more ipod video

Of course, in addition to the free video content, there's plenty you can buy off iTunes. I've bought a dozen or so music videos.

Today we consider: the Kanye West video Gold Digger. The song is pleasantly funky, the words are funny, Jamie Foxx's part sounds like one of those vintage field recordings, and the video, it turns out, is pretty original. Kanye West is so cool, he doesn't actually have to face the camera to rap - he does almost the whole thing with his back toward us, although he does look partway over his shoulder sometimes. The women in the video pose like pinup girls on the covers of fake girly magazines. Relatively class girly mags. The solid-color backgrounds look great on the little iPod screen.

Here's the problem. In the radio version, it's totally obvious that they drop out the n-word, because it rhymes with "gold digger." And that's fine, because it's radio, and you can't say anything on the radio.

But iTunes isn't the radio. It's a music store. The FCC doesn't care. And yet Apple apparently feels the need to protect me from bad words.

If you listen to the song closely, you realize that so many words are missing, it's hard to follow the lyrics. Now, it could be argued that I'm not missing that much when I can't figure out the missing word in the sentence "My best friend said she used to ___ with Usher." (Actually, I have a good guess.) But dropping words out messes up the rhythm, too, not just the meaning. And, dang it, I'm an adult, and I paid my two bucks. I can handle some naughty words.