Yesterday provided yet another example of how prudish corporate America and big mainstream media can be when they are scared of all those pressure groups who want to "protect" children from "bad" words and any hint of sex.
I'm talking about the Rolling Stones brief headline performance during halftime at the Super Bowl -- the championship of American football. Real football, not that sleepy stuff we call soccer.
Seems as though the National Football League was concerned about one word in each of the Stones' songs the legendary rock group wanted to perform. The NFL and its media partners have been quite skittish about "obscenity," ever since Janet Jackson's nanosecond-long, "wardrobe malfunction" nipple exposure two Super Bowls ago.
Hide your eyes, people. We are going to get a little nasty here.
Seems as tho the Stones wanted to perform "Start Me Up." No, we're not talking about being able to rev up a lawn mower on the first tug. We are talking about a song in which a man tells a woman that she is quite stimulating.
The last line of the song goes, "you make a dead man come."
Stones' lead vocalist Mick Jagger was allowed to mouth the (gasp) "c" word, but his Mick's mike was muted when he sang it.
If he had been allowed to actually proclaim it, I don't think it would have made a whit of difference to the moral fibre of our young people.
After all, I guarantee you, there are far nastier lyrics on your kid's iPod.
Second, although the word was squelched in the name of "family entertainment," I guarantee that most kids of ages deemed too tender to hear that word probably thinks the Stones are old fogies and probably weren't watching anyway.
And the four year old on Mommy's knee -- well, I doubt that the little tyke was parsing every word out of Mick's mouth.
I also should point out that the very act the censored word describes is quite likely how that four-year old got here.
The other Rolling Stones song to be censored was a new one called "Rough Justice."
In the name of all that is decent, one word in the last line of this opening stanza was muted:
One time you were my baby chicken
Now you've grown into a fox
And once upon a time I was your little rooster
Am I just one of your cocks?
Personally, I think that's clever.
But what about keeping our children pure?
Now we all know that once your 14-year-old daughter hears the word "cocks," the very mention of that term will launch her into a lifetime of sexual abandon and depravity. Or at least stare at the crotches of the cute guys in her class.
Wait! Maybe she is doing it already!
At least the NFL and ABC-TV (which held broadcast rights for the game, and imposed a five-second delay from performance to airing) didn't censor Stevie Wonder's pregame proclamation:
"Now is truly a time for love. Let us come together before we're annihilated."
Uh-oh, Stevie sang "come together"!
The Devil works in strange ways, doesn't she?