Horse. Stable door.
Only 19 years worth of exposing our kids to the word "faggot", then.
Beeb censors Fairytale of New York
The BBC has censored The Pogues' xmas classic Fairytale of New York lest the lyrics offend homosexuals, the Telegraph reports. The line in question is, of course, "You scumbag, you maggot you cheap lousy faggot, Happy Christmas your arse I pray God It's our last", now gracing the airwaves with "faggot" beeped out. A Beeb …
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Hell in a handcart, etc
One wonders what parents of the 1950s would have made of the fuss over a meatball being considered "offensive" while "scumbag", "arse", etc. are all fine for innocent youthful ears...
Only half a job
I heard it yesterday morning and couldn't believe they would censor Faggot but leave in Arse..
What next Censor the word Mother and Leaver in Fu....
Stooooopid
I find the term BBC offensive, can you Bleep that out too??
... I honestly thought Faggots were meat balls made partially from offal? How the Grand Jury's Knackers can this be offensive?!
Censorship.. Pah. I'm adult enough to decern (just!)
Go Shane & Kirsty (Gawd bless 'er in Peace)!!
Just heard the full version...
Radio 2 just played the uncensored version. I'm not at all offended, and apparently I'm the very type of person that should be!
Scumbag not offensice? They have lost the plot as usual.
I wonder how many complaints they received before they censored it?
My colleagues and are penning our complaints that to bleep/blank part of this classic song is far more offensive - that is 5 complaints right there.
I wonder how many more people will complain...go for it!
Only a very small percentage of the job
I think that removing this word, or indeed any word from this 'song' is an admirable beginning. We need now to gather speed and remove all the other words, the melody and all existing copies of this 'song' stored on or in any media or format, then that guy with the bad teeth who sings in said 'song', and for good measure 'The Boogaloo' pub in Highgate where I think he hangs out sometimes.
Thumbs up on a job well started there Aunty Beeb, lets see if we can finish it off.
It's not just the BBC
A local secondary school censors the entire verse when the song is performed at the Christmas concert, because the parents of some year 7s (11 y/o) may be offended that their children hear such language... As if their darlings didn't hear and use much more offensive words day by day in the playground.
Fairytale of New York
How long before "Fairy" is removed from the title?
The beeb has double standards
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/faggotswithoniongrav_3899.shtml
Hypocrisy in the Beeb
Radio 1 edit it - but Radio 2 have left it in....
And then newsbeat keep repeating Faggot in every news break anyway to discuss the whole issue so you probably hear it more times in one day than you would anyway.
D'oh!
I see the BBC proves once more how it truly has it's fingers on the nation's pulse and relishes it's role as our moral compass....ar$eholes.
Dear "god" !!!
I find it offensive that other take offense at the smallest petty things... This is taking the PC brigade to new levels... Be off with their heads, I say!
Bleep
Let's just hope the BBC never licenses Futurama.
Though they're clearly not always so politically correct: If I recall, one of Heston Blumenthal's recent programmes involved the mention of a mincer.
Not enough editing
Personally I don't see how anyone can like this song. Its full of "swear words" its not a proper festive cheer song. Its just about to drunk Irish. Edit the entire song tbh.......by burning all copies of it and not playing it.
Then you can get started on Cliff Richards xmas hits list. Not because they are offensive, but because they are just annoying !!!
Great editing.
You're a bum
You're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy f______
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it's our last
Of all the content to filter.
Someone!
If I had children, I'd be asking someone to think of them!
Re: Only half a job
Sorry AC if I'm missing the sarcasm, but they already censor the word mother and leave in fu... on TV broadcasts. Yippe-kay-yay <bleep>fu... regularly appears on Die Hard 2
Plotical Correctness Gone Mad
Its just another step along the same slippery road to PC madness that insisted on changing the well known nursery rhyme "Baa Baa Black Sheep" to "Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep" (see http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1752155.html).
I once read an article that said all this PC Gone Mad to avoid offending anyone of any race, religion or gender is now becoming Offensive to the indiginous native population as our 'common use' language has to be modified in light of the increasing number of non-indigenous arrivals that CHOOSE to come here then OBJECT to what they find here and INSIST that *WE* change to accommodate them.
Makes perfect sense to me.
Beep?!?
I belong to a small and repressed minority group. For us, beeping is the gravest insult someone can make.
It's enough that we have to put up with car horns and mobile phones insulting us all day... now it's the BBC too, inserting beeps into songs.
I bet they think it's funny. But it is appalling. I thought the BBC were supposed to be PC.
Disgraceful.
Love this song
I'm gay, and yet I love this song. As mentioned in the report, it's about two old friends bickering with each other. I take no offence to the use of this word in this song at all.
Ban all Christmas Songs
especially Cliff Richard
If you have ever worked in a shop, pub or anywhere else where this pathetic lift music is played on a loop from the middle of November then you will understand why.
And if you have any suggestions about how to eradicate children laughing and playing then I would be glad to hear them to.
Only the faggot?
So faggot can't be heard but the 'old slut on junk' line is perfectly acceptable?!?
How to look foolish at Christmas
I'm curious to know if the word was red-ruled after extensive consultation with a broad representation of the homosexual community? Or was this done after 10 seconds with Peter Tatchell (which is long enough for anyone to be exposed to The Noxious One). Or perhaps was done by some faceless North London nonce desperate to be seen as on-message to their pluritan bosses and thinking they were doing the gay community a huge favour.
I know this is coming over all Daily Mail but it really is a bit pathetic as well as irrelevant to a certain extent; faggot is an American term, not British.
