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
Why would anyone go to one of the military academies just to do sports?
Opportunity to go to a better school than might otherwise be available?
Ricky Dobbs was the quarterback at USNA back around 2010/2011; he was quoted as saying he wanted to go to the dentist.
A girl I know who went to USMA for soccer was heavily encouraged by her parents. A gifted soccer player, her choice of colleges were slim due to her academics.
The Academies are not supposed to recruit. But they do.
Because of close quarters onboard ship, the Naval Academy has a height limit at 6’6”. The 6’8” David Robinson was given a waiver so he could play basketball. SecNav John Lehman then arranged for him to receive his commission in the Civil Engineer Corps. That knocked down his post graduation commitment from the mandatory six years down to two. So while the rest of his classmates took their education and talent to the fleet (Navy or Marine Corps), Robinson took his to the NBA.
I thought the academies had pretty high academic requirements.
For the most part they do. As @ejhill noted above, the academies are not supposed to recruit, but they do. The female soccer player I know had to do two years of prep school just to get ready for USMA. Thanks to a lot of tutoring, she did eventually graduate.
She (and the other academy athletes I knew, which in fairness isn’t more than half a dozen) had an entirely different application process than son #1 did. It took son #1 a year plus of paperwork; getting recommendations, applications to congressmen, interviews, etc etc etc; 99% less for recruits.
As I understood it, Robinson actually grew two inches in the Academy, eliminating his ability to become a line officer.
The application process only took me from May 1983 until Oct-Nov ish of 1983. I found out I was accepted in Feb-ish of 1984 and entered on July 6th 1984.
Recruits still had to get a nomination, but there were people to help fill out the paperwork. In my case, I actually had to go see an orthopedic doc because the medical records of my septic arthritis infection in my hip (age 3ish) was lost in the St Louis military records fire in 1973. The academy wanted some assurance I still wasn’t affected by it.
Some candidates use their athletic skills as a way to get into one of the academies bypassing the normal procedures most successful candidates have to get through. They genuinely want a commission.
But I have the same question, given the discipline cadets/midshipmen have to go through. Why go just to do sports? Cadets/midshipmen are enduring 4 years of discipline and denial of the good life. Unless, in some way, they’re able to bypass that too.
They do. The athletes are given some leeway during their training season, but they do have to maintain standards.
They get a little slack, but it is still a military school.