Further to my previous observations on the subject, be it hereby known that the iTunes Store's algorithm can't censor its way out of a paper bag. The latest evidence comes from Penn Jillette's celebrity playlist, which, as you might guess, has a couple of risqué items in it (dude likes to épater le bourgeois, if you know what I mean). For example, George Carlin's "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" is on there, and if you are skeptical about Jillette's claim that that's a piece of music, you will probably be even more skeptical of his assertion that the playlist "is, perversely and anally (and those are very different things) in alphabetical order." (It's not alphabetical by track title; it's not alphabetical by artist's name (first or last); maybe it's alphabetical by lyrics?)

Anyway, iTunes considers two words in the track titles in Jillettte's playlist bleepworthy, and neither of them is among Carlin's seven. Track seven, by Kinky Friedman ("the next governor of Texas"), shows up as "A*****e from El Paso," although, oddly enough, the 30-second preview of the song that iTunes will play for you contains the chorus, which begins, "I'm proud to be an asshole from El Paso." So you're allowed to hear the word asshole on iTunes, but you're not allowed to read it.

Track one, by Candye Kane, shows up as "M**********n Blues," and I hope I may be forgiven for having assumed that the ten asterisks stood for the letters "otherfucki," but they don't. Fortunately, as in the case of "Asshole from El Paso," the bleeped out word can be gleaned auditorially, and it turns out that the missing letters are "asturbatio." Um, wtf? Last I looked, the topic of masturbation was taboo, but the word itself was not. Further research confirms that iTunes does systematically bleep masturbation, and eliminates the possibility that "M**********n Blues" (asterisks included) might be Kane's actual title for the song.

So, I thought, this is a case where the iTunes bleeping policy results in the neutralization of a contrast: the surface form "m**********n" is ambiguous between two possible underlying representations. Turns out it's not—because iTunes doesn't bleep motherfuckin (with or without the addition of a g or an apostrophe at the end). I'm beginning to think that the slipshod censorship is really just there for entertainment value, and to encourage people like me to search for songs we would otherwise never be exposed to.