"'Cops' canceled by Paramount Network in wake of George Floyd death, protests over police brutality"

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PetraG, respectfully I don’t think that we can engage in a productive debate because you are completely missing my point or I am completely missing yours and not understanding how it relates to what I said.

Cops was not canceled because it wasn’t making money, it’s been on the air longer than I’ve been alive and is still popular, as is a more recent spin off, Live PD.

These shows were canceled because of a belief from a group of people that has been presented which I will present as an acronym as it’d be offensive to spell it out. ACAB. And anyone who dares disagree with that is being fired from their jobs, publicly shamed, and ostracized.

I feel the need to publicly disagree with that categorization of police.
 
No. This is just another childish and stupid demand by the crazies who want 2 + 2 to equal 5 and our feckless “leaders” and our snazzy billionaires and CEO’s continue to foster, promote, fund, encourage and give into their insanity.
 
Any decent parent worth their weight in salt knows that the moment you give in to all of your kids childish demands, YOU LOSE.

😉
 
PetraG said:
As for the entertainment industry, why shouldn’t they be free to change their offerings? They’re courting popularity–so what?
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Popularity. What if it were popular that 51% of people decided you were not worth living? It’s popular, they say. Are you going to submit to their demands?

Popularity. What if the mob decided that anyone over 70 had lived long enough and should be euthanized?

Popularity. What if they decided all abortions were good?

Popularity. That morally neutral thing that doesn’t have any consequences.
 
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The concept isn’t outlawed or patented. You’re free to put money up and produce the show yourself.

In the meantime, this is shallow entertainment, not a hospital or a grocery store. It is not necessary infrastructure. It can be bringing in buckets of money and be the favorite of 99% of all viewers, and the producers are still free to just move on to some other project.

I highly doubt that the cancellation of Cops is going to lead to a big angry boycott. If it is like literally every other reality show on TV, nobody in law enforcement watches it. (As one friend says, when it is right it is too much like work and when it isn’t it makes me crazy.)
 
I agree. Most shows on TV aren’t worth the pixels they are created on. I’m not arguing that these shows are like empty calories.

My point is regarding the capitulation. The knee-jerk, give-in, reaction. The submission. It’s like they are spineless wimps.
 
I don’t blame anybody who decides a reality TV series isn’t a hill they want to die on.

When the arrows are going to be flying literally from every direction, I think a retreat is smart, not cowardly. That goes many times over when the hill has no strategic importance except in somebody else’s war, don’t you think?

When someone starts trying to get the prohibition enshrined in law, though, I will be on your side unless the show is blatantly immoral. (It would be have to be curl your hair blatant to be worse than what the FCC already allows.)

But, for instance, if they were to try to outlaw opinion shows. I have been subjected to enough Rush Limbaugh to know it would be for the best if he were cancelled, but it would be wrong to outlaw opinion shows, including his.
 
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Strategy is well, not an easy thing. There are many ways to approach it. And yes, you can make the argument it isn’t all that important, and no, the show itself isn’t. But when does it become a give-here, give-there, continued encroachment. When do we say stop?

I also look at it as more of fundamental sense of integrity. They give in on this, they will give in on pretty much anything else. You have to stop and stand your ground. If they give up the hill and then continue to give up hills, that’s is bad strategy. If you give up a hill to take another hill and win the war, that’s altogether different.
 
JoeFreedom said:
Strategy is well, not an easy thing. There are many ways to approach it. And yes, you can make the argument it isn’t all that important, and no, the show itself isn’t. But when does it become a give-here, give-there, continued encroachment. When do we say stop?
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We could say stop when someone forbids continuing it instead of only leaving the producers free not to produce it or leaving the owners free not to sell it. We stay stop when they force someone to watch it or make it impossible to avoid it. Otherwise, the show does have an owner with property rights. If they don’t want to show it, that is their call. That makes it a free country.

Honestly, there isn’t as much pressure as Disney gets on a regular basis. That’s the way a consumer-driven (or shall I say advertisement-driven) entertainment market works. It is OK.

Again, I also doubt this is the kind of show that a typical police officer could stand to watch, if it is like literally every other “reality” show being made. If it is canceled, it is surely no loss to the police.
 
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The producer saw issues with airing a hyperbole view of police work in which tense situations were treated like something that makes the job glamorous…that’s what I took “glorifying” to mean. It is what “reality” TV does. Well, they produce a lot of content; there isn’t reason to do content that could harm the rest of the brand with someone no matter how they package it.
 
We are in a time warp which is fueled by extreme emotions.

I am not unaware of racism; I saw it on a daily basis when I was in Vietnam, and it is not pretty. And I speak both of the racism from Americans to the Vietnamese and the Vietnamese to Americans.

Note that I don’t separate out Americans by race; nor was I unaware of racism within the various races of Americans one for another. My roommate was black, and when we went out on the perimeter for guard duty, I watched his back and he watched mine. We shared that duty equally.

