A Good Year for the Outlaw

Not much ticks me off more than censorship. I won’t buy CD’s at EvilMar…er, WalMart…anymore because they ONLY stock “edited” versions of CD’s. “Edited” means “censored”. Plain and simple.

So when I see or hear censorship, I try to bring it up and make it known, so we can work on eliminating censorship. Funny how some folks think it’s our RIGHT to own a gun or as many guns as we want, and it’s our RIGHT to carry them on the street, but health care is not a right, and freedom of speech is not a right. Amazin’. But, while they carry on their fight, I’ll continue to carry on mine.

That all being said, there are different levels of censorship. Cutting out gratuitous violence and sex and language so a movie can be shown on “family TV” is one thing. Cutting out some things and leaving in others is what I call idiotic censorship. The latest case of idiotic censorship I heard came via CMT. Yup. They’re censoring country music. But this one is simply hilarious.

The Zac Brown Band, a talented bluegrassy/country/folkie new group, has a new song out called “Toes”. In the very first line of the song, Zac sings that he’s got his “toes in the water, ass in the sand”. On the video version playing on CMT, “ass” is not edited out. Good, I say to myself upon first viewing. Then comes the end of verse two where he sings that he’s going to “roll a big fat one, grab my guitar and play”. Guess what’s edited out? Yep. “Roll a big fat one”. No cursing. Nothing more than insinuation. Could be a cigar for all we know. But CMT’s wizards edit it out.

Now, keep in mind that a Trace Adkins song from a couple years back that mentioned the word “ass” saw that word edited out. So there’s already a double standard.

But now we have “ass” allowed and “roll a big fat one” edited out. Hilarious. And it gets better. Later in the same song, Brown mentions Jagermeister and Pabst Blue Ribbon by name, but they’re not edited out. Should they be? Of course not. But I’ve seen videos with brand names blurred on hats and t-shirts, so it somewhat surprised me, being that “roll a big fat one” was disallowed, that commercial mentions – and in all reality plugs – were left in.

Ah, the crazy world of censorship.