Who would have thought that FM Radio staples Dire Straits could cause controversy in mild mannered Canada? The country’s radio watchdog has banned the band’s 1985 smash hit ‘Money For Nothing’ in a controversial decision once they reveiwed the song’s lyrics after receiving a complaint from a listener. The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council ruled that the unedited version of the song’s lyrics using the word ‘faggot’ three times was unacceptable. The song is written from the perspective of an American blue collar worker, who sneers in jealousy at the rock stars he sees on MTV, the offending lyrics saying We gotta move these color TVs (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).
Fans are up in arms over the decision, arguing that is not a slur against gay men, rather it is exposing prejudice. Other commentators claim that the word has no place on the radio in 2011. Guy Fletcher, Dire Straits’ keyboardist, argues “WHAT a waste of paper.” Even though “a part of me understands the decision”, he posted on his website, “you can and should be allowed to write a song or poem and use language that is or has been in use by real people in everyday life … MFN does not ‘celebrate’ a slur. In it, Mark [Knopfler] uses real everyday US street language to describe how a numbskull worker in a hardware department … feels about a video being shown. The fact that the [CBSC] can make a ruling such as this, completely missing the context in which it’s used says rather a lot about the society in which we live.”
Check out the video below
