Tuesday, January 29, 2008

28 January 2008: Censorship strikes the DFAC

Ah! Sitting in limbo at Camp Liberty! We didn't even try a flight today. We've moved on to plan B for the mission. After two late nights in a row waiting around for flights that failed to materialize, I gave the team a day off. I slept until 0900 and then lingered over coffee while I sent and received e-mails - mostly work related. The weather was reasonable and considerable drying of Liberty mud made walking to the DFAC an easier event. The DeFleury Cafe provided my highlight for the day.

Once I filled my tray with the usual lunch of chicken wings and a grilled cheese, I sat close enough to a TV to watch Sportscenter. The TCN's working the DFAC have a portable stereo set up behind the carving station in the front center section. I normally don't listen to the music they play, but today I perked up when a certain song came on. "American Idiot" by Green Day piped up. It was the sanitized radio version. Even so, I immediately thought, "I wonder how long this will last." I had no problem with the song but I knew someone in the DFAC would. The "flash-to-bang" was about one minute. Having perked up, I had my eye on the general area of the stereo. Sure enough, a stocky senior NCO ran up and had a talk with one of the TCN's. Immediately after that, the song abruptly stopped. It was replaced by some crappy country tune. I rolled my eyes in disgust. It was blatant censorship in the DFAC. The crazy thing is, I've heard that song playing on AFN radio many times during this deployment. The irony was the song was stopped right after the line, "I'm not a part of a redneck agenda!" Then it was replaced by country.

Sometimes I think people get offended just a little too easy. It creates an atmosphere of intolerance. Today was a very good example. The song is fine for play on AFN but not for the DeFleury DFAC.

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