There I was, enjoying a mainstay of my childhood, the Sundance Channel's "Gilligan's Island" marathon, and decided to put my Liberal Lenses on.
Liberal Lenses are lenses that one uses to judge past events by today's PC standards. For instance, we now realize, as a society, that the "N" word is an abhorrent word and we don't even say it in our thoughts because of the history of using said word when putting down an entire race of people, regardless of their contribution to society. But because said word is in a few pieces of American literature, many want said literature banned because it contains that abhorrent language. Those that condemn the literature are wearing Liberal Lenses as it was once perfectly fine for free Americans to say that word.
Now back to the Sherwood Schwartz classic TV show. Just as many of today's profanity laden entertainment would NEVER pass 1960's censorship, "Gilligan's Island", would never make it past today's PC Police. With the many stereotypes (all natives are cannibals, all wealthy people are snobs, all movie stars are glamorous, the 2nd in charge is always an idiot, etc.) and lack of diversity (where's the token Hispanic? African American? Asian?) it would certainly end with the pilot, IF the pilot had even been allowed to have been filmed.
And THAT'S the problem with Liberal Lenses. Does that make it okay to make today's entertainment using yesterday's guidelines? No. Because the 'N' word DOES harm many in our multicultural society. But it doesn't give anyone carte blanche to put Liberal Lenses on EVERYTHING. Because then our multicultural society is denied knowing our history, how far we've come and how much farther we've yet to go.
