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By Phil Lawler (bio - articles - email) | Sep 17, 2021

In todays Wall Street Journal, my friend Tom Spence, president of Regnery Publishing (which brought out my book Lost Shepherd), lets loose on Banned Books Week. He explains that this gimmicky promotion caters primarily to those who believe that schoolchildren should have access to anything bound between two covers without the interference of those busybodies we call parents.

Unfortunately, Spence observes, there are books being banned todayalthough the sponsors of Banned Books Week have nothing to say about it. Books that offend against woke attitudes and politically-correct standards are disappearing from bookstores and from the Amazon menu. Authors are cancelled. Lecturers are disinvited.

Such censorship hurts the authors, of course. But it also hurts the rest of us, their potential readers, because we never have a chance to learn what they have to say. We dont even know what we dont know.

The censorship is not confined to written works alone, however. The social-media giants, Facebook and Twitter, are even more blatant in stifling the views that their employees find offensive. How often have you seen a fact-check pasted onto a controversial postand, if you took the time to investigate, discovered that the fact-check was far more misleading than the post it sought to correct.

An urban television news team recently issued an appeal on Facebook, asking for stories about unvaccinated people who had been felled by Covid. That Facebook page was promptly flooded with thousands of replies. But the vast majority of those replies were not giving the reporters what they wanted; instead they were telling stories about friends and relatives who had been harmed by the Covid injections, or had contracted Covid even after being fully vaccinated. Clearly this response was not what the TV news editors expected. Still, isnt it a story nonetheless?

News editorslike publishers and librarians and bookstore owners and social-media baronshave enormous power to sway public opinion. They exercise that power not only by putting their own slant on news stories, but alsofar more ominouslyby censoring the stories they find inconvenient. You cannot be outraged by an injustice, or encouraged by a positive development, if you dont hear about them.

Mistrust of the mass media is widespread in our society today. Many Americans say that they dont believe what they hear from the mainstream media. That skepticism is richly deserved, and for the most part healthy. Still a problem remains. You may not believe what you see in the mainstream media, but what about what you dont see? You dont know what you dont know.

This is why, for more than 30 years now, I have been insisting that discerning readers need to find their own trusted sources of news. If you know that the mainstream media are offering slanted coverage of some stories, and blacking out other stories altogether, you need to find outlets that will provide accurate reporting on the subjects that interest you. Which is I why I established Catholic World News, 25 years ago, and why I want you all to encourage your loyal Catholic friends to discover us.

Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org. See full bio.

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Here's how to beat liberal censorship of ideas - Catholic Culture

A group of U.S. senators challenged Google over the tech giants double standard and censorship of pro-life Abortion Pill Reversal (APR) ads while advertisements for deadly abortion pills are still allowed on the search engine.

We are deeply concerned by Googles decision to ban Live Actions pro-life ads promoting Heartbeat Internationals Abortion Pill Reversal (APR) hotline, the senators wrote in a letter Thursday. Googles pro-life censorship is out of step with the science and reflects an unacceptable bias against pro-life views. We insist that you immediately reverse this decision.

Google pulled APR ads from pro-life group Live Action Tuesday following a report from a group named Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). The report was publicized in an article from The Daily Beast parroting abortion industry anti-APR narratives such as that the APR protocol is dangerous and not based on science. Abortion proponents regularly attack APR legislatively, in the courts, and in the media.

Quashing APR ads on the internet or social media means women seeking a second chance at choosing life for their child will be blocked from obtaining the information necessary for them to have that second chance and choice.

[Click here to subscribe to Pregnancy Help News!]

Google first approved Live Actions APR ads let them run for more than four months, the senators noted, at a cost of more than $170,000 and directing thousands of people to the APR hotline.

Then, their letter states:

On September 13, Google unexpectedly shut down these ads without warning or evidence, citing its unreliable claims policy. Google has subsequently indicated that it took this action after reviewing a one-sided pro-abortion report provided by a left-leaning news agency. Google has also since stated that it censored APR ads because they made unproven medical claims, citing serious concerns from the pro-abortion American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). It is shameful that Google has acted to appease pro-abortion activists by silencing pro-life voices, rather than considering all the evidence and following the science.

