Whitewashing the Dire Straits

In a ruling released on January 12, 2011, the Atlantic Region Panel of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) announced its decision that the Grammy-winning 1985 rock song "Money for Nothing" was not fit to be played on Canadian radio. The decision followed a complaint launched by a listener of CHOZ-FM in St. John's, Nfld., when they heard the word "faggot" used several times in the song's lyrics. The broadcast council said the original version of the Dire Straits' song contravenes the human rights clauses of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters' Code of Ethics and Equitable Portrayal Code, but has noted that they would be OK with an edited version thereof.
Since then, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has announced that it wants a second look into the decision to ban the unedited version of the song from Canadian radio. The ruling has set off a firestorm of public disapproval, and even prompted some radio stations to protest by playing the supposedly offending version over and over again.
One reason that the CRTC has its shorts in a knot is the public's mistaken assumption that it was responsible for the ban, as attested to in the letters of protest received, said CRTC secretary general Robert Morin. The "perceived overlap of responsibilities between the commission and the CBSC" is really messing with Morin's finer sensibilities. The CRTC wants to retain, untarnished, its self-perceived deification, and not waste any of it on this particular battle. Choosing the battles to fight is an important strategy for any body of governance, such as the CRTC, and this is one they're smart to distance themselves from.
Censor everything, or censor nothing. The idea of censoring any one song while the rest of the current offerings play on, uncensored, is ludicrous. As long as various rappers are out there demeaning women, and churning out the most offensive lyrics they can manage, simply to outsell the next guy, there is no point to singling out one song for a clean-up. As long as even one supposed aritst is able to warble their way, uncensored, through lyrics espousing denigration, singling out any one song for a whitewashing is just plain ludicrous.