Crumbelievable Quote of the Week

The CQoW seems to really be catching because the competition is becoming as fierce as Tyra Banks. There's a lot of great candidates out there. Personally, when I read Nate Raduns and Bob Motzko complain in the St. Cloud Times about getting too many powerplays in their 4-2 loss on Saturday, I thought "Oh, they're a shoe-in". But I've got bigger issues to deal with this week. After all, when you're a blogmaster general, you're not only a blogmaster, you're also a general. And it's a general's job to get things done. So I feel it's my responsibility to stop this madness.

This was in INCH's WCHA Notebook last week under the "Bench Minor" section:

After playing it ad naseum after goals for more than a decade, hockey teams throughout North America have generally banished Gary Glitter’s “Rock & Roll Part II” (a.k.a., the “Hey!” song) from their buildings recently. Since 1997, Glitter (born Paul Francis Gadd) has been arrested several times on child pornography charges in the U.K. and in southeast Asia, and is currently in a Vietnamese jail after being convicted of obscene acts with minors. Thus far, the folks who play music inside the National Hockey Center at St. Cloud State have not followed suit and, as of last weekend, were still playing Glitter’s signature tune when the Huskies scored.

I'd like to point out that I don't mean to single out INCH here, who I think does fabulous work. They're certainly not the only ones to bring this up. In fact, the NFL has banned the song from their stadiums.

Now I'm not going to pretend the crime that Gary Glitter(who by the way, is still sticking with that hair) committed isn't serious. You've probably gotta mess up pretty badly to end up in a Vietnamese prison. But what does that have to do with a song he wrote in the '70s? As far as I know, the word "Hey" has no connotation that has to do with child pornography. Since when did a person's personal life totally invalidate their contributions to society?

Would we force our players to skate around in slush if Frank Zamboni had punched a midget? Would we give up on reading silently if St. Ambrose never paid his phone bill? Would we turn off the lights if Thomas Edison was one of those people that yelled "Shoot It!" whenever his team touched the puck on the powerplay?

The point is, Gary Glitter is no doubt a creep, but I think any rational person can draw the line between the person and the song he created. Glitter had become nothing more than a trivia question answer to the question "Who wrote that "Hey" song?" anyway.

If teams want to stop playing the song, I guess I can understand that. It's their choice. But this idea that everyone should be forced to stop playing a song because of a totally unrelated action is just, well, crumbelievable.