Poor Woody. I feel for you. Do you miss the word? You can say it if you want. Go on. Say it.
A US friend swears he saw a sign in a mens’ room in a pub in London: “No fag butts in the urinals”
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Indeed, not so unusual…and not just in London… but yes, unlikely to see in a posh gastro pub !
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I should perhaps point out that the above incident occurred in a bar in San Francisco at Halloween (so was certainly not inspired by any signs in the loo.)
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The matter of inconsistency in censorship, however defined, is always interesting. I was just rewatching Team America: World Police and reading up on the problems they had getting it past the MPAA. Here’s an excerpt from an interview with one of the filmmakers at the time:
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According to the website, the movie still doesn’t have a rating. I’ve heard rumors it’s because of gratuitous puppet sex. Can you confirm or deny this?
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Yes, we confirm it. It is absolutely the most ridiculous, stupid thing in the universe. Our puppets are not anatomically correct, they don’t even have, like, pubic hair—they’re dolls. And we put them in sexual positions, but obviously everything’s completely implied. It’s just a joke, and the MPAA was like, “No, no, no.” Meanwhile, we’re taking other puppets and, you know, blowing their heads off, they’re covered with blood and stuff, and the MPAA didn’t have a word to say about that. It was all about the sexual positions. It couldn’t be anything but missionary.
Fascinating how, in this case at least, sex rang the moral arbiters’ alarm bells but violence didn’t.
Mark
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It would often have appended to it ‘it makes them soggy and hard to light’.
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We had a similar sign in one of the village pubs (sadly no longer)
Please don’t leave your dog ends in the urinal, they’re hard to light when wet.
I think, if we are being honest, there are many things in life that some individual or group may find offensive; this often resulting in another group being offended that someone else was offended by the original offensive offence😉 It then spirals and becomes increasingly antagonistic.
What concerns me personally (perhaps it offends me🙂) is that, society as a whole is selective in deciding what is offensive. There are clearly well discussed things that are now deemed offensive, however, there are other offences ‘committed’ that or ignored or actively encouraged. As an example, my wife is a redhead and jokes on media are routinely made about red heads and are deemed acceptable. However, to many ‘red heads’ this is very offensive, but society deems it acceptable and therefore they should just lump it. I personally find the ‘bashing’ that ‘middle class white men’ have received over the last 15 or so years offensive, but, as it’s part of the zeitgeist, we have to just put up with it. Believe me, I work in a predominantly female led line of work (primary teaching) and I’m far from convinced that the world would have been much different today had women been in charge for much of history instead.
The other thing I object to is the re-imagining of history through modern moral standards. Indeed, there are things that happen today that people in the past, rightly or wrongly, would have found very offensive. Yes some things have improved but I think it would be wrong for us to claim some form of moral ‘superiority’ over previous generations, in the same way we should be cautious in doing the same over other cultures that exist now. There are clearly exceptions to this and cultural relativism can be used as an excuse for all sorts, but we should think twice before we cast the first stone.
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I often wonder whether the recent trend to find offense and call out everything that can possibly said is some kind of subconscious distraction in order to use up society’s collective anger and frustration at it’s inability (on unwillingness) to tackle actual real world issues like climate change, world hunger, war and the such. That outrage and energy had to go somewhere. People aren’t shagging anymore according to surveys in many developed countries, so directing that energy into callout culture facets like militant censorship and ruining people’s enjoyment of older music and films and TV shows is what society is reduced to.
That’s not always true. Some can’t avoid taking offense.
Just reading through this thread many people have expressed offense at the censorship by the BBC. Personally I don’t understand why it offends but I’m sure it’s real offense and not a synthetic reaction that’s been chosen.
I’d agree you can choose whether and how you act on how you feel about something, but the original trigger; the itch of offense is, I think, an innate thing that happens before you know why.
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There is a lot of offence here… perhaps the real issue is that everyone including the BBC needs to learn to become more tolerant and then I am sure the world would be a more peaceful place.
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The Sunday Times has a relevant and poignant article on this and the thought-police in their own ‘social media’ bubble this morning; with the sub heading ‘Radio 1’s censorship of the festive hit panders to a narcissistic minority’.
The Times & The Sunday Times: breaking news & today's latest headlines
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100% in agreement with that. Wish I’d written it.
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I was in a record shop in Durban , South Africa , the radio was playing and a very, very unacceptable word got used on air.
Nobody turned a hair . Maybe there should a watershed on radio?
Perhaps we should see the word in the context of the song, two people spitting insults at each other over a ruined affair. Or maybe we should see two people at their nadir who haven’t walked away from each other -no matter what hatred they have .
Having spent 30+ years as a police officer being referred to, frequently, as ‘scum’, ‘filth’, ‘pig’ and one or two other epithets I won’t reproduce on this forum, I would just like to say that I would much rather people felt free to express their views rather than all of us being subject to this current suffocating blanket of politically correct censorship.
The right to be offended needs to coexist with freedom of speech. A world where everyone is genuinely tolerant of all minorities would be a wonderful thing but, given the evidence of the last 200 millennia, is unlikely to emerge any time soon!
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May be stating the obvious, but unacceptable to whom? If the ‘word’ failed to elicit any response, perhaps it is you who is out of step in that particular setting? I have noticed among many young people, most from ‘respectable’, well brought up backgrounds, a tendency to use a particular word (believe it is referred to as the C bomb) without turning a hair. We live in increasingly fluid times in some respects, but positively repressive in others.
A very unacceptable racist word , I was shocked to hear it.
I went into buy some cheap headphones for the flight home. So maybe I was out of place
Isn’t the problem we are judging this song by today’s standards ?
This is from my old school’s magazine - late 1970s, can anybody spot something that might raise eyebrows today ?
Yes the dress sense was questionable, flares were never a good look. 
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Zippelfagottist was an 18th century insult, used by Johann Sebastian Bach.