In case you missed it …
Governments in action: Biden calls for regulating social media, the UN calls for an online “code of conduct”, Brazil to regulate “hate speech”, and Canada passes censorship bill.
Elon Musk calls a division of the State Department “worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation” and a “threat to our democracy.”
Canadian university adds tampon dispensers in men's bathrooms for 'students who menstruate'
Dear Friends,
I never expected HBO to be the bastion for conservative TV shows or movies. But as cancel culture took over, their attempts to censor or alter older content on their streaming service have gotten even sillier.
Gone With the Wind … and back again
At the height of the Black Lives Matter riots, HBO Max pulled “Gone With the Wind” from its streaming service. They later brought it back, accompanied by a disclaimer and two videos discussing the context of the movie. One of those videos is an hour-long discussion panel debating the movie’s “complicated legacy”. Sounds like just the thing to kick off a viewing of a movie that everyone already knows doesn’t depict the U.S. as it is today.
Bringing a knife to a gunfight
When HBO Max brought the Looney Tunes cartoons to their streaming service, they stripped Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd of their pistols and shotguns.
They did, however, allow Elmer Fudd to continue hunting Bugs Bunny while armed with a terrifying scythe instead. Slicing up Bugs is better than shooting him?
Yosemite Sam is also armed with a scary-looking curved blade.
And lately …
Most recently, HBO Max has begun censoring cigarettes in old movie posters.
When HBO Max users head to the menu to select a movie to watch, the poster for the movie usually appears on-screen. Posters for older movies like “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean” and “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” have simply erased the cigarettes the main characters were smoking, leaving them posing weirdly with their hands by their faces. “There was a Crooked Man” is cropped so a cigar is no longer in the shot, and “Fallen Angels” shows a girl oddly waving her cigaretteless hand.
You can still find plenty of shows and movies on HBO Max featuring drug use, smoking, murder, gore, and all sorts of debauchery if you like that kind of thing. So the solution of erasing a few cigarettes seems very, very odd.
—Ken
That picture of Paul Newman now looks like he's smoking a roach.
No way, wont watch HBO Max
Bad optics
Since Direct TV killed NewsMax, planning to return to cable
Bad woke
The worst Woke movie: Will Smith Wild Wild West movie