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Erasing the Banned
Lori Loughlin and Jack Wagner in “When Calls the Heart.” (Hallmark Channel/Photo Illustration EJHill)
Hallmark Channel has announced that its signature series, When Calls the Heart, returns on May 5th, without Lori Loughlin and with one fewer episode than ordered. Back on March 14th when the news of the college admissions scandal first broke, Crown Media, the studio arm of the Kansas City-based greeting card company, fired Loughlin and announced that all future projects with her had been canceled. The producers of the beloved frontier soaper assured viewers that the series would return and that they would explore all options during a “creative hiatus.”
Through editing and reshoots, Loughlin has now been “erased” from the remaining episodes. Like the old Soviet Union we are now airbrushing those who have fallen from grace from society, allowing them to remain on the fringes where their only function is to serve as a warning to others. We are no longer satisfied with the judgments of the courts since due process is too slow and can ultimately be so unsatisfying. From now on we will mete out our own punishments – quickly and decisively – and the rest be damned.
The creators of The Simpsons recently pulled the episode featuring Michael Jackson and all of Bill Cosby’s television offerings have been removed from syndication, as have reruns of Roseanne and 7th Heaven. When the digital sub-network Bounce returned Cosby’s show to their rotation they were inundated with criticism. “Good to know where your corporation stands on rapists I guess,” wrote one viewer. So it’s no longer enough to ignore the offerings of those you deem unacceptable, you must deny their creative talents to others. And you must deny those residual checks to innocent colleagues who had the unfortunate luck to be associated with them.
Someday soon the FBI will probably be conducting pre-dawn no-knock raids on those known to have old copies of the Huxtables on DVD. Little old ladies will be frogmarched in handcuffs for trading thumb drives with episodes of Garage Sale Mysteries and the Twitter accounts of the “Hearties” will be archived for future shaming sessions. And despite what those spearheading these erasures may believe, we are not creating a better society. All we’re doing is softening ourselves up for censorship, historical revisionism and embracing the sweet siren song of totalitarianism.
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I greatly admire and always agree with you. Perhaps I am prejudiced here because I so love the character she plays on When Calls the Heart. That said, it bothers me tremendously that the prosecutors are leaking all this stuff to the press complete with their tax returns? She is seen as guilty before she’s had her day in court.
I agree. Hogan’s Heroes was a great show. It’s gone from the memory hole. I don’t care if Cosby was a perv (I knew he was from his earlier films), the show was fun.
I find the instant erasing to be disturbing and unamerican.
A friend of mine had his research on pesticides and psych meds, and the effect of such on our brain’s structure and processing, requested by one of the deans at an ivy school. That friend said he was told that from the 1990’s to present, the SAT’s and other tests have been dumbed down. As has course work at most universities and colleges. I know my son got through all of HS years writing only one term paper. It was six pages in length. My HS had us writing one term paper a week, some semesters. His schooling at the university required one and only one term paper as well.
I agree a stint in the slammer might not hurt these people. If a kid can’t get into the school of dreams, the idea that the kid can then have the parent buy their way in does end up as demeaning to everyone else’s kid who got in due to good grades, decent test scores and some academic-styled intelligence.
There shouldn’t be any shame in not getting into best schools. There are so many successful American business men & women who never attended college at all. But they found their niche, be it selling real estate, running a franchise of hair salons, or repairing high tech medical equipment. Steve Jobs never got through a 4 year college program, although Wozniak did go back to school to get a teaching license. If Jobs and Wozniak had attended a program of higher education, by the time they got out, someone else in Silicon Valley most likely would have put together an Apple-like machine and they’d have had to settle working for that guy.
The whole modern process makes us infantile.
“We must fire ______ immediately and memory hole every thing they were ever in because we can not acknowledge their existence without that acknowledgement meaning we tacitly endorse every action, every thought or every sin that person ever had.”
That’s just ridiculous and juvenile thinking. Lori Loughlin’s presence on the screen in episodes already filmed means Hallmark was endorsing actions they had no previous knowledge of? They’re afraid that views and advertisers can’t handle or process that? Give me a break.
