NEW YORK, NY Aug. 18 (DPI) – The NYT, without a trace of irony or reflection, reported yesterday that TV show producers and distributors are expunging certain episodes of old comedy shows. And common-sense readers almost universally expressed their concern that such cultural cleansing is dangerous and a bad sign for a once-tolerant nation.

The NYT report used the word “offensive” with no quotation marks or any suggestion that the word may connote different things to different people. Readers picked up on the “1984”-like implications of the NYT’s woke dogma: “God help this nation, with this new cancel culture,” wrote one reader, whose post was the #1 recommended.

The top 5 most popular comments:

Who decides what is offensive? As a person with a high moral standard, I am appalled by 70 percent of what is on TV, but I’m not calling for it to be removed. Its called change the channel. Its called freedom. God help this nation, with this new cancel culture.

Is the same principle going to apply to books in public libraries? That’s a slippery slope.

If you remove it, it never happened. Sounds like 1984 to me.

The “memory hole” of 1984 is now a reality. Instead of coming from the hard totalitarians of the novel, it is coming from the “soft” totalitarianism of very trivial “good intentions.” We need to (a) preserve the record, and (b) toughen people up so that they can hear and respond to views they don’t like, as opposed to demanding a silencing that becomes the suffocation of the capacity for exercising freedom. Among the virtues required are self-discipline, capacity for reflection before action, and tolerance. A lynch mob that is crying instead of snarling is still a lynch mob.

This destruction of creative content is a sure sign of a society in decline. Removing South Park episodes about Mohammed but leaving the ones that mock Jesus or make light of his life or death? Stripping episodes from the 30 Rock catalog – one of the funniest shows ever, and one that was able to present blackface as part of its story – no racist implication whatsoever? When every extant record of blackface has been expunged, what will be different in terms of American values or attitudes? What will we have learned? Why is one person’s depiction of God more valued, more protected than another? Must we scrub every improper, irreverent reference to every religious symbol? Will these same entities support Trump ordering the removal of South Park episodes that mocked him? I don’t support blackface. Wouldn’t think of doing that myself. I’ve never mocked Islam or the Koran. But removing episodes of TV shows just because a character paints his or her face is going too far. When every minority, every special interest, every allegedly aggrieved group or individual has the power to alter what we see and hear, to remove subjects or incidents from the cultural and historical records, we become a leaf spinning in the drain.