As many of you probably already know, Alabama publisher NewSouth Inc. plans to release censored versions of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, replacing the words "nigger" and "Injun" with "slave" and "Indian," respectively.
That's a good start, but there's still a lot of offensive material out there, especially in the world of music. We bet that if we really tried, we could take the teeth out of many wild, troublesome songs and in doing so, remove their impact entirely. Quarrelsome music causes unrest of the innards; we'd much rather listen to stuff that's more middle-of-the-road and forgettable.
Censoring the following artists still won't make them as harmless as the songs of those nice fellows Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow, but it will help.
5. John Lennon, "Working Class Hero"
"A working class hero is something to be" proclaims John Lennon in this song, but it just doesn't sound like he means it at all. He describes in painful detail a growing-up experience full of oppression, difficulty and sadness. Hey, lighten up, John!
Okay, so maybe you were bullied at school, but weren't there also some good days? Maybe some really nice days out on the fields at recess, or perhaps a smooch from his first puppy love? And don't even get us started on the expletives. This must have been one of the first mainstream songs to feature the dreaded f-bomb, and it does so twice.
Was that really necessary? If Lennon could have just cheered the lyrics up a little, he probably would have realized that the profanity was no longer necessary.
A real "the glass is half empty" kind of song.
4. Dr. Dre, "The Day the Niggaz Took Over"
First of all, Dr. Dre - if you're even a real doctor - could you please tell us how the use of the "az" as opposed to "er" somehow makes the n-bomb okay? And that's just the start of the profanity sprinkled liberally throughout this song; not only are there several more n-bombs, but also several s-bombs, b-bombs, both kinds of c-bomb, a cluster of mf-bombs, an i-bomb, and even a w-bomb.
Aside from the atrocious language, the violence depicted in this song is truly deplorable. The LA riots of 1992 are referenced repeatedly. Couldn't Dr. Dre have picked a more positive subject to rap about?
The racial tension at the time of this song's release (mere months after the rioting in question) hardly needed a song like this to exacerbate the situation. It's almost like Dr. Dre and his friends wanted to incite others to resist oppression and stand up for themselves! People get hurt doing that!
