A little more than two decades ago, popular music was under fire by Tipper Gore’s PMRC, the Parents’ Music Resource Center. Tipper was aghast at popular music’s coarsening of the public discourse, especially because a young Karenna Gore had played Prince’s Darling Nikki at a party full of politicos. Scandal! Naturally, this meant war! Or, if not war, then censorious legislation!

But Prince didn’t really give a rat’s ass about arguing for freedom of speech back then; He just toured the country inflicting good music on people. So it was left to Frank Zappa to fight the good fight. Which he did admirably, as evidenced by this clip of Frank Zappa on Crossfire:

In case you needed more evidence that the good die young, Frank Zappa left us in 1993. Meanwhile John Lofton, the voice of the absence of reason featured in this Crossfire clip, has embraced his extremism and is now blogging on some creepy website. John has gone from not liking the same music as me to feeling that I’m not American. But it’s okay, I bet Frank Zappa would tolerate me.