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In the essay just previous to this one, I alluded to possible censorship of the movie "Unplanned," that I had heard about in a YouTube video. I wasn't comfortable with making any bold statements regarding the veracity of those claims, as at that point I considered them hearsay.
However, the creators of the movie have already appeared at a congressional hearing regarding the alleged censorship, and judging from the details included in the following video, it was far worse than I was first led to believe: Writer/Directors Chuck Konzelman & Cary Soloman testify about #Unplanned censorship After listening to the two principals speak (Sen. Cruz and Mr. Konzelman), and the brief (edited) attempt by a Twitter executive near the beginning of the video to explain away Twitter's violation of the 1st Amendment, I am disturbed and angry. I'm disturbed because the mainstream media and mainstream social media were apparently all complicit with preventing the makers of Unplanned from being able to do something as uncontroversial as simply paying to advertise their movie. In the interest of fairness, it should be mentioned Konzelman testified that, unlike other social media, Facebook put up no roadblocks and Unplanned did very well in that digital venue. The 'R' rating itself is outrageous. I saw this movie, and there was absolutely no nudity, violence, excessive language nor any of the other elements that require the rating. It makes Konzelman's discrimination claim much more credible than the conspiracy theory realm I'm sure some would prefer to banish it. This generates the irony of kids being old enough to get an abortion, but not old enough to go to the movie without a parent and see what it actually entails. Whether or not one agrees with the position of the makers of the movie is irrelevant. There are myriad movies, television shows, songs and books that contain exceedingly more offensive material than Unplanned. But those are deemed acceptable by a media machine that is pulling further and further away from what the average person with a conscience truly wants for information and entertainment. Orwell turns out to have been an accurate prognosticator of future totalitarianism. He just got the year wrong. And Big Brother, it seems, is not a white-shirt conservative...he's a Left-wing fear monger. |