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I see the comments and see buzz words tossed around such as "woke" "DEI," references to Orwell, and accusations of evil, counter to Google's original motto not to be.

Firstly, the clickbait title of this article is not true. Winslow Homer was not banned. One Winslow sketch was flagged, likely by a bot of course. Is this truly infuriating. Yes! Is it part of some sinister agenda? I wish. It's worse than that. It's a product of complete institutional cultural illiteracy.

If you've ever worked for one of these companies - I have to my immense regret - you'll be shocked not just by how culturally illiterate they are, but how their company culture vilifies broader cultural literacy. An applicant whose CV reflects an interest in literature, languages (the spoken kind) art, or serious music is deeply suspect.

And for reasons that once made a sort of sense. They sought dedicated tech brains. Very dedicated! And gifted - so gifted that, once upon a time, finishing university was held against applicants. I'm serious. But I'm going into the weeds.

Google isn't evil or political in any meaningful sense. They are *ignorant.* The problem now is how to insert deeper cultural knowledge and adult judgement into these organizations. Right now they have the cultural IQ of a sixth grader. That's the problem.

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1984

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The search to ban cultural and historical icons is the iconoclasm of modern progressive political religion.

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First, perhaps this is a foretelling of what an unfettered AI bot may produce. The word "confederate" does not mean a southern civil war criminal. Second, the sketch itself is art and says nothing about war, civil disorder. And there is no "red hat" either. That AI would choose a course of political correctness is perhaps the most worrisome thing to me. That political correctness will exist beyond today scares the heck out of me!

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The goal being that we forget or never get to learn who we are and then become ripe for whatever the powerful wishes us to be.

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Censorship just never works. As a country, we've been running away from the history of the Civil War; it's causes and it's legacy. It's been swallowed up by the culture wars like so many other important topics that deserve nuanced, deep debate and discovery. Claudia Strauss-Schulson should consider donating this Wilson sketch to the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, VA. It would make a great addition to their collection and mission of exploring the "unparalleled significance that the Civil War holds to the complexities we face today…"

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Google has been doing this since at least Bill Clinton.... making sure any "president" searches put Bill to front of the list and any one else on the ballots go back to page six. They just keep getting richer and richer and richer... Google that is and the Clintons.

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Google is an awful company. When will DEI and wokeness get purged from the company?

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DDG is a honeypot and not a pro-privacy alternative. Their true nature was revealed in 2019 and only getting worse by fooling the public to believe that it is private and not tracking you.

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Postmodernism continues to be alive and well and embedded in Google.

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Winslow Homer was such an amazing artist; perhaps some people have difficulty recognizing his talent.

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This is why I don't use google.

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founding

DDG

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Randomly I was watching Matlock on TV. You know half watching something that is from the late 80s is kind of interesting. How it was paced, the lack of technology, a show set in Atlanta (which is kind of rare now), and just kind of interesting how ungritty it is.

One thing I noticed is there is a confederate flag on the right of the judges bench in the courtroom.

I was not surprised by the flag - it makes sense in the context - but more by the idea that Amazon had not somehow AI'ed it out of the show to avoid anyone being confronted by history...

I also pondered complaining to them about it being there to see if anything happened...

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I don't think what you saw was the confederate battle flag. Georgia incorporated the "stars and bars" as part of the state flag (made up about 2/3 of the overall flag design) from 1956 until 2001.

Matlock, like many shows and movies created in the 80's, captured society at that time. If people are offended, they should avoid watching Matlock. A lack of viewership is a sure-fire way to get replays of Matlock cancelled.

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founding

Every flag - except the interim one in the 2000s - have had the Confederate flag as part of their design.

Most folks are unaware that the 'stars and bars' was a 'national' flag; the 'battle flag' is what most folks associate with the CSA.

And if you're concerned about old Matlock's...well, lemmie tell you about the Dukes of Hazzard.... ;)

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Jul 7·edited Jul 7

Honestly, I don’t think that should be taken out of Matlock retroactively, but I also think a confederate flag doesn’t belong in a US courtroom. Some of these “woke” changes are for the good.

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hmm Google. Aren't they the company whose AI generates images of black vikings and other politically sanitized, if factually inaccurate, renderings of the past. So this current censoring fits, right? At least they are consistent.

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Google, and the rest of the”misinformation” zealots, don’t really care about reality. They want us to only see and hear their version of reality. They, like the Biden Administration, continue to demonstrate that they are the ones pushing misinformation on the public.

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There are future free helicopter rides to the littorals for multitudes of leftists.

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These very same extra-governmental, unaccountable entities who coldly and algorithmically condemn a nearly two century-old drawing are the very same ones who downplay or ignore the atrocities of 7-October while embracing and amplifying calls for the destruction of Israel and the death of its inhabitants.

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