When you put it that way, I have to agree.
At least our guns are safe.
What interests me is the sin that got her unpersoned: she inadvertently unveiled the graft and privilege behind the institutions that perpetuate the credentialed class.
Hallmark does have the right.
Hallmark is peddling sentimentality (wholesomeness is secondary).
Woody Allen shouldn’t be compared to Roman Polanski. Allen has remained married to Soon-Yi Previn for 22 years. They raised two children together. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I’m not recommending that their relationship be the norm, but if it had been abusive, it would have come out by now.
The Cosby Show may be the greatest family sitcom of all time. Now it seems like its purpose (at least for Cosby) was to be a cover for him to rape. That is going to make it difficult for me to watch it again.
Indifferent, more like it. What do you expect from what universities have become, even the Ivys? I long ago stopped giving to Penn, around the time of the “water buffalo” incident, and never gave to Cornell, since that was my graduate school. I have no qualms about my 18 year old daughter not going to a university (she took and passed the GED last year). She’d rather try to establish herself as a singer/songwriter, and that’s fine with me.
Agree. In fact, I really don’t care about the cheaters at all compared to 1) the cost of college these days, and 2) the plethora of worthless “Studies” degrees.
I know I will be alone in writing this, but I sincerely believe this admissions “scandal” is way overblown, and it appears Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman have unfairly become the face of the scandal based on their celebrity.
Unfortunately, getting your kids into schools they could not gain admissions through the normal admissions process is nearly as old as ….. Oh I don’t know …. COLLEGE FOOTBALL !!! But in the old days it was doing all the above to get the prized running back enrolled and eligible for at least the fall semester …. (and using sports crazy alumni money).
The illegality of this scandal, while admittedly exists on both sides of the quid pro quo, resides at much higher percentage on the side of the admissions help company and the universities working with the facilitating admissions company. The parents are the users while the admissions company and the universities are the dealers.
Taking so much of our Federal law enforcement resources to investigate, prosecute, and incarcerate the parents in this scandal seems like a misappropriation of law enforcement resources to me ….although maybe coming down like a ton of bricks scares off future parents thinking of similar actions.
But my experience is, as time goes by and people forget about this scandal, the same/similar scandal will resurface some years later because people do what they do, ….. cut corners, cheat, essentially do whatever it takes to get what they desire.
I don’t understand this. It seems to imply that the specific individuals (i.e., coaches) who acted independently of the institutions in accepting bribes are stand-ins for the institutions themselves.
It is as far as the NCAA is concerned. That’s what they refer to as “lack of institutional control.”
That’s in the realm of intercollegiate sports. Athletics was a sideshow here (and not in every instance). It’s the institutions themselves that were defrauded. They incurred no direct benefit, unlike instances of cheating in intercollegiate sports.
Boss – We are Ivy League grads – in many places the adjudicated better-than-grads, and I guarantee the average grade at our respective alma maters is not an A-.
You aren’t alone.
But I am too busy enjoying the leftist circular firing squad to complain.
Pass the popcorn.
I am certain the institutions were paid for the “educations” they were dispensing. Further, I would bet there were no student loans involved.
If that is the case, the American public is worse off after this ‘scandal’.
No, I don’t want them ‘unpersoned’ either.
Monetary loss is only one form of fraud.
Bingo.
I should have been more clear. I wasn’t making an equivalence between what Woody Allen did and Roman Pulanski. The latter was illegal and reprehensible; the former, well, who quite knows but it was a bit sordid given that at the least adultery was involved. And adultery with a step child I find creepy and distasteful. The point I was trying to make was that unlike Cosby and Hallmark, they were definitely not peddling wholesomeness in their art. I don’t happen to believe that art and entertainment is nullified by the character of the artist or entertainment, but like with sports fandom, our reactions to art and entertainment are visceral and not just cerebral. Old Hollywood knew that which was why they went to such great lengths to hide its stars’ debauchery.
