Song: "Handle Me" by Robyn
Problem: Potential racial slur
Feelings: Mixed
In the song there is a hard to understand line, that to my ears sounded like "Boot-necked, Hispanic creep." I like to think of myself as being hip with all of the new slang, but boot-necked, was not an expression I was familiar with, which is why I wasn't sure that it was a racial slur. To my knowledge "Hispanic" isn't a slur, and "creep" while not a nice thing to say, doesn't typically apply to one group of people more than another. But for all I knew the combination of innocuous words like Hispanic and creep could become a fatal (and very rude) slur.
After searching urbandictionary.com I found out that boot-necked is an actual thing and it is: Royal Marine (British Special Forces). Known to each other as "Royal" but the rest of the British Forces know them as boot necks. This nickname is derived from them cutting the top from a leather boot and wearing it like a modern neck brace to stop sailors cutting their throat while they guarded officers on board British sailing ships in the days of old. This certainly doesn't have anything to do with Hispanic people.
Finally I caved and searched the various websites that have song lyrics on them. I put it off for a while because they are usually very unreliable. According to three such websites, the line is "Boot licking Nazi creep." In my defense, they blur the Nazi part because apparently you can't sing about fascists without being censored by fascists.
Song: "Handle Me" by Robyn
Problem: Censorship
Feelings: Mixed
3 comments:
Isn't there a problem in the fact that the censors take "Nazi," a word that would be offensive primarily to Nazis (and who gives a hoot what they think), and blur it out so that it sounds like "Hispanic," which makes it racially offensive?
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DONELL
nazi or hispanic, i don't think this should have been censored in the first place. this is ridiculous. what is actually wrong with the world goes much deeper than being hispanic or fascist. why bother listening to the creative expressions of any artist if we must modify them to suit our petty little political sensitivities
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