — stupidity

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC), the secretive group of censors who regulate private Canadian TV and radio broadcasters, made a stunning admission last week: They don't have the foggiest idea what they're doing.

Remember, back in January, this group of busybodies banned Canadian radio stations from playing the song Money for Nothing by Dire Straits.

That song was released back in 1985 and went to the top of the charts in Canada.

Moving at the speed of government, 26 years later, the CBSC banned it, following a complaint from a Newfoundland listener, because it has the word "faggot".

That's like those creeps who go through kids cartoons frame by frame looking for things that look like naughty pictures.

These sex-obsessed, profanity-obsessed censors decided Canadians can't hear that song even though the word was used by Dire Straits to highlight anti-gay bigotry and to criticize it.

Of course the word is rude and it's hurtful. But since when does the government ban rude words? If you can't even say a word, how could you tell someone that it's rude and explain why?

Because the Sun newspapers raised a ruckus about this, hundreds of Canadians wrote to the CBSC telling them to butt out. It was a rare moment of accountability.

The CBSC were caught being un-Canadian. They were caught being bullies. They were caught being arrogant little bureaucrats, putting their own artistic and political tastes ahead of that of 34 million Canadians.

So last week they tried a do-over. They issued a new ruling, saying it was OK to play the song Money for Nothing after all.

The song didn't change. They just came up with a novel excuse ­— stupidity.

Here's an actual excerpt from their new ruling. They "did not have much of the information that has subsequently been provided to the CBSC by the public."

And since the CBSC is "not a fact-finding body and does not tend to do original research. had that information been available (the first) Panel might have come to a different conclusion." So they admit they banned a song because they didn't know enough about it and didn't understand it. They didn't even listen to the song — they have a policy of just reading song lyrics. And they actually complain that nobody told them what the song meant before they banned it.

In other words, the CBSC pled stupidity.

Can you imagine these buffoons have the power to tell you what you can listen to or not?

How many other songs and shows and jokes were they too stupid to understand, so they just banned them, like some caveman smashing things that were too sophistimacated.

Me no understand! Og no understand! So Og burn books!

But even if the CBSC were smart, even if they had the common sense to listen to a song before banning it, or to Google the song to understand it, even if they were the smartest music critics or political pundits in the world, so what? They're no better than you or I are. They have no more rights than you or I do. They're not morally superior to us.

Why should we follow their judgment or taste? Even if they are "correct," who died and made them kings?

Correction: Last week I wrote that Jack Layton didn't sit in Parliament as leader of the opposition. In fact, he did so briefly before resigning. I regret the error.

EZRA LEVANT, QMI Agency