Oldschool Video: Frank Zappa Owns Censorship Nannystatists

One of my rock idols helped save the First Amendment back when he was alive. This video is from 1986 and it’s discussing the PMRC censorship hearings. Video after jump…

posted Jul 3rd, 2006 by Stuart Richards
  • Liberty For All

    Dweezil’s Zappa Plays Zappa tour was in town a few weeks ago. Awesome. Simply awesome. There will never again be anyone like Frank.

  • http://libertarianyouth.blogspot.com Nigel Watt

    Wow, that video was pretty awesome. Zappa destroyed them.

  • michelleshinghal

    That is a great video. I saw Zappa albums on my father’s shelf when I was kid and never listened to them. I am going to call him tomorrow and ask for them.

  • http://ncway.blogspot.com/ Sean Haugh

    This is way cool, but could you not set it to start up upon arrival? You did figure out how to beat my flash blocker though, I’ll give you credit for that.

    This is way cool. Got a link to John Denver’s testimony?

  • ianbernard

    Fascist theocracy, he nailed it.

  • http://www.ilovephysics.com Chris Moore

    “… but could you not set it to start up upon arrival?”

    Yeah. I didn’t mind watching it the first time. But it is really annoying to have to scroll down and click pause everytime I visit the main page.

  • http://www.libertyforsale.com Timothy West

    Yeah he did.

    whats scary is that the clip was aired 20 years ago, and how much worse things have gotten since then.

    Do you realize how hard it would be to even FIND anyone these days that would stand up against the fascists the way Frank did and tell that fat bastard from the Reverend Moon newspaper to kiss his ass on national TV?

  • Steve Perkins

    That John Lofton kook-job is still going, and hasn’t changed much over the years. He’s no longer with the Washington Times, but runs his own ultra-right wing blog with a “Recovering Republican” tagline. He hosts a weekly radio show with Presidential nominee Peroutka from the Constitution Party (the folks who see Pat Buchanan as a liberal p*ssy).

  • Jonesy

    I actually dont think he gave a very good defense of free speech. He kept trying to focus on “words”. He had a chance at the very start of the program to say that he doesnt think there should be any obscenity laws at all for any kind of media (including Porn), but he balked. My position is age restrictions are fine, but that nothing (film, music, words,…) should be considered “obscene” and therefore illegal. Zappa didnt seem confident enough to stand up for that principle.

  • Stuart Richards

    I’m sorry, I could only figure out how to beat Flash. VanDyke, if you could edit it to not start, that would rule.

    It might just be QuickTime… I think it does that automatically.

  • http://www.libertyforsale.com Timothy West

    you can set your OT prefs not to start playing it I think.

  • Steve Perkins

    Yeah, if you right-click the movie, go to “plug-in settings” and the “browser” tab, there’s an option to stop Quicktime from automatically playing the clip on every page load. I was about to put my shoe through the screen before I figured that out.

  • Steve Perkins

    Even still… and don’t take this too harshly since Stuart is one of my favorite bloggers… but clips like this one are better as external links rather than embedded directly. This clip is 50 megs in size, and since Quicktime isn’t smart enough to make use of browser cache it re-downloads it on EVERY page load. I’m on DSL, and HoT is even bogging down my connection right now. I liked the clip, but can’t wait for enough new posts to be made that it scrolls off the main page.

  • http://www.mikekole.com Mike Kole

    Micehlle- Ask your Pop if he has the album with “Briefcase Boogie” on it. That will get his attention.

    If John Lofton ‘got out more’, he would have flung that one at Zappa… though Zappa would have squashed him.

  • http://libertarianyouth.blogspot.com Nigel Watt

    Yeah, I had left my audio on pretty loud (was using Sibelius) and HoT open, but minimized, and came back upstairs to screaming coming out of my room…Scared the crap out of me before I figure out what was going on.

  • http://360.yahoo.com/pong_god Robert Mayer

    I couldn’t care less about Zappa and his music, but it was refreshing to see him rip these statists apart.

  • Wes P

    Steve Perkins said: clips like this one are better as external links rather than embedded directly. This clip is 50 megs in size, and since Quicktime isn’t smart enough to make use of browser cache it re-downloads it on EVERY page load. I’m on DSL, and HoT is even bogging down my connection right now. I liked the clip, but can’t wait for enough new posts to be made that it scrolls off the main page.

    I agree! Stuart, even on broadband at my office, it keeps holding up my IE several seconds and then popping up a dialog box “Click here to run ActiveX Control”.

    Can’t you change it to an external link?

  • Stuart Richards

    Well, it’s been fixed. My apologies to everyone-I’m not quite up to speed on video code. I’m currently at the “View Source, Copy and Paste” stage. So again, my apologies.

  • Wes P

    Thanks, Stuart!

  • Wes

    I miss Frank!

    Too bad he never ran for office like he suggested others do.

    I think he did respond “yes” at some point when asked if he thought that anything’s ok to put in a video.

    But I think he was right to keep bringing the discussion back to “words”, which were after all the original point of proposed censorship. His opponent kept trying to link him to a laundry list of “bad stuff” like incest and whatever was mentioned or shown in some song or video.

  • http://www.two--four.net/weblog.php Billy Beck

    “Well I’m watchin’ and I’m waitin’
    Hoping for the best
    I even think I’ll go to prayin’
    Every time I hears ‘em sayin’

    There ain’t no way to delay
    That trouble comin’ every day.”

    (“More Trouble Every Day”)

    Frank Zappa was the H. L. Mencken of rock music.

    We will never see anything like him again.

  • cliff

    It is scary to see the roots from which our present situation is grounded. Frank did nail the fascist theocracy zeitgeist of the Reagan era.

    I would venture to say that with the technological advances of the last 20 years, the fascist theocracy has been supplanted by the fascist theo-technocracy, which combines all of our favorite thou shalt nots… and thou shalts… with an ability to observe and detect all of our actions.

    With steady and relentless erosion of our rights and liberties in the last 20 years, I can envision a time, not far from now, when our thoughts could be monitored and edited as well.

    I saw a comment a while back that sums up my feelings about our “beloved government”, “We are as doomed as doomed can be.”

  • Chris Haskell

    Lots of good points by everyone! Now when are the citizens of the United States going to stand up and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!? When? When it’s too late? Or is it already?
    Givemeliberty.org Lets do it now!