“Cops” is cancelled by Paramount; Gone with the Wind is no longer available; statutes are being pulled down because we now must rewrite history so that it is race neutral. We now must teach that Christopher Columbus was a racist or not teach about him at all. And I am watching a multitude of companies mouth platitudes that I suspect are thinly veiled attempts to look “non racist”.

I almost snorted my coffee while watching one of the corporate individuals with McDonald’s talking about how they are seeking more black ownership; the last time I looked somewhat into a franchise of McD, one had to have a net worth of something in the range of a million dollars net worth to get any consideration; not sure how that is going to solve racial problems.

The liberals seem to think that if we pass more laws, racism will stop; and given the range of language that is being slung around as to what to do next, I am inclined to think that there is a wish or a hope or a fantasy that passing more laws, pulling down statutes, defunding police and rewriting history will change people’s hearts.

It won’t.

And we will end racism - from all races - at the Second Coming, and not before; just as we will not eliminate sin before then.

Do we need to improve; to learn what it means to love (the choice, not the emotion) all peoples, to accept all?

Absolutely.

Do I care about “Cops”? I don’t know if it is on television or a movie; I haven’t owned a television for 31 or so years and don’t go to movies, so basically it does not affect me.
 
Maxirad said:
Regarding the Gone With the Wind situation, check out this article:
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Yes, that was my reference.

We were on a downhill slope when student were demanding “safe places” and calling any speech that didn’t parallel their opinions "hate speech’ and needing to ban it.

No teacher in high school told them that the ACLU twice (at least) represented the Ku Klux Klan and defending their right to parade about officially - and one of those was in Skokie, Ill.

I am not suggesting that I have even a scintilla of respect for anything the Klan has to say. But once free speech constitutional rights are broached, it is up to the whim of the majority as to who’s speech will next be targeted.

If history is rewritten to protect the feelings of those who might be offended, then one needs to re-read - or read for the first time the truism that those who fail to learn from history are bound to repeat it. Perhaps not an exact repeat; but it most certainly will rhyme. In fact, we are currently watching that occur on the news this week.
 
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Maxirad said:
Did Paramount Network make the right call?
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I personally would say no. Shows like Cops show the heroism and danger that our law enforcement agencies face everyday, as well as the professionalism of the majority of those who serve in the law enforcement community. Taking these venues away essentially serves to silence one narrative in favor of another which paints law enforcement generally as systemically racist (with little to no statistical evidence) and prevents people from seeing how the police actually benefit the communities they serve. Law enforcement deserves a venue for demonstrating their service to the community. We actually can do two things at once, uphold the law enforcement community as a necessary and honorable profession that serves our nation in bravery and honor, and simultaneously condemn specific incidents of police brutality. Turning things into an either/or narrative serves no one.
 
There’s not much difference between TV crews filming cops with their cameras and bystanders filming cops with their smart phones. Except that TV crews are subject to editorial oversight.
 
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Hodos said:
I personally would say no. Shows like Cops show the heroism and danger that our law enforcement agencies face everyday, as well as the professionalism of the majority of those who serve in the law enforcement community.
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Are you a real Cops fan, or is that a theory?
Hodos said:
Taking these venues away essentially serves to silence one narrative in favor of another which paints law enforcement generally as systemically racist (with little to no statistical evidence) and prevents people from seeing how the police actually benefit the communities they serve.
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Again, I’m not sure this is the typical take-away message of an episode of Cops.
otjm said:
“Cops” is cancelled by Paramount; Gone with the Wind is no longer available; statutes are being pulled down because we now must rewrite history so that it is race neutral. We now must teach that Christopher Columbus was a racist or not teach about him at all. And I am watching a multitude of companies mouth platitudes that I suspect are thinly veiled attempts to look “non racist”.
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Keep in mind that a lot of Civil War memorials went up in the late 1890s to 1920. You won’t find any examples of anyone who was black being consulted. They were not meant to be anything that black citizens would celebrate and no one at the time ever said they were. For that reason, they have been monuments to the truth that blacks were expected to stay quiet and remember who is really in charge.

When statues are put up to people who went to war against the US government, the usual message is that the US government was at least partly on the wrong side of the conflict, after all. You don’t put up a bronze statue to Chief Joseph unless you think the resistance of the Nez Perce to the US government put the Nez Perce on the side of the angels.

Besides, if the North had put lots of statues of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman up all over the South immediately after the war, I’d think those would have all come down by now. I believe Robert E Lee really did fight for the South as a loyal son of Virginia, in spite of his feelings about the institution of slavery rather than because of them, but I do not blame anyone for saying that statues of Robert E Lee make them feel that what is being glorified is states rights up to and including allowing chattel slavery, not the personal characteristics of General Lee. His place in history, which is to say his fight to allow Virginia to maintain her authority to permit chattel slavery, eclipsed his other merits and accomplishments, as many and as remarkable as those were.
 
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