There’s this music video that I see constantly on “the n,” which is the (if you ask me) lame-ass name for the tv station that is Noggin during the day. The video is the Black Eyed Peas’ Don’t Phunk with My Heart, and it always makes me think of Lenny Bruce.

Lenny Bruce was a little before my time, but I’ve seen a few of his bits from archive footage, and what always stuck with me was this insight: “dirty” words can only be so if everybody knows what they are, and what they mean.

Why does this video make me think of Lenny? Well, as played on the n, it’s SUCH a classic example of the phenomena.

There’s a couple of little bits that are oddly - but not inexplicably - blurred. Now the whole video has a racy, wink-wink-nudge-nudge kind of vibe, but apparantly those persons who are in charge of making things safe for our kids to view decided that two things in this video - the bit where Taboo grabs the chick’s ass and the words “Knock Boots” on the wheel at the end - were just too darn naughty for the 11-15 year old demographic the n’s programming is aimed at.

It’s not as if you don’t know he’s grabbing her bum, the whole scene indicates it so much that you need not see the actual move to know what has taken place. And even with all my experience I have not the foggiest idea what kind of sexual position might result in one “knocking boots” But I damn sure know now that “knock boots” means sex.

What has astonished me since the very first time I saw it played was the title - the word Phunk is such a blatantly obvious play on fuck, one of the dirtiest words available, I couldn’t believe they let it through at all. I’m guessing that the censors who made the rest of the video safe for the kiddies let this one pass on the basis that it might also have been a play on “funk.” However, contextually speaking, funk doesn’t fit at all…don’t musical style with my heart? See - it doesn’t work. Don’t screw with my heart - that works.

It strikes me that what is actually going on here is not so much protecting the kiddies from naughtiness as it is teaching them what is naughty. Oh, I don’t think the folks who slapped the blur on the video had any such thoughts in mind - more likely they were thinking “ok, the kids love this song but the parents’ll flip if we just play it; we have to try and clean it up a bit!” But isn’t that exactly how cultural conditioning works?

Like I said, it makes me think of Lenny.