During the nineteen-nineties I was the President of three major record labels, Atlantic, Warner Bros, and Mercury. I am speaking not only as a long time record executive, but also as a father of a ten year old girl and a six and a half year old boy. I do not believe either government or any entertainment industry committee has any business in telling me and my wife what entertainment our children should be exposed to. The United States is a diverse country with hundreds of divergent religious beliefs, ethnic backgrounds, regional traditions, and opinions about art and entertainment. Unlike the visual media, the record business is being asked to categorize and label groups of words.
Song lyrics are by their nature impressionistic and are often used symbolically.
We placed such a sticker on our current album Spit by the heavy metal band Kittie because the teenage girls in the band use several curse words over the course of the album. I know that there are many Americans who are offended by curse words and don't want children exposed to them. However, those people have no moral or legal right to impose such a standard on my family or the millions of other Americans who, like George Bush, are comfortable with cursing. The parental advisory sticker informs retailers and parents that such words are on the album. Other than that there is no universal criteria for categorizing words in lyrics, books, magazines, newspapers, etc.