Paramount CEO bucks the leftist trend, calls censoring old movies with ‘different sensibilities’ a ‘mistake’

In what can only be described as a victory for everyone who hasn’t fallen prey to the woke mental disorder, Paramount’s CEO Bob Bakish vowed on Monday that the company will not censor old films for the sake of appeasing current sensibilities.

Bakish made this announcement in comments to The Guardian, in which he explained that Paramount would not remove old programs from the company’s Paramount+ streaming service. Since anything made prior to two or three years ago, if that, is considered old and offensive to the woke crowd, we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

“By definition, you have some things that were made in a different time and reflect different sensibilities,” Bakish said. “I don’t believe in censoring art that was made historically, that’s probably a mistake. It’s all on demand—you don’t have to watch anything you don’t want to.”

The question is more than an academic one, as self-righteous wokesters are increasingly gunning for old movies and programs that don’t live up to their impossibly high moral standards. As The Guardian article points out, many streaming companies—including the UK’s BritBox and the BBC’s iPlayer (no surprise there)—are capitulating, and have begun censoring their old content.

They’re not alone. HBO Max, for instance, pulled the classic 1939 Best Picture winner “Gone With the Wind” from its programming lineup following George Floyd’s death in 2020. What that classic film had to do with the hysteria and societal breakdown of a period nearly 100 later is anyone’s guess, but HBO apparently thought the movie was too “triggering.” Even now, a Google search of the film elicits an insufferable trigger warning: “Includes themes and character depictions which may be offensive and problematic to contemporary audiences.”

In fairness, though, at the time even Whoopi Goldberg thought the move was too much.

“Personally I think if you put things in a historical context—because if you start pulling every film…you’re going to have to pull all of the blaxploitation movies because they’re not depicting us the right way,” the co-host of “The View” observed.

And who can forget when serial offender Disney forbade children under 7 from watching “racist” classics on its Disney+ streaming service, including such notoriously evil fare as “Dumbo,” “Peter Pan,” “Swiss Family Robinson,” and even “The Aristocats” (“We are Siamese, if you please.”)

Netflix has also waded into the controversy, and in a remarkable move the streaming giant gave the cold shoulder to the liberal woke agenda after it realized the timeless truth of the hoary maxim “get woke, go broke.” After realizing its liberal proclivities were causing it to lose money and subscribers, the platform fired 150 employees, canceled a number of upcoming woke projects, and told current employees to pound sand if they don’t like the streaming service’s content.

Is the tide finally turning against the insufferable woke crowd? Only time will tell—but the massive success of Paramount’s nostalgic “Top Gun: Maverick” is a hopeful sign.

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