You Don't Get To Stop The Music Because You've Been Told To Be Offended
It's become easier than ever to stop that nasty free speech. Or to shut down music that other people want to hear.

"Trigger warning" is now being used as a form of power -- a way to tell other people they must bend to your will and shut up. Or shut off the music that other people want to hear.

Much of popular music has lyrics like "I know you want it." Are we really going to call all of it off-limits or start boycotts of any venue that plays it?

Jenny Surane writes at the Daily Tarheel:

What started with a spat between a UNC student and a disc jockey at a bar Saturday night ended with a boycott and a formal apology from the pub.

When a DJ at Fitzgerald's Irish Pub played "Blurred Lines," Liz Hawryluk stepped into the DJ box to ask him to stop.

Critics say the song promotes rape culture with lyrics like "I know you want it."

Hawryluk said she was then asked to leave the bar completely.

But Lauren Shoaf, a spokeswoman for Fitzgerald's, said it was a misunderstanding, and the UNC senior was only asked to leave the DJ's area, not the bar.

"Fundamentally, all I was aiming to do is to create a safe space in the Carolina community," Hawryluk said. "In a lot of ways, violent or graphic images that allude to sexual violence are triggers."

She took her mini-war to Facebook, and fellow free-speech condemners went after the pub.

A couple of comments from the Daily Tarheel page:

Bobby Anstatt
I feel that these students, while well intentioned, really misguided their frustrations. I understand the objection that people have with Blurred Lines, but that shouldn't give students the license to demonize the establishment and post disparaging things on their websites in an attempt to hurt their business. They were playing a hugely popular song to entertain their patrons, just like every other bar on Franklin; they were trying to run a successful business, not promote or propagate sexual assault. Perhaps it would have been a bit more prudent to work with Fitzgerald's to make changes, rather than attack their livelihood. The level of activism on our campus is amazing and something that we, as Tarheels, should all take pride in- but lets direct our anger at those who deserve it, not Fitzgerald's.

Richard Climer
This is such an aggressive conception of "safe space." You declare someone else's business a safe space, and then act like you have the right to make them play by your rules. For people that also rail against imperialism all the time, they seem pretty happy to be imperialists when it suits them.

Turns out the DJ is now out of a job, too. And Fitzgerald's has apologized to Hawryluk and her posse and pledged that the song will never be played there again.

The lyrics to Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" are here and, by the way, involve a woman grabbing at a man. Thicke sings:

The way you grab me Must wanna get nasty Go ahead, get at me...

Let's get real. Until the term "trigger warnings" came up, has anyone ever heard of or experienced victims of sexual assault being deeply disturbed by the lyrics of popular music? (I can understand that a victim would be deeply upset if they heard a song that played while they were being raped.)

Also, there's a whole lot of music that's going to have to be shelved. I Googled "I know you want it" (with "-Thicke" to try to get rid of all the Robin Thicke mentions) and came up with 81,300,000 results, including Christina Aguilera's "Your Body."

What will become acceptable to play at music venues, the collected works of Enya?

via @CHSommers