As painful as it is to call attention to the “musical group” the Clipse, I am professionally obligated to call MTV out for their rudderless censorship policy.
In the most recent Clipse video called “Popular Demand,” viewers may be confused by what appears to be performers rapping in front of a blank restaurant marquee. What’s with the flat yellow paint, you ask? Deceiver delivers!
The Brokelyn blog first reported last week that MTV censored the name of the Brooklyn fast food joint in the video — the often vilified “Obama Fried Chicken.” When asked, MTV used the “someone else asked us to censor it, but we don’t remember who” excuse. (Really. They really used that excuse.)
Here are the censored and uncensored version of the video. Below are some screen shots so you don’t suffer (like I did) watching the actual videos.
Feeling uncomfortable yet? MTV is known for censorship of various sorts. (Plenty of things are glazed over, and some randomly strong statements or images go untouched by the PTB’s.) Cable TV channels can’t protect us from stupid people any more than they can protect us from bad music, but MTV seems unable even to protect itself from its own double-standard.
Back in August 2007, MTV lashed out at AT&T for apparently editing out some mildly disparaging comments about then-President Bush:
Before a crowd that stretched as far as the eye could see, Pearl Jam closed out Lollapalooza on Sunday night with … lyrics from Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2″ slipped into “Daughter,” during which singer Eddie Vedder altered the lyrics to, “George Bush: Leave this world alone!” …
Oh, wait, you didn’t hear that part?
Maybe you were watching the live “Blue Room” webcast of Lollapalooza beamed out by main Lollapalooza sponsor AT&T. According to the band and a number of its fans, PJ were informed after the show that some segments of their performance were missing from the AT&T broadcast — namely the anti-Bush statements, which led them to suspect that the broadcast may have been censored by AT&T.
MTV’s coverage continues:
“We aren’t talking about them editing ‘f—’ out,” [Pearl Jam spokesperson Nicole] Vandenberg continued, after acknowledging that mistakes often happen during such high-pressure, live events. “We’re talking about them editing out content in a song that referenced the president. I’m curious as to why this content monitor thought that might concern them? I’m interested in knowing whether AT&T thinks this is the only ‘content monitor’ who will ever make a mistake of this nature?”
The other line cut from the webcast was, “George Bush: Find yourself another home.”
Steve Schwadron, a spokesperson for AT&T, told MTV News on Thursday that the editing of the performance was not intentional and was “a mistake by one of our webcast vendors.” Adam Smith — executive vice president of the vendor, music-consulting firm Davey Brown Entertainment, which produced the webcast for AT&T — also said the edit was an unintended error. “It was a mistake,” Smith said. “Our policy is not to edit any performance at all — never, ever. We take responsibility for the mistake.”
Much of MTV’s reporting could be re-mashed into a manifesto titled “For the Sacred Rights of All Men to Hear Disparaging Comments About Anyone, Including Presidents.”
My, what a difference two years makes.
Hey MTV, if you’re going to censor all “extremes of the political spectrum” style, maybe you should have a plan. I’m sure Stalin did.
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MTV is about as edgy as a maxipad. (Now with wings!) Only it’s less useful.
Seeing them be hypocritical is like seeing Lady Gaga be crazy; you’d be surprised otherwise.
Yeah, biggest example of MTV hypocrisy ever? MUSIC television that features no music
Does anyone still waste their time with these jokers?
…I….I feel compelled to eat there now. Just because people are pissed off about it.
Tut. Of course Bush was the ‘bad’ president. Taking away the comment was a denial of free speech. Obama is the ‘good’ president, you can’t have anyone sullying the name of ‘the one’, worse yet, associating it with, gulp, fried food. /sarc.
Obama Fried Chicken? That is so stupid I nearly choked on my Sonia Sotomayor Tacos when I read it.
I have to make the statement again….”People still watch MTV??”
MTV still plays music videos? I thought that was so 1980s.
Like the rest of the “entertainment” industry, MTV is so far in the tank for Obama that they need a snorkel. But like Audrey said, they can’t even seem to get that right.
Didn’t you know? References to fried chicken are, in themselves, racist.
This is sad but I didn’t realize that Pearl Jam was around anymore and that someone thought they were still relevant.
MTV is really still around? I watch the top 20 on VH1. Never knew that they were still around and still played something other than “real World”. Huh, go figure.
No, aaw, they also play that crappy show that gave us Speidi, don’t they?
And the one about whiny brats who don’t like their birthday parties.
We have a pretty small Thanksgiving so we only roast the Turkey breast.
Is it racist if you only eat the white meat?
It is, isn’t it?
If you drive a NASCAR vehicle, are you a racist ? (Sorry)
Only if its not burning biodiesel made from oil milked from hippy’s hair.
Interesting ACORN positioning here. Apparently their defense will be that they are victims of racism, as their primary spin control activities seem to be targeted at preserving evidence of “racist, hateful, or bigoted” calls or emails and preserving them in a spreadsheet:
http://biggovernment.com/2009/11/27/acorn-document-dump-trashed-documents-are-relevant-to-investigation/
Back during the ’96 Olympics here in Atlanta, we were informed by the international media that the pickup trucks used in the opening ceremonies were racist. Pretty much anything can be racist, in someone’s eyes.
The really nutty thing is…the owners of Obama Fried Chicken *_love_* Obama. They named their restaurant in honor of the new Pres (and also to cash in on the hype).
A racer of cars ~ a racist is a racer of cars … never mind….
A former coworker (who is black) once told me that her (black) friends thought her dad drove a “white” car – because he drove a pickup truck. As she put it, one: how does a car have a race or ethnicity, and two: he worked in construction (or similar), what else could he drive that had space for tools and materials?
I thought only white kids watched MTV anyway, their “shows” are whiter than I am. And I’m pretty pasty. And I like fried chicken.
Liberalism Killed the Video Star…