Sometimes it's not censorship

Keeping mature content away from kids isn't the same thing

1. I’m off next week.

I’ll be completely off the grid all next week. Don’t burn the place down and I’ll be back after Labor Day! — Ken

2. Not everything is censorship

I screwed up on Wednesday. 

I mentioned that a new streaming service refused to add Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls” song to the band’s latest Greatest Hits album. What I didn’t realize was that the streaming service was one that advertises content that’s safe for children.

The Daily Mail fooled me

They downplayed the child part in their write-up headlined “We will woke you!” and I didn’t read it carefully enough. (And thanks to reader Ted Tice for his sharper eye.)

The service in question is a Yoto Player, a music player that plays music or reads stories to young children. Queen’s “Fat Bottom Girls” is a campy song, but beyond singing about girls posteriors, it also has lyrics about a young boy being molested by his nanny. It’s nowhere appropriate for pre-teen children, and Yoto Player was 100% in the right.

The Daily Mail got their outrage clicks and earned their half-cent in ads from me, but their reputation took a small hit. They’re still a good news source, despite their tabloid sensibilities, but I certainly trust them a little less.

“Censorship” versus age-appropriate

The entire episode got me thinking about how this is a good illustration of the difference between censorship and adults reasonably trying to keep harmful content away from children.

Each side in this debate wants to make the other look bad. Yes, the Daily Mail whipped up outrage by crying censorship of a song that wasn’t “woke” instead of noting that it’s not an appropriate song for children.

On the other side, libraries and schools beat the same censorship drum when parents question whether Drag Queen Storytime or certain LGBTQ books are appropriate for kids.

There’s even a new, leftist term for proposals to prohibit some of these sexually themed books – “Educational Intimidation Bills.” Those who support the books try to paint the parents who object as intolerant bigots who don’t want their kids to learn tolerance.

That’s not it. What parents don’t want their kids to learn is adult themes and ideas (and some of those books get pretty explicit) at too young an age.

There are always going to be people who advocate too far on each side of this debate, wanting to get rid of innocuous books or wanting to give, in essence, pornography to kids. Deciding these standards is exactly the kind of thing democracies should debate.

But in the political world, there are always people trying to mislead, so let’s make sure we know what the book bans are really all about.

3. Underreported: The reality of “gender-affirming care”

Language matters. 

We’ve talked before about how “gender-affirming care” sounds positive, supportive, and gentle. It’s not. It’s adults, who are making money off of these procedures, cutting off and mutilating the body parts of children. This is a brutal telling of what actually happens to these kids. 

Here’s an interesting but terrible story about two detransitioners suing their doctors for operating on them when they were minors. They say their doctors pressured them to take cross-sex hormones, get mastectomies, and agree to other surgeries. 

This is going to be how gender surgeries end. Not with legislation, but with lawsuits brought by the many children who were taken advantage of by doctors. Once those doctors stop earning and start paying, those procedures will lose their allure real fast. 

4. Artificial Intelligence is supercharging an old con

It used to be a common phone scam. The phone would ring, and someone claiming to be a police officer would inform you that your son was in jail and you needed to give them financial information to arrange bail. There were several variations on the theme at one time or another. 

Now, with AI able to alter videos and certainly voices, it’s possible for someone to get a recording of a loved one’s voice and change it to say just about anything. As you can imagine, this can lead to any number of scams as well. 

Be skeptical. And maybe ask a question that only a loved one would know the answer to if you ever get one of these calls. 

5. Underreported: Even vets don’t want their kids to join the military

According to the Wall Street Journal, children of military families make up the majority of new recruits in the U.S. military. But many of those disillusioned parents are now telling their kids to look for jobs elsewhere. 

The WSJ cites a number of reasons for this including wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that didn’t end with decisive victories, low pay, and lots of other jobs right now. Of course, it could also be that the recent examples of silly political ideology in the military aren’t actually attracting young people to join. 

6. I wish this weren’t so close to the truth…