Fittingly, it comes not long after the media sensation caused by the censored version of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. What's weird, however, is the fact that I fall on opposite sides in both cases. I'm against the censoring of Huck Finn, but I totally get the censoring of Mark Knopfler. And I like Dire Straits.
Don't get me wrong: the usage of the respective slurs is similar. Twain uses the n-word to reinforce the plight of the African-American in pre-war Missouri. It would've been common usage back then, and a common notion that blacks were not people. The word has come to symbolize everything ugly about racism, and even generally makes people uncomfortable in it's "We're taking it back" context. I remember a really anvilicious episode of African-American comic Robert Townsend's lameass sitcom "The Parent 'Hood" where his son asked, innocently, why some black kids were willing to use this word, and he got a thousand-yard stare as he sighed "I don't know, son... I just don't know." Omitting it from the text scrubs a pretty vital part of the meaning of the book.
In the song, Knopfler takes the voice of a laborer in an appliance store, slacking off while watching MTV. He's got to move the refrigerators and colour TV's, while some dumbass guitar player gets his "Money for nothing" and his chicks for free. The offending verse goes like this:
That little faggot with the earring and the make-up
Yeah buddy, that's his own hair
That little faggot's got his own jet airplane
That little faggot, he's a millionaire.
The (justifiably envious) blue collar workersees the prissy, effeminate rock stars that were on the scene in the mid-80's (I'm not sure whether it refers to Motley Crue, David Bowie, Sting, Elton John, the Pet Shop Boys or Knopfler himself) as, in Knopfler's words, running a "good scam." He has a grudging respect for them. And it's completely realistic that the character would use that slur (and apparently he wrote it based on the real situation from which it arose.) But there's a huge difference between writing a word in a book that gets taught in an English Lit class, and using a word in a Top 40 hit.
In an English class, you have a teacher guiding you through the text, explaining the context and meaning of the word and how it relates to the theme of the book. On the radio, in your car, you just hear a catchy lyric that goes "faggot" and think "Did he just say faggot? That's fucked up." Context isn't something people consider.
Really, the entire verse is redundant. The unedited version of the song runs 8:26. The label issued the radio-edited 4:07 version on the last Dire Straits compilation, Private Investigations: Te Best of Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler. I've got it on my iPod and there's no measurable effect on the song except that I don't get uncomfortable listening to it near my family members. As much as I dislike censorship, the slur is kinda unnecessary.
Still, classic rock stations feel the need to get indignant. (Surprisingly, classic rock radio stations are resistant to change.) Q107 in particular has been really snarky about it. And I get it, they have a loyal fanbase, they can whip people up into a frenzy, but it's not terribly productive to get pissy about the right to broadcast what is generally considered hatespeech. You can teach it in a classroom, that's fine in my books: but not for free over the airwaves -- there are sponsors to think about.
I'm not usually pro-censorship, I just think it would've been better if Knopfler had gone with a less controversial alternative, like "That little fucker."
In general, I like the song. Even with the slur, the lyrics are intelligent and catchy, and it's all hooked around a bitchin' riff that easily brings to mind the kind of MTV shenanigans Knopfler's writing about. Here's the edited version: As you can tell, without the word "faggot" it clearly makes no sense whatsoever:
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