LONDON - A 70-year-old song is giving the BBC a headache. <\/p>\n
The radio and television broadcaster has agonized over whether to play \"Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead,\" a tune from \"The Wizard of Oz\" that is being driven up the charts by opponents of Margaret Thatcher as a mocking memorial to the late British prime minister. <\/p>\n
A compromise announced Friday the BBC will play part of \"Ding Dong!\" but not the whole song on its chart-countdown radio show is unlikely to end the recriminations <\/p>\n
This is not the first time Britain's national broadcaster, which is nicknamed \"Auntie\" for its \"we-know-what's-good-for-you\" attitude, has been caught in a bind about whether to ban a song on grounds of language, politics or taste. <\/p>\n
Here's a look at some previous censorship scandals: <\/p>\n
SEX, DRUGS AND DOUBLE ENTENDRES <\/p>\n
The 1960s and '70s saw several songs barred from airplay for sex or drug references, including The Beatles' \"A Day in the Life,\" for a fleeting and implicit reference to smoking marijuana. <\/p>\n
For The Kinks' 1970 hit \"Lola,\" the trouble was not sex or drugs, but product placement. The line \"you drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca-Cola\" fell afoul of the public broadcaster's rule banning corporate plugs. The brand name had to be replaced with \"cherry cola\" before the song could be aired. <\/p>\n
The BBC frequently has been targeted by self-appointed moral guardians, most famously the late anti-smut activist Mary Whitehouse, who campaigned for decades against what she saw as pornography and permissiveness. <\/p>\n
In 1972, Whitehouse got the BBC to ban the video for Alice Cooper's \"School's Out\" for allegedly being a bad influence on children. The controversy helped the song reach No. 1 in the charts, and Cooper sent Whitehouse flowers. He later said she had given his band \"publicity we couldn't buy.\" <\/p>\n
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The rest is here: LONDON - A 70-year-old song is giving the BBC a headache. The radio and television broadcaster has agonized over whether to play \"Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead,\" a tune from \"The Wizard of Oz\" that is being driven up the charts by opponents of Margaret Thatcher as a mocking memorial to the late British prime minister. A compromise announced Friday the BBC will play part of \"Ding Dong!\" but not the whole song on its chart-countdown radio show is unlikely to end the recriminations This is not the first time Britain's national broadcaster, which is nicknamed \"Auntie\" for its \"we-know-what's-good-for-you\" attitude, has been caught in a bind about whether to ban a song on grounds of language, politics or taste. Continue reading
\nDing-dong over Thatcher song is latest censorship controversy for BBC<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"