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 TOM LEHRER - Smut Lyrics

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 no 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.

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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!