What do the songs "Bridge Over Troubled Water," "What A Wonderful World," "Ticket to Ride" and "You Dropped A Bomb On Me" have in common?
According to Clear Channel Networks, a corporation that owns 1170 radio stations nationwide, these songs are among a list of 150 that are deemed insensitive to be played amid the recent tragedy. Clear Channel has recommended to its affiliates that they withhold these songs from their play lists indefinitely, further proving that this tragedy has made us sensitive to the point of neurosis.
Following these recommendations is voluntary, but few stations would think it good business practice to disregard its parent organization, its owner and its boss. This recommendation really is more binding than it seems because, if nothing else, Clear Channel probably would view failure to comply as crass and insensitive. The corporation's executives did after all circulate the lists because they don't want the corporation to be thought of in a negative light. If your boss thinks of you as both uncaring and insensitive, you hardly can expect additional help when it would be needed. In short, to ignore this suggestion could be costly.
The New York Times reports that compliance varies station-to-station, but the fact that a respectable number of these stations even comply partially with such a ridiculous request only proves the point that this "suggestion" is more than just that.
The request itself is unsound. The list was formed by circulating an e-mail among executives and employees at Clear Channel. They individually added songs to the list, which grew to a staggering 150. Well-known upbeat songs were on the list, as were some songs that intimated the use of violence or songs that used the word "bomb." This hypersensitivity isn't really helpful, because just as surely as some songs may cause feelings of hurt in some, they can be therapeutic for others. No one looked into the songs' psychological effect. Rather, people who are unqualified to make that sort of judgment - radio executives who aren't known to have any special psychological training - assumed the songs to be harmful.
It makes no sense for the radio industry to become the curator of American psychological health. For one, industry members are not experts and what they do may end up having no capability to assuage pain. This is not a matter of national security. It is not a matter of physical health. It is about emotional and mental health, and this radio corporation oddly enough wants to put itself in the shrink business.
The list is entitled "Clear Channel's Songs of Questionable Content." What does that mean? What about the Beatles is questionable? Do their songs give off the impression that they would have supported these acts? Clear Channel specifically singled out Rage Against the Machine and urged that none of its songs should make it to air. It did this despite the fact that Rage Against the Machine's members have forcefully condemned the attacks of Sept. 11 and insist that their music is a response to just the sort of intolerance that was underlying last Tuesday's attack on U.S. domestic targets.
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This list unfairly indicts artists because it calls their content questionable. The list is not entitled, "Songs We May Not Want to Play in Our Current Context." That would be fine and would sound a lot more like a suggestion than a demand from the top down. But that's not what is said. The list points a finger at artists.
Naturally, some artists could lose consumers due to the fact that their songs will not be heard on some of the stations Clear Channel owns or influences. If some people take Clear Channel's accusations of questionable content seriously, these artists may lose out on album purchases that they otherwise would have secured. This list, despite Clear Channel's insistence that it is just a list of suggestions and compliance is voluntary, actually may end up hurting artists who are accused unjustly of having content that is in some way supportive of the evils this world recently witnessed.
It's fine to be alert. But to go overboard - to effectively and arbitrarily point the finger at some artists and to deny their otherwise artistically qualified talents display - is an insupportable injustice.
(Jeffrey Eisenberg is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at jeisenberg@cavalierdaily.com.)
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