Not too long ago Mr. Potato Head was in trouble. In a day when even a sitting U.S. Supreme Court justice claims not to know how to define a woman, the hubris of calling any toy “Mr.” is just too much for our present culture.

Even Piers Morgan was upset about this tempest-in-a-teapot because the “Mr.” part of Mr. Potato Head was “upsetting a few wokies.”

Giving in to wokeness is one thing. Sensitivity to others is another. LEGO announced some new additions to their lineup of toys. Dailymail.com wrote recently,

“LEGO, which recently unveiled a range of new characters, with a range of skin tones and nationalities, several of whom have disabilities, has revealed…the details of each of these characters. The new generation of Lego friends are a diverse bunch, representing a multitude of backgrounds and lived experiences.”

One can understand being sensitive to others, as in the LEGO example. But often the woke revolution goes too far.

Even children’s literature today is unsafe. Dr. Seuss has been banned by some, and even the late, beloved children’s writer, Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach, recently came under fire. He almost had hundreds of changes posthumously made to his books.

Thankfully, after the uproar against the attempted bowdlerizing Dahl’s works, Random House decided to continue to make available the books as Roald Dahl wrote them—while still offering the new, edited, sanitized versions.

About 25 years ago, I paid good money to the estate of Roald Dahl to use portions of his classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in a book of short stories I compiled.

My book, The Moral of the Story, published by Broadman & Holman (1996, now out of print), included selections from various stories that helped illustrate the nefarious nature of the Seven Deadly Sins. They are Pride, Greed, Envy, Anger, Lust, Gluttony, and Sloth. The Bible condemns each of these sins. But would today’s culture perhaps make each of them a virtue?

Portions of Dahl’s Willy Wonka story were perfect for the section of my book dealing with gluttony. Dahl cleverly exposed the pitfalls of eating “beyond one’s seams,” including one boy named Augustus Gloop, that “nincompoop.” Dahl called him “fat.” The modern censors tried to change that and other offensive details.

In the famous scene I was able to reproduce, some fortunate children win a special visit to Willy Wonka’s magical chocolate factory. While on the tour, Augustus Gloop is unable to resist the temptation to get down on the banks of a magic chocolate river and lap as much of it as he can, like a dog.

Wonka and Gloop’s parents warn Augustus