The method by which I was making posts to my blog from my cell phone is no longer functioning (dammit — that was cool), so a text message post I made earlier while watching the local news didn’t get posted. That’s fine, because I’d like to have more than 160 characters to rant about it anyway.
While watching News 8 this morning, a story came on about a spate of graffiti in the Anderson Mill area of Austin. Apparently someone went through the neighborhood spray painting crude swastikas on mailboxes and park signs. Swastikas are a little new for this area, but graffiti isn’t terribly new. Graffiti happens. But what I’d like to rant about right now isn’t the graffiti or the Swastikas. No, what tweaked my outrage meter this morning was neither of those things. In fact those things barely rank an eye roll out of me these days.
What I found highly bothersome and annoying was that the video of the neighborhood and graffiti shown during the news story had the Swastikas pixelated to such a high degree you couldn’t even tell there was anything there. Couldn’t even see that it was a mailbox. And it isn’t the fact it was too pixelated that irked me either. Nope, it’s that the Swastikas had to be pixelated at all to protect everyone’s overly delicate sensibilities. I would hope that the news staff thought it was ridiculous as well, and were just doing it to cover their butts so someone didn’t sue them … an idea that is just as ridiculous as having to protect people’s eyes from Swastikas during a news story about graffiti … but you never know, do you? The staff might have thought it was a good idea to not allow anyone to actually be able to see what they were talking about during the story. Really, why bother with a video feed at all then? Rather pointless.
What sort of society do we live in that the mere site of a hastily and poorly spray-painted graffiti Swastika is considered to be too awful to show on the news? Can I expect TV stations to begin blurring them out in movies and history programs as well? It is utterly and completely ridiculous, and I say that as someone who had family members who died over there with tattooed numbers on their arms and yellow stars pinned to their clothing. I am more offended by people trying to protect all these delicate flowers from ever having to see a Swastika than I am by the symbol itself. It isn’t like we can pretend it didn’t happen, and if no one ever sees a Swastika again, how will they know what it is or what it meant. Whitewashing history or the present helps no one, and you can’t protect everyone from being offended by something.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
–George Santayana
I think I’ll email News 8 and asked them why they chose to pixelate the Swastika graffiti this morning. I’d really like to hear their reasoning on why it was a good idea and necessary … and what other things they may decide need to be kept from public view due to their offensive nature. :rolleyes:
If you think this is lame, consider that fewer than five percent of Americans can even identify the Viet Cong battle flag. Including those living at the time.
Confusion is stupidity made manifest, and we’re manifesting a lot these days. Just be glad they can’t take away your education, although I’m sure they would like to.
If Hitler had caught someone spray-painting a swastika he’d have found some very unpleasant punishment for them. The Nazi swastika needed a set-square to draw.
Sometimes I feel like I was one of the last people to make it through the whole educational system with an education. I talk with people just a little younger than myself, and it’s as if they really didn’t learn much at all, except how to take standardized tests.
My senior year of high school was the first year of the “exit exam”, long before No Child Left Behind madness of non-stop standardized testing but where it all really began, and quite frankly, everyone at my school thought the test was a joke. No one failed it. I’ve seen the new tests, and I can’t believe how many people do poorly on it. It’s still, I would think, easy enough that anyone who was taught anything in school should be able to pass it no problem.
And don’t even get me started on whatever it is they are teaching in college these days. It’s as if the whole system has been dumbed down. Kids today aren’t stupid, they just aren’t being taught anything, and the most important thing they are missing out on is critical thinking skills.
I’m very thankful for my education!
Ekim, I imagine if someone had spray painted Swastikas around like that in Nazi Germany, it would not have gone well for the graffiti artist.