Dee Snider was my hero for a minute.
I was a child of the ’80s. Although I grew up in a conservative Christian home, my parents allowed me to listen to and play the music I liked. And I liked the hard stuff. They endured my garage bands creating horrible, wonderful, overdriven Marshall stack sounds from the basement of our three-bedroom ranch house in the country. They also endured my typical ’80s oversized boombox blasting metal from my bedroom at the end of the hall.
They got it. They respected my choices and empathized with what moved me.
But what my parents allowed was threatened by the “my morality is the correct morality” crowd. The PMRC, with its talons into the government, wagged its manicured finger and insisted that our music was sure to harm us.
And then, in September of 1985, Dee Snider took the stand. Edgy, yes. Blustery, sure. Disrespectful? Damn straight. But also eloquent, knowledgeable, and right on — keep the government out of the censorship business.
A group of three easily decides what it will and won’t censor. But with a group size of 330 million, using the big stick of the government gets awfully attractive.
Various political, religious, and social groups pass the censorship baton back and forth as each loses or regains power. When our team gets the baton, we use the government to ban books, censor art, and influence media platforms that run against our ideology.
But it doesn’t help because, fundamentally, it comes across as “you’re bad.”
Instead, let’s resist the baton and instead lean into respect and empathy. Respecting choices. Empathizing with personal journeys and worldviews.
When we care enough to do the hard work, there’s room for all of us.
