MTV and other music channels aren't just worried about offending pro-war viewers with peacenik videos - they're also loath to annoy their advertisers.
MTV rival Much Music USA yanked System of a Down's "Boom" - which features footage of the band at peace rallies - because the U.S. Army is a big advertiser.
Rolling Stone freelancer Bill Werde reports on his Web log that it was the ad department that nixed the Michael Moore-directed video, not the channel's program director. "The truth is much more insidious than a couple of channels worried about offending viewer sensibilites," he writes.
Last week, MTV Europe banned videos deemed "insensitive" in a time of war. As reported by PAGE SIX, the verboten vids include Aerosmith's "Don't Want to Miss a Thing," with footage from "Armageddon;" Bon Jovi's "This Ain't a Love Song," full of war scenes; Iggy Pop's "Corruption," with captions that read "we love guns;"Billy Idol's "Hot in the City," which includes an atomic explosion; and "Bombs Over Baghdad" by Outkast.
Werde links MTV's surprisingly cautious playlist to a poll taken by MTV.com that found that 61 percent of the music channel's viewers support the war.
"The majority of Americans still support this war," Werde writes, "no matter how boisterous folks are at protests, no matter how long the city of San Francisco is shut down by people with their arms chained together, no matter how loudly protesters scream 'Not in my name!'!"
Meanwhile, Madonna is still trying to explain her video for "American Life," which shows her tossing a grenade into the lap of a President Bush look-alike.
"It is not me being anti-Bush, it's me being ironic and tongue in cheek," Madonna insisted to "Access Hollywood" last weekend. " My kind of wish for peace and my desire to sort of turn a weapon of destruction, which is a grenade, into something that is completely innocuous."
Given the furor surrounding Madonna's Bush-bashing clip, don't expect to see anti-war rants by Lenny Kravitz, R.E.M., the Beastie Boys, Rage Against the Machine ex-frontman Zach de la Rocha and Billy Bragg on MTV anytime soon.