There are so many layers to this story I don’t even know what to think anymore.
But I can’t count the number of people who made donations to Catholic High Schools the year before their kid’s application would be submitted. I know someone who tells the story (over and over and over) about pulling out his checkbook to make a donation when he was told that the third grade class had no room for his son. Suddenly there was room for another desk
What crossed the line for me was cheating on the SATs and ACTs.
That said, the trend of “disappearing” people is disturbing and not healthy. I think it’s a symptom of our collective mental illness. As a society we’re going backwards on learning how to deal with things.
Actually, the SAT cheats are the ones that bother me the least. If the candidate’s future major field of study involves a lot of intellectual heavy lifting, he will be surrounded by peers who are smarter than he is. Have fun on the left shoulder of the bell curve, youngster. If on the other hand it is going to be something along the lines of Aggrieved Group Studies, then who cares?
It is the schools who expect activities where some kid’s honest after-school basketball loses out to another kid with his head photoshopped on a photo of a real athlete that bugs me.
I do not think our culture should devolve into accepting cheating and dishonesty on any level. Already we as a society have lost one of our major protections – that of freedom from conflict of interest.
Now we have corporations whose executives get their people put into head roles at the FDA, CDC and FAA. Corporate profit is then allowed to overcome the “quibbles” about public safety. Then we wonder why the public no longer trusts products made for our consumption. Lately this route of total corruption has gone so far that our president had to go and ground the Boeing airliners. In a society where honesty was promoted as a virtue, and where “pragmatism that allows for profits” was disdained, that would never have had to happened. Boeing would have cleaned up its own mess.
I’m not for cutting any of the cases that I’ve heard of a whole lot of slack. There are other crimes involved with this whole thing. Depending on how the payouts were structured, money laundering seems likely. All the prosecution has so far is indictments and some plea deals. We shall see.
Listening to David Susman’s podcast Dave Sussman interviews #AdamAndrzejewski from http://OpenTheBooks.com who discusses the #StudentLoan crisis and #GovernmentWaste has added a new layer to my thinking on this subject. It seems to me that the higher education system is corrupt from universities, to junior colleges, and even cosmetology schools. The system is bilking the taxpayers big time. So if the whole system is gaming the public, where does that put the parents who bought their way in?
I must say that the podcast (Whisky Politics) on higher ed is factual and super enlightening to this naive brain.
We all need to listen to this podcast. I was shocked.
He is innocent.
So much to unpack from the OP and the comments:
First, its a shame that we care enough about artists and other actors private lives to make their troubles news. If I had a magic wand I would never know anything about an actor other than what they portray on the screen. I don’t want to know their politics, their loves, their misdemeanors or their felonies. And neither should anyone else. The only information any fan truly wants is whatever confirms their own imaginations about that artist. And if not confirmed then many wonderful performances are spoiled.
Second, higher education has become a racket. Sad to say because real research and scholarship are important. But credentialing is dross, and its a self-reinforcing process. Credentials give you access and access gives you credentials. Too much opportunity for graft and a ton of rationalization, with proper elocution, to justify why graft is not graft.
Third, due process is critical and much needed by all who are suspected. The criminal justice system has too many levers to obtain cheap convictions. How about just straight up charge real crimes, treat them as real crimes, put on the evidence, let the jury decide, then punish as real crimes?
Fourth, Lori Laughlin is not the sharpest tool in the drawer. Sweet looking and sweet sounding. A good match for the projects for which she was chosen. My guess is hubby is running the legal strategy and it is not going to work out well. I don’t fault Hallmark from making the business decision to cut her from current projects. Don’t touch past projects, maybe just keep them in the vault for a little while. F. Huffman and B. Macy had a lot more on the ball and will do OK. If the work dries up I can see them spinning this their way by becoming advocates for reform. The best evangelists were the worst sinners, cf. Saul of Tarsus (AKA Paul the Apostle).
Freshmen are fungible.
I am certain they got their freshmen too.