Montana Sen. Steve Daines (R) spearheaded the letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Daines is the founder and chair of the Senate Pro-Life Caucus and was joined in sending the memo by Senators Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ted Cruz (Texas), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.).

Google disingenuously cites unreliable claims as their reason to ban the promotion of Abortion Pill Reversal, but has obviously failed to understand the FDA-approved treatment that the reversal technology uses, Live Action said in a statement. Live Action and pro-life medical professionals across the country are proud to promote the Abortion Pill Reversal regimen, which involves an FDA-approved, bioidentical pregnancy hormone called progesterone that has been used for dozens of years to prevent miscarriage and has already saved thousands of lives.

Heartbeat International, the largest network of pregnancy help organizations in the world, manages the Abortion Pill Rescue Network (APRN), made up of some 1,000 medical professionals and pregnancy help centers who facilitate APR.

Heartbeat President Jor-El Godsey said there was no issue with a policy restricting unreliable claims, however the problem is that this policy is being abused.

Unfortunately, how this policy is being implemented by Google protects Big Abortion and forces women to go through with an abortion that they no longer want, Godsey said.

Tweet This: Googles pro-life censorship is out of step with the science and reflects an unacceptable bias against pro-life views"-Group of US senators

Chemical abortion, or the abortion pill, also known as medical abortion, RU-486, DIY, or self-managed abortion, is a two-drug process.

The first drug, mifepristone, destabilizes a womans pregnancy by blocking progesterone, the natural hormone necessary to sustain a womans pregnancy. This typically ends her unborn childs life.

The second drug, misoprostol, is taken a day or so later and causes the mother to deliver her deceased child, provided the chemical abortion is successful.

The abortion pill has numerous possible side effects associated with it, some severe. If complications from the abortion pill do occur, the woman is typically at home, often alone to deal with the (at times severe) side effects.

However, if a woman regrets starting a chemical abortion and she acts soon enough, she may be able to save her unborn child with APR.

The protocol entails administering progesterone to counter the first abortion drug and is an updated application of a treatment used safely since the 1950s to prevent miscarriage. A 2018 peer-reviewed study showed positive results with APR, with 64%-68% of the pregnancies saved through the protocol, no increase in birth defects and lower preterm delivery rate than the general population.

The Abortion Pill Rescue Network answers more than 150 mission-critical calls each month from women who regret their abortion decision. Women consistently report having found the APRN online after starting the chemical abortion process and seeking answers for how to reverse the abortion pill's effects. Statistics show that more than 2,500 lives have been saved (and counting) through the Abortion Pill Reversal protocol.

Live Actions ads with Baby Olivia, a medically accurate animation of human development in the womb, were pulled as well. The pro-life group has been censored on social media in the past for its pro-life message.

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley (R) wrote Pichai one day earlier about Google pulling Live Actions ads and ads from Choose Life Marketing, a Missouri-based company. Hawley noted that Planned Parenthood advertising that violated Googles stated policy prohibiting using keywords related to getting an abortion were allowed by Google.

In a dramatic and unprecedented move, Google has sided squarely with extremist pro-abortion political ideology, banning the pro-life counterpoint and life-saving information from being promoted on their platform, Lila Rose, founder and president of Live Action said. They arent hiding their bias anymore: Googles censorship baldly reveals that the corporation is in the pocket of the abortion industry.

The double standard decried by Live Action, Heartbeat, and the U.S. senators hinges on the fact that abortion drugs are still sold on the internet, despite the many safety risks. U.S. Food and Drug Administration health standards in place since the FDA approved the abortion pill in 2,000 stipulate an in-person exam and prescription by a certified healthcare professional in a clinical setting.

The group of 11 senators reference the abortion pills dangers and the double standard in the letter.

While banning pro-life APR ads, Google continues to allow ads for purveyors of the deadly abortion pill mifepristone by mail, despite the fact this drug has resulted in at least 24 mothers tragic deaths and at least 1,042 mothers being sent to the hospital, they wrote. Googles double standard on abortion is disingenuous and an egregious abuse of its enormous market power to protect the billion-dollar abortion industry.

