Fairytale Of New Labour – Episode 1
In which rampaging political correctness strikes at the very heart of all that is sacred.
So, Wifie – the Christmas Spirit being upon her – decided to buy a “Best Ever Christmas Songs Ever Ever Volume 29” album. You know the one, Noddy Holder, Chris de Burgh – the kind of thing you can only ever stomach at christmas time but without which, well, it just isn’t right.
So there I was, archiving off some old Oracle logs while the Christmas CD was playing in the background. And then Fairytale of New York came on. “That’s strange,” thought I, “that doesn’t sound like Shane McGowan.” And indeed it didn’t because it wasn’t. It was Ronan Sodding Keating. With some other nontentity.
“What what what what what?” quoth I. “You can’t have Fairytale of new York without The Pogues? What possible reason could they have for sticking a really crap cover version on the CD when the real version has been on every christmas album ever made?”
I’ll tell you, ladies and gentlemen. The Lyrics. They’ve. Changed. The. Lyrics.
You know, those beautiful perfect lyrics that paint a vivid and eloquent picture of two old has-beens having a cat fight and then making up on christmas eve. They’ve taken out the word “faggot” (you know, “you scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot”) but, bizarrely, left in “arse” (remember? “Happy christmas your arse, I pray God it’s our last”).
This is NOT political correctness. This is abusive political revisionism, and the only place this can possibly lead to is the burning of books.
November 28, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Copy the cd, replace the offending track with the original, burn a new copy and put that in the cd case. Send a cheque for 79p to Shane McGowan. Sorted.