Censorship in music

I got into a rather heated debate on a forum the last few days about censorship in music especially on the radio and video games. While my political leanings have always been to the right (hands off my money!) my personal liberties views tend to lean left (don't tell me what I can or can't see).

My personal belief is censorship is for lazy parents. Why should they have to teach their kids right from wrong when some government body can sanction what they are exposed to? My favorite movie when I was little was Major League. One of the first non-kids movies I can remember seeing in theaters was See No Evil, Hear No Evil and I specifically remember my parents asking if it was rated R for language or violence and they said for language only so inside we went. I was allowed to hear those words and when one came up my mom always told me to not use that word in public.

I never cursed out a teacher or uttered the f word in front of my grandmother. I did get in trouble in third grade for erasing Waldo out of the book on a white background after everyone had memorized his location on every page. I would've gotten away with it too had my friend not decided to erase him on non-white pages creating a notable absence. Now that was fucking funny, but I didn't say that to the teacher at the time.

Anyway back on subject. Some songs do needlessly spout obscenities and that is mildly annoying to me. For example, Down With The Sickness contains many words that do not necessarily enhance the song. It's more annoying that the edited version contains random pauses than that the word is missing, but if the artist's vision is to have that word in the song then by all means have it in the song. Imagine if a guitar lick or really cool crash cymbal portion of a song was removed for no reason. It would sound just as odd.

What really makes me die a little inside though is when songs like Creep are edited. This isn't just a random metal, we have to curse because it's metal, song. Thom Yorke is probably one of the most thought provoking songwriters alive and while I am both a huge Radiohead fan and find prolonged exposure to their music drab, I can't ever argue with the lyrics.

The entire song is about how a girl doesn't notice him and he feels bitter towards her because she is so much better than him. What conveys bitterness more while building up to the chorus?

A. You're so fucking special
B. You're so very special

Sometimes you need a curse word to put in for emphasis like "Fucking Soriano struck out again" or "Wayne was getting held for 3 fucking seconds". What's even worse is I'm sure there are some people out there who think very is the actual lyric to that song because they haven't heard the real version.

So to sum up I hope you enjoyed this fucking article and anyone in favor of music censorship can eat a steaming plate of mekrab.