(16.01.2003 - 7:54 p.m.)
Considering the subject that I keep writing about at the moment, it's appropriate that I'm beginning to sound like a stuck record, but I urge you to think about the consequences of censorship and further regulation of our lives. The following excerpt is taken from todays Daily Telegraph (16th January): "The Home Secretary has been making pronouncements about hip hop, a subject about which I suspect he knows very little. Blaming pop music for the world's problems tends to be an activity indulged in mostly by those who try their hardest to never listen to it. As a rule, I think, politicians would be best advised to keep their thoughts on such matters to themselves, lest posterity make them look as foolish as George Bush Snr who, in the Sixties, instigateda CIA investigation into the "highly suspect" number of British rock bands signed to American recording contracts. "When it comes to our minds and hairdos of our young people, something had to be done," the future president asserted. The current President Bush appears to have inherited his father's suspicions. It is not so long ago that he was reported as indentifying "the most dangerous threat to American children since polio" as being Eminem. I may have had to revise that asessment since the emergence of Osama Bin Laden and the return to prominence of Saddam Hussein, neither of whom are noted for their satirical wordplay and complex rhyming schemes. At least Bush knows he could count on the support of this Labour government were he to suggest sending troops into the recording studio to drag out sonic terrorists dead or alive. Indeed, he would probably have no difficulty in gaining a mandate from the UN security council. World leaders may have difficulty agreeing on the subject of weapons of mass destruction, but get them on to the pernicious influence of pop music on the minds of impressionable young people and I think you would soon hear them all singing from the same hymn sheet."
Neil McCormick On Pop, The Daily Telegraph, London. Please just tell me if you're sick of reading all this stuff about music and censorship. I just care about it. We gotta' fight for our right to party, people! Did I just write that?
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