...this one image kept coming to me unbidden: a circa-1984 Tipper Gore, her 11-year-old daughter strapped into the passenger seat next to her, puts a cassette tape of Purple Rain into her car stereo player. Oh, to have been there to see the expression that must have melted across her face when “Darling Nikki” came on and she heard “I met her in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine” for the first time.
That mental image, and everything it represented, is the reason I call myself a conservative today; Tipper Gore’s actions afterwards are why I will never become a repressive cultural liberal. Ever. The hollowness of Gore’s argument still rings out today: that purchasing a Prince LP somehow represented a moral failing on her part as a parent, that parents all across the country were in great peril of making the same tragic mistake that she had made, and that only the power of the federal government could prevent this great moral catastrophe. Even the official title of the group Gore formed in 1985 as a reaction to hearing “Darling Nikki,” The Parents Music Resource Center, audaciously implied she represented all parents who were bound to make the same mistakes as she did. Progressive paternalism, summed up rather nicely. Gore’s stated goal, as with most liberal social policy, was to “start a conversation” and “open dialogue” between parents and unsuspecting kids who might be lured into a phantasmagoric world of rock & roll, permed hair, Doc Martens and satanic goat murder. But the truth is, Prince gave a better sex education class with Purple Rain than was available at any U.S. public school.
Tipper Gore wanted America to know that she the other Senator’s wives she rounded up for her PMRC coffee-klatsch were doing it all For The Children. The artists she targeted, however, naturally saw it otherwise.
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”On page 3 of Raising PG Kids, Tipper explained why that particular song had moved her to create an organization that would use the the threat of government action to clean up “sex and violence in the media”:
In December 1984, I purchased Prince’s best-selling album Purple Rain for my 11-year-old daughter….When we brought the album home, out it on our stereo, and listened to it together, we heard the words to…”Darling Nikki”: “I knew a girl named Nikki/guess [you] could say she was a sex fiend/I met her in a hotel lobby/Masturbating with a magazine.” The song went on and on, in a similar manner. I couldn’t believe my ears! The vulgar lyrics embarrassed both of us. At first, I was stunned—then I got mad! Millions of Americans were buying Purple Rain with no idea what to expect!
Of course, when you’re the wife of a second-generation U.S. senator, your mad counts for more than most of the rest of us.”
Gore’s “anger” took the form of the what infamously came to be known as “The Filthy Fifteen,” a list of songs she and her morality group deemed to be the worst fifteen songs in popular music regarding the wanton invocation of sex, drugs, alcohol, violence and the occult. This was a list compiled by Gore and her committee, with little to no input whatsoever from the artists as to their intentions or motivations behind writing the music. She simply took it upon herself to act as the world’s moral compass and the gatekeeper for America’s children. She and her committee interpreted the lyrics of Prince, Twisted Sister and others, bestowed their own meaning upon the material and used their interpretation to attempt to legislate them out of existence.
What Tipper Gore and her hit list stood for was infinitely more dangerous in a free society than what Prince stood for; that’s why Prince was such an important cultural figure, even to those that may not have been head over heels fans of his music
Darling little Nikki had traumatized Mrs. Gore so much that she then took it upon herself with the assistance of her husband’s senatorial position to lead a quite literal crusade against musical artists across the wide range of the popular musical spectrum over the lyrical content and presentation of their songs.
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But for you young’uns who don’t remember, make no mistake: the PRMC and the moral nannying that came with it was Tipper Gore’s baby and Prince’s mega-popularity was target Number One. Sure, “Darling Nikki” is a filth-ridden sex anthem–a very, very good one, for that matter. It’s well orchestrated with an unmistakable hook, a dripping guitar and keyboard riff and Prince’s signature vocal style that always managed to sound like he was singing somewhere between the border of pleasure and pain.
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And as with most things involving the former Gore couple, Tipper’s research council was as much about protecting music and freedom of expression as her ex-husband’s climate crusade built on millions of dollars of Saudi oil money is about protecting the planet. This was about control, and stood as a stark warning where we today find ourselves as a culture and society. In the arena of moral posturing, I’ll take Prince’s views on righteousness over Tipper Gore’s every time.
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In the end, thanks to stunningly fluent and passionate testimony from artists like Frank Zappa and Dee Snyder (whose speech should be viewed in it’s entirety) about the responsibility of parents to pay attention to the music their kids were consuming–as opposed to the federal government or a committee created by record labels–the PMRC was reduced to abandoning their quest of pulling such music from record stores and were forced to settle for a “Parental Advisory” warning label that, while compromising the integrity of the artists’ album art, became the equivalent of the musical Streisand Effect; a badge of honor and something much much more enticing to young audiences than any idea of Nikki grinding in the dark. Perhaps the greatest moment of political testimony in American history is when Dee Snider suggested to Al Gore’s face that the reason his wife finds sodomy and bondage in the lyrics of albums like Prince and Twisted Sister is because his wife is looking for such things.
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The lessons learned from the intentions of the moral left can never be forgotten even in Prince’s passing. The cultural lessons from Gore and the PMRC vs Prince’s rights to free expression cannot be ignored as campus activist groups on the left demand safe spaces and statist presidential candidates demand the expansion of libel laws. Perhaps as a consensus reminder to our born rights to free expression, we should just put Prince on the twenty dollar bill and be done with it.
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