Tom Lehrer - Smut lyrics

rate me

I do have a cause though. It is obscenity. I'm for it. Unfortunately the civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it owing to the nature of the laws as a matter of freedom of speech and stifling of free expression and so on but we know what's really involved: dirty books are fun. That's all there is to it. But you can't get up in a court and say that I suppose. It's simply a matter of freedom of pleasure, a right which is not guaranteed by the Constitution unfortunately. Anyway, since people seem to be marching for their causes these days I have here a march for mine. It's called...

Smut!

Give me smut and nothing but!

A dirty novel I can't shut,

If it's uncut,

and unsubt- le.

I've never quibbled

If it was ribald,

I would devour where others merely nibbled.

As the judge remarked the day that he

acquitted my Aunt Hortense,

"To be smut

It must be ut-

Terly without redeeming social importance."

Por-

Nographic pictures I adore.

Indecent magazines galore,

I like them more

If they're hard core.

(Bring on the obscene movies, murals, postcards, neckties,

samplers, stained-glass windows, tattoos, anything!

More, more, I'm still not satisfied!)

Stories of tortures

Used by debauchers,

Lurid, licentious, and vile,

Make me smile.

Novels that pander

To my taste for candor

Give me a pleasure sublime.

(Let's face it, I love slime.)

All books can be indecent books

Though recent books are bolder,

For filth (I'm glad to say) is in

the mind of the beholder.

When correctly viewed,

Everything is lewd.

(I could tell you things about Peter Pan,

And the Wizard of Oz, there's a dirty old man!)

I thrill

To any book like Fanny Hill,

And I suppose I always will,

If it is swill

And really fil

thy.

Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately?

I've got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley.

But now they're trying to take it all

away from us unless

We take a stand, and hand in hand

we fight for freedom of the press.

In other words,

Smut! (I love it)

Ah, the adventures of a slut.

Oh, I'm a market they can't glut,

I don't know what

Compares with smut.

Hip hip hooray!

Let's hear it for the Supreme Court!

Don't let them take it away!