We are allowed to still use the term Christmas aren't we? Just thought it may be offensive to someone so it might be dropped. Or beeped out or blanked.
Really....
Is anyone else getting tired of feeling like we have to justify ourselves to a country that no longer cares about the people it's here to serve.
I've become so apathetic to the whole thing that I feel like swimming in quick-sand and getting it over with..least it would be quicker than this slow-strangulation of our rights.
When struck with the need to voice my concern, seconds later I feel overwhelmed with an urge to take some generic branded "happy-pill". Maybe it's a sympton of the times - maybe we are too used to doing what we want, that, like a petulant-child, we have to be reminded every now and then that our freedom is about is real as cold-fusion.
There isn't even an emoticon that comes close to how this makes me feel...Jesus, does that mean I'm already gone!
@Only half a job
Of course, on the original appearance on TOTP, they censored it the other way - Kirsty Maccoll had to sing "ass".
Plus ca change!
Quest for coverage by the BBC?
Mmm, so the BBC has banned some lyrics. How can we survive? Wait, what's this? It's cheeky chappy Chris Moyles, everyone's fave podger (who's got a new book out) come to save the day...!
So the BBC looks good in the eyes of the parents, the kids empathyse with fatso - all claim the free advertising, doubles all round!
Radio 2
I read this article just as BBC Radio 2 played the full track unedited.
Mugs! The lot of you.
Get real! This is obviously a Moyles plan to ensure his Christmas choice is number 1. How else could he get the publicity. No one listens to that shit (can I say that;-) radio station anymore.
I was offended
When they gave Chris Moyles a radio show.
@ AC
"And if you have any suggestions about how to eradicate children laughing and playing then I would be glad to hear them to."
One word. Skynet.
I object to the objection
What we need is a standing list of those that object to any PC objections. Call it the sanity list. Then whenever one of the 'think of the children' crowd shouts out their objection, it can be counted against the sanity list and nobody thinks of taking any action until the net number is positive.
Of course the real reason for all this wouldn't be to get some publicity, and for the Beeb to be able to push the song above the x-factor dross, from the other side, in the christmas chart...
Cynic, moi?
@Nige
Well yes, but there wasn't such an animal as a rainbow sheep, so now the correct version should read:
Rainbow trout Rainbow trout Have you any wool
No, boss, no boss I am a fish.
Wool is for mammals and I am a trout.
Just give my best to the PC crowd
Rainbow trout Rainbow trout Have you any wool
No, boss, no boss I am a fish.
Now new here...
I worked retail a few years ago and this was on the piped Xmas music we got sent by head office, it wasn't beeped out instead there was a gap where faggot was!
Might as well ban the whole song anyway, its awful!
Ban Christmas!
is the only solution. It no longer means what it's supposed to anyway. Let's just have a day when we all give a lump sum to the charity of our choice.
So long, and thanks for all the fish....
Just another indication (as if we didn't already know) that the lunatics have taken over the asylum...
God help us all
What about...
Dire Straits' Walk of Life - "See the little faggot with the ear ring and the makeup? ... that little faggot he's a millionaire"
Looks like a publicity stunt for BBC if you ask me.
@Only half a job
Your not wrong. I have a clipping from the "Metro" about the time when Ali G used the work motherF***er on Radio 1. The Metro got it wrong and the published M****fucker, if I were at home I'd post it.
@ old slut on junk
I heard this, last night, and IIRC they have censored "slut" too.
Not that I consider censoring either word acceptable.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slut
3. (countable) (derogatory) a slovenly, untidy person, usually a woman.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/faggot
4. (pejorative, US, slang) A male homosexual.
Just because they happen to broadcast to the US on satellite radio, doesn't mean that they should censor the version broadcast to the vast majority of their listeners.
I'm offended
Speaking as crack addicted prostitute, can I register my offense at the use of the derogatory term "slut on junk"
Remember concerning offense
In a liberal democracy you do not have the right to not be offended!
Double standards
They play Soldier Boy (f**king awful rap song).
The main lyics consist of "Superman dat ho"
www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=superman+dat+hoe
Inconsistent censorship?
What with lots of people querying the logic of censoring "faggot" (for example) but not "arse" it brings to mind a broadcast I saw of Courtney Love reading Kurt Cobain's suicide note (bear with me).
Basically she was reading bits out and commenting on them and at a couple of points, where she seemed to strongly disagree with what he'd written, she called him an "asshole". At least I presume that's what she was saying as only the word "hole" was bleeped out. Go figure.
Cock-a-hoop.
I'm so cock-a-hoop about this news, I'm going to have a gay-old time enjoying some faggots tonight, love spuds too. All topped off with some creamy gravy.
BBC Censorship
Never mind about words in songs - how about they completely censor some of their shows? If I see another f*ing cookery show or another Crap in the Attic show I'll go postal.
re: Just heard the full version
Jon: "Radio 2 just played the uncensored version. I'm not at all offended, and apparently I'm the very type of person that should be!"
What, you're a meatball? How did you type that out with no arms?
@Nige
I really object to this imported middle eastern death cult called Christmas anyway.
why should I pretend to be a Christian once a year so I can celebrate the winter solstice.
After all pagan festivals are a lot more fun, they are all about food, beer and fertility which is much more fun then guilt, sin and death.
Am I to be labelled politically correct because I would rather decorate a phallus and be visited on Christmas eve by a fertility goddess in suspenders then fill my house with symbols of Roman torture an coke advertisements?
P.S. see fertility goddess pictured left, a lot more fun then a fat man who bribes small children to sit on his knee.
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