In this context, the PMRC’s demands are the equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation.

At the Senate’s record-labeling hearing, Zappa opposes the PMRC proposal and argues that it would restrict adults’ civil liberties without delivering real benefits to children. He invokes the least restrictive alternative in First Amendment questions, then compares the proposed remedy to a fatal treatment for a minor ailment. He follows by arguing that parents are already free to choose different records for their children.

The proposed cure is destructively disproportionate to the alleged problem.

This is a specific criticism of the PMRC’s proposals, not a claim that all concern about children’s listening is worthless. The exact comparison is checked here; this entry does not establish that Zappa invented the older rhetorical image of decapitation as a cure for a minor complaint.

Politics, Reason

• Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.
• the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; Martin Luther King Jr.
• My nationalism, fierce though it is, is not exclusive, is not devised to harm any nation or individual. Mahatma Gandhi
• O tempora, o mores! Marcus Tullius Cicero
• Human life lay crushed beneath the weight of religion, until a Greek man dared to rise against it. Lucretius

• upi.com/Archives/1985/09/19/Singer-Frank-Zappa-told-a-Senate-committee-today-that/6248495950400

Frank Zappa, Testimony to the US Senate Commerce Committee (1985), Statement to the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, record-labeling hearing, 19 September 1985; opening statement after the discussion of the least restrictive alternative. Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/treating-dandruff-by-decapitation/ (24 October 2026).

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