Canada Bans Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing" for Being Too Offensive. No, I'm Not Kidding
Please don't ever tell me that Canada is a more enlightened country than the U.S. and A.:
The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has ruled that Dire Straits' 1980s hit Money for Nothing is too offensive for Canadian radio.
The ruling, released Wednesday, was in response to a complaint against St. John's radio station CHOZ-FM. The listener complained that the word faggot – which appears three times in the song is "extremely offensive" to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
The council is an independent body created by Canadian radio and television broadcasters to review the standards of their content. […]
The council ruled that the song contravenes its ethics code which states: "broadcasters shall ensure that their programming contains no abusive or unduly discriminatory material or comment which is based on matters of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status or physical or mental disability.":
It ruled that "faggot," when used to describe a homosexual, is "even if entirely or marginally acceptable in earlier days, is no longer so."
Here's your Canadian samizdat, which if anything should be banned for animating Sting:
Read more about Canada's "human rights censors" here.
By the Great White North's ape-like logic, there is no end to songs that Canadians should be protected from. Starting with Randy Newman's "Rednecks":
And, obviously:
