Frank Zappa, Freedom of Speech and Free Market

I just re watched that cross-fire episode because I remember I had some fun watching it in the past. Censoring 7 words is an hypocritical idea in a world where everyone's dying to hear the latest gossip or picture of, let's say, Britney Spears, to see if she's gained weight, to see what kind of underwear she's using, if any. Not only it's hypocritical: it's arbitrary and probably useless. Why those words and not others? Half of Zappa's songs would disappear in a censored world and they are, let's face it, harmless amusing little stories like "Why does it hurt when I pee?" or "Don't eat the yellow snow". And if you don't like it, you don't have to buy it, but I should be able to buy it if I do. We are living in a society that gets alarmed for single words like "fuck" (and such a word can have an artistic value in the proper context, see for example Lost for Words, Pink Floyd) and is desensitized towards all the trash our children are basically forced to swallow like reality TV shows, shows about the richer you are the cooler, the hotter you are the better (justifying all kinds of plastic surgeries). The message of those shows is that in order to be loved you need to be rich and pretty so they lead children to value superficial things in judging their social environment, and those children will be inevitably the middle class of the future, voting for the president 15 years from now. So, once again, western societies are not seeing the elephant in the living room and are myopically trying to catch mosquitoes that might sting their children. Acting about the elephant would be more difficult because it would require self-criticism and criticizing the foundations of a society whose main value is the dollar sign. Because of people chasing money at all costs, parents are not spending as much time with their children (for example at lunch or dinner) and therefore part of the cultural transmission process is not happening or is happening between the TV and the child. The descriptions of contingencies on TV are often inaccurate and very few of the children watching are going to be rich and "cool" as Paris Hilton, but often nobody is telling them that it's ok not to be rich, not to be pretty, that you can be an interesting person even if you're not a millionaire and have big boobs. We take for granted that money is a measure of success, and success is achieved often through continuous growth (especially in the stock market). Who stops growing is old news. Well, we need to accept that as a group and as individuals we need to stop growing. Slow down, also demographically, no matter what the Pope says. Resources are limited and many people are gathering much more than others and much more than what they need to survive and be happy if they knew how. It's not about freedom, it's about our freedom, within our ingroup of western societies that are careless of the thousands of people dying every day because they don't have food or water in the rest of the world. And even within the US, is it right that few people keep billions in the bank while others are starving or don't have health insurance? How does it help to say that the rich ones have worked for it or deserved it when it's clear that it's an anomaly of the free market system itself to create asymmetries in wealth distribution, oligopolies and so on? We need to take more of a system approach and not exclusively an individualistic one when talking about our society. Clearly the system is unbalanced towards the 1% of the population in the US that owns 38% of the wealth. Defending this system using individual freedom as an arguement doesn't work especially when our freedom goes at the expenses of someone else's. This is the way in which I might reconsider the idea of freedom at all costs, not by banning single words. I think governments should promote cultural interventions, shouldn't censor anything. We should talk more about these issues: I might be completely wrong about them but talking about them is important, and we don't. Certainly we don't encourage children to do so. This is the problem, not using words like fuck and shit. So Frank is right. And his music is badass.