Wednesday, August 30, 2006
All That Glitters
It appears that the NFL has banned Gary Glitter's stadium anthem "Rock and Roll Part 2" from their stadiums this season. Loyal readers of Data Janitor will remember that Glitter was arrested in Vietnam last year for having sex with underage girls. Now that he's serving an 11 year sentence in a Vietnamese jail, the NFL appears to be in full damage control mode. After all, they wouldn't want to risk losing any revenue if one of those professional outrage manufacturing interest groups were to catch wind of this and organize some sort of a completely ineffective boycott. I wish the NFL didn't take such a reactionary approach to anything that could possibly offend a fan in the "heartland". I'm not going to be picketing in front of NFL stadiums demanding that they play "Rock and Roll Part 2" or anything, but I stand by my original statements. If a song is good, it's good regardless of whether or not the person who wrote it or performed it is a criminal sex offender and enjoying the song is in no way an endorsement of the singer's crimes.
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1 comment:
Hodge,
While playing and enjoying "Rock and Roll part Duex" is not an endorsement of pedophilia, when NFL teams play the song, they are endorsing something else: Gary Glitter's wallet. Based on what I know about copyright and licensing, every time an NFL (or any sports team for that matter) plays RR2, they must pay a licensing fee (or they purchase the rights to play for the year) to the person who holds the rights. That person in RR2's case is presumably Gary Glitter. So while every NFL probably wishes they could continue using the song, the NFL probably does not want to contribute financially to the Glitter man's deviant lifestyle. I suspect that is the main reason the League felt compelled to act. Though I'm sure there were PC motivations as well.
On a related note, the Chefs used the song as their touchdown celebration song. You may remember hearing the song as many as 8 times when you came to Kansas City to see the Chefs vanquish the Lions. Now that the song is banned the KC faithful has elected to use POD's "Boom" as the new celebratory song. As a first-year season ticket holder, I'm glad that I won't be subjected to the "We're going to beat the hell out of you ... and you, and you and you and you" chants anymore, but I'm afraid the fans have swung too far in the opposite direction. Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2006 Kansas City Chiefs - celebrating every score with the best in alternative Christian Metal!
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