The practical consequence of Googles abortion distortion is that pregnant mothers in crisis will only have the option to be marketed abortion drugs through Googles ad platforms, they said, while life-affirming alternatives are suppressed.

Tweet This: The practical consequence of Googles abortion distortion is that pregnant moms in crisis will only be marketed abortion drugs

Both Hawley and the 11 senators questioned Pichai about whether Google had recent contact with any pro-abortion entities. The Daines group wanted to know names if there was contact.

Hawley also asked about the rate at which ads from pro-life organizations are deemed ineligible and how Google ensures that its widely reported internal progressive bent does not affect ad eligibility decisions.

The Daines letter asked whether experts were on both sides of the abortion issue were consulted in the decision to ban the APR ads, or only those who promote abortion, and whether Google will also remove ads for the abortion pill mifepristone.

Again, we urge you to reverse Googles unjust and indefensible decision to suppress these pro-life life-saving APR information ads, the senators wrote, and we look forward to your prompt response to the above questions.

Editor's note: Heartbeat International manages theAbortion Pill Rescue Network (APRN) and Pregnancy Help News.

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Congress members intervene in Google censorship of life-saving Abortion Pill Reversal - Pregnancy Help News

Censorship by the campus Left does not take a break during the school year, not even on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

The latest incident of censorship happened at Washington University in St. Louis, where a student stole the American flags set out as part of the 9/11: Never Forget Project put on by Young America's Foundation. The student serves in student government. He claimed the display was in violation of school rules (it wasnt) and that he was violating no policy or law by trashing the flags (which is debatable, given that police officers had threatened to arrest him for trying to destroy the display earlier).

This wasnt even the only campus 9/11 display that was vandalized. Michigan State also saw a memorial display tampered with. And, as Jonathan Turley notes , this has become a popular trend on college campuses across the country. Left-wing students and staff now feel entitled to censor ideas they dont like, ironically, under the guise of free speech.

Washington University said that the school condemns the vandalism and that we value freedom of expression in all forms and will work to ensure that all students are able to express their points of view through appropriate channels without disrupting the rights of others to show support for causes they care about. Its a bit mealy-mouthed, but the message seems to be that the university cares about free expression and opposes censorship.

If it means that, it should start by disciplining the student who vandalized the display. According to YAF, the university has not said whether that student will face disciplinary measures. Too often, all universities do is offer a concerned statement without punishing the censorious offenders. Washington University must ensure that this kind of behavior is punished because anything less is tacit approval.

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Universities must do more to address censorship by students and staff on campus - Washington Examiner

I think Tennessee Williams accidentally wrote a love letter to the year 2020, says director Brenna Geffers of Williamss The Demolition Downtown, the short play shes staging outdoors at the Bas Relief in the towns center. Geffers, founder of the Philadelphia-based Die-Cast ensemble, has directed four festival productions over the years, including Pericles in 2017.

The Demolition Downtown is about a fascist takeover and the way many might sort of comfortably slide into that, Geffers says. David [Kaplan] chose the play before the pandemic. But its about a couple afraid to leave their house and talking about what food they have left in the freezer, so it became spooky and, after Jan. 6, it seemed even more relevant.

The rarely staged play was published in Esquire magazine in June 1971 as the escalating war in Vietnam divided the nation. As a companion piece, Kaplan directs an outdoor staging of Williamss dark satire The Municipal Abattoir, a short play that Williams worked on through the 1960s. It centers on a government clerk and a state-run slaughterhouse where good citizens, when summoned, go willingly to be killed.

In both plays, the audience has a voyeuristic experience, says Geffers. They are both funny pieces [about] a world that is absurd yet so familiar that we can do nothing else but laugh at it. Its too terrifying to do anything else.

Williamss plays and their popular screen adaptations were often censored, including his first produced play, Battle of Angels. In its pre-Broadway tryout in Boston in 1940, the Boston City Council took umbrage at the story of a charismatic drifter, Val Xavier, whose arrival upends a Mississippi Delta small town and exposes its racism and religious intolerance. According to the festival program, when Margaret Webster, the plays original director, returned to Boston to watch a performance of the censored version, she wrote that she found a castrated and largely incomprehensible edition of the play dying an inevitable death at the Wilbur Theatre.

Not just that, but a conflagration at the end of the play went so awry on opening night they almost burned down the entire theater. The first two rows of the audience had to flee, says Jessica Burr, founder and artistic director of the New York City ensemble Blessed Unrest, which will stage the Battle of Angels, sans pyrotechnics, at Provincetowns Town Hall.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Battle of Angels never made it to Broadway, although 17 years later a different version with a new title, Orpheus Descending, did open in New York. A third retelling was the 1960 film The Fugitive Kind, starring Williams mainstays Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani.

Burr sees contemporary parallels in the 1939-set Battle of Angels.

We generally think of community as a good thing but in this case theres a dangerous groupthink that can destroy the individual. Its also an impossible love story between people who refuse to compromise. They are surrounded by these terrified, frightened people who have to destroy it to keep the status quo.

Unlike the original production, Burrs Battle of Angels has a multiracial cast led by Michael Gene Jacobs, a Black actor. Burr says her research indicates that Williams likely wanted Val to be played by a Black man. But in 1940 Williams was 23 years old and a nobody. He could not tell the producers what to do.

Williams was obsessed with the Othello story, says Burr. He studied Shakespeare really closely and he studied his Greeks. [Battle of Angels] is a collision between these very Christian ideals of right and wrong and the Greeks sensibility. Before completing the play, Williams wrote a short story called Why Did Desdemona Love the Moor? Its a strange piece but it led directly into Battle of Angels, she says.

Audiences can see the connection for themselves as the festival will also present a staged reading of Why Did Desdemona Love the Moor? at Fishermen Hall. Adapted by Thomas Owen Mitchell, it is about a Black screenwriter who has a secret affair with a white movie goddess. Williams abandoned the project after writing 75 manuscript pages, likely because he realized that, in 1940, the subject matter would prevent it from being produced as either a play or a film.

PROVINCETOWN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS FESTIVAL

At various locations in Provincetown, Sept. 23-26. Schedule and ticket information at http://www.twptown.org

Originally posted here:
Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival returns to celebrate works that made the censors sweat - The Boston Globe

You probably saw all the photos of the weekends Met Gala, in which the elites attending the event showed their beautiful faces while the workers serving them were forced to wear masks.

Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal reported another similar two-tiered structure for the privileged and those who are beneath them. This one had to do with Facebook and its now-renowned censorship policies.

Simply explained: The underclass are muzzled while the elites speak (or type) freely.

From the WSJ report:

Mark Zuckerberg has publicly said Facebook Inc. allows its more than three billion users to speak on equal footing with the elites of politics, culture and journalism, and that its standards of behavior apply to everyone, no matter their status or fame.

In private, the company has built a system that has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules, according to company documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

The program, known as cross check or XCheck, was initially intended as a quality-control measure for actions taken against high-profile accounts, including celebrities, politicians and journalists. Today, it shields millions of VIP users from the companys normal enforcement process, the documents show. Some users are whitelistedrendered immune from enforcement actionswhile others are allowed to post rule-violating material pending Facebook employee reviews that often never come.

The XCheck policy literally says, Facebook routinely makes exceptions for powerful actors when enforcing content policy.

Reclaim the Net adds:

This is in marked contrast to how billions of deplorables are being treated on the platform, often falling victim to Facebooks inadequate to say the least automatic moderation, as well as deliberate censorship.

In seeking to illustrate how VIP users are abusing this privilege, the [Wall Street Journal] for some reason chose only examples harmful to one side of the political divide in the US, citing posts containing anti-Clinton, anti-Covid vaccination, etc., content, and even one from former President Trump that are viewed as harmful and would, in any case, be censored had they been posted by regular people.

Facebooks response to the article was that the policy is outdated.

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Facebook Censorship Limited to the Internet Underclass National Legal And Policy Center - National Legal and Policy Center