Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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.
Published in General
Extorted? Did someone FORCE them to write a check, buy the house, etc? They could have said, “No”, and walked. They didn’t, so they’re in the place they are now. It bugs me that the criminal behavior of many mentioned here has overshadowed their genuine creative efforts. Finding out the political leanings and activities of many in entertainment has the same effect. Jim Carrey comes to mind—his efforts against President Trump means I refuse to watch any movie with him in it now. Same with Cher, and many others.
Well, then. Guess I’m good positioned to start evangelizin’.
It’s a terrible situation as well for those faculty who are relegated to adjunct (part-time) status due to administrative greed at countless colleges and universities.
Well, not exactly. As long as it’s not the government demanding this treatment, I’m OK.
I doubt any of the kids involved were actually THAT dumb. They – and/or their parents – were just playing more of the game that other students – and parents – play too, in order to get past made-up criteria that universities can use to pat themselves on the back about their “diversity” etc.
Most of the time, I already knew enough about someone’s… outside preferences?… to know if I wanted to pay any attention to their main activity, be it acting or whatever. In the case of Jim Carrey, I never cared for him anyway, don’t see his movies, etc. If there is someone who I otherwise enjoy but who I find out contributes the money they get partly from me – from buying movie tickets, etc – to Elizabeth Warren or the like, I just make sure that I partake of their material in ways that they don’t profit from.
If there is a wall of separation between government and the entertainment industry, that is an important distinction.
The NCAA had a chance to prove once and for all they were about integrity in sports. That evaporated when they let UNC off the hook for the most flagrant violations ever . . .
Yet, the very same entertainment industry has been decrying the existence of “the Blacklist” for decades.
The Blacklist was a Hollywood invention from the very beginning, we are now seeing the next iteration.
Fascists they have been and fascists they will always be.
Very good point.
So bribes, fake test scores . . it’s all a game and it’s all relative?
Disagreed. Censorship done by private parties may be legal but it still makes for a pretty awful society.
No one seems to have observed that the present “scandal” and subsequent erasure is solely the exquisite level of hell that befalls those not quite well-off enough to be at the pinnacle: If you can afford to buy a library, you’re not only in and not chargeable, you could be a hero; the only thing with which you might be beaten is the odd bouquet and no one cares what young Snotly did on his SAT nor knows from which end of a football the bullets come out. If you get caught doing it the cheap(er) way, you’re screwed.
Yes. And I think the ginning up of hostility toward her by the media serves two purposes (1) To distract people from focusing on the corruption in the admissions process of the colleges involved, especially USC (2) To pressure Lorie Loughlin into shutting up about that process.
I don’t see the parents as exactly extorted. However, with any institution (and, I think, especially with colleges and universities) you have the official rule book and the way things are actually done. People who follow the official rule book, as opposed to following the softly stated directions of people in a position of influence or authority at the school, often find they get nowhere. Worse than getting nowhere, they often find themselves on the wrong side of the people at the school they seemed to defy by doing things by the book.
I think Loughlin hired Singer because hiring Singer, and doing whatever he said, seemed to her the best way of following the actual, unstated rules of the game. The man had between 700 and 800 customers other than these 33 parents. He got a lot of kids, we’ll never know about, into the college of their choice. And there couldn’t be just one like Singer.
We should be focusing on the people within the schools who took the bribes, misrepresented the athletic ability of the students or turned a blind eye. We should focus on the people who made the fake S.A.T. , A.C.T. scores possible.
What?! Don’t people understand that the “regular” admissions process is actually the Cliff Notes version. The full text is like the Tax Code — lots of special rules and exceptions. After all, how many parents (for that matter how many of any of us) thought to examine which colleges had scholarships for crewing?
It might be a game that should be exposed. We should ask that it be more investigated, and point out that it isn’t much investigated, in response to these pieces designed to make us imagine Lorie Loughlin as arrogant and hate her for it.
Lorie Loughlin didn’t sell out the right of a smart, hard working kid from the (relatively speaking) wrong side of the tracks to a fair evaluation (or, at least, a transparently unfair evaluation) from a school. People in the hallowed halls of places like Yale did.
I’m not saying it wasn’t wrong that Loughlin was buying. It was. But more would be done toward preventing this if the school, not Lorie Loughlin, got a lot of bad press as a result of it.
Very good. Is that one of your creations?
At Hashtag Industries, we only deliver fresh creations from our Photoshop Ovens! Hot takes from our warped minds to your doorstep!
Yes.
We should be focusing on the bribed as well as the bribers. “All are punish’d.” William Shakespeare
Just saying schools would do something about this if it cost them enough.
Universities athletic programs/teams bend the normal admissions standards as well as use ACT/SAT test takers, cheat to keep players eligible (ie: test takers, pliable professors/graders), and most egregiously use loosely affiliated “agents” of a University to pay students athletes and/or their families to have the student athlete attend the University to play a sport.
I realize college sports recruiting scandals are similar but not the same as the current celebrity/rich guy admissions scandal, however, what I find odd about the current scandal is how it has been elevated to a Federal crime.
Which is to say if one is a Federal crime, then why isn’t the other?
Broadway once put on a musical about professors fudging exam scores so football players would remain eligible for the “big game” – in 1927.
MGM made it into a movie twice (Good News).
Re: # 83
I thought it was elevated to a federal crime because, after donating to Mr. Singer’s fraudulent charity, these deadbeat Leftists actually had the gall to claim a tax deduction.
No?
Even if they didn’t take the deduction, I think that knowingly participating in the “charity” is money laundering. You are hiding the nature of the transaction.
The organization (Key Worldwide Foundation) has a tax exempt status of 501(c)(3).
Same as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Clinton Foundation.
Donations are tax deductible. Services, not so much.
This. Totally agree.
The thing that gets me about sports and academic fraud is highlighted by the UNC-Chapel Hill scandal. (Funny, despite the fraudulent classes, there were no perp-walks or indictments.)
Personally, I think the only way to avoid such activities is to have no “scholarships” and actually pay the students to play. Students would have to be enrolled in the school for which they play and can foot their own bill. We need more transparency in college sports financing.
No, I was just pointing out that the kids involved probably aren’t stupid to the point of not being able to do the work at the schools they were going for. Lots of “qualified” applicants don’t get accepted, because they didn’t spend summers in South America or some other activity that the school rewards for no academic reason.
I may be missing something, so apologies, but it sounds like you’re suggesting that the two examples are comparable in some way. So I can be clear, I see no comparison between defrauding an admissions process by the use of bribes and phony test scores, and a school choosing legal (i.e., nondiscriminatory) criteria for admission.