Forget Fuck Censorship

So for starters this is the song that brought this to mind for me:
Cee Lo Green - Forget You
Radio Version
Real Version

Now I think most people can relate to some extent to the lyrics and, if anything, it's a topic that carries a lot of emotions. So to me, censoring the song has drastically reduced its effectiveness on the audience.

This is of course just one song (and a currently popular one, I'm too cool to like pop music, ha). But one of my favorite examples from the past is Radiohead - Creep. The censored version to me is just a song, the real version is much closer if not entirely in the deepest realms of art.

And let's extend it even further. I've only covered censoring cursing, what about the rest? Well, I still feel the same there too. I think when a good piece of work is put out with what some consider inappropriate material and that material gets censored, the piece of work is no longer in existence and simply a dumbed down replica.

Of course there is the other side of it that involves rampant totally valueless cursing. This is where subjectivity gets in the way and case by case basis is not acceptable. So really it has to be all or nothing in my opinion, and in case you haven't guessed, I vote for absolutely no censorship. Someone said something that offends you? Grow up and take it for what it's worth (or go beat them up). You want to shelter your kids? Well first of all, have you ever gone to public schools? Or browsed the internet for more than 10 minutes? The fact of the matter is, sheltering your kids from obscenities, etc simply glorifies them and also means that you won't have any control over how they are eventually exposed to it.

Finally, this is one of the many reasons I love the very ideology of the internet: it's all there, all the time, its just up to you to find and view it. If I want to hear my uncensored music, I do it. If I want to look at lewd pictures, so be it.

This whole post may seem trivial to you, but keep in mind that censorship is a notoriously slippery slope. Today it's the F word, tomorrow it's joking about bombing an airport, oh wait I forgot jokes aren't funny anymore. This whole FBI etc spending a bunch of money to track down, arrest, and charge someone for joking about bombing an airport is a VERY SLIPPERY SLOPE!!! In fact the whole "war on terror" is, in my opinion, a simple way to get praised for extremely limiting your citizen's rights. But that is a whole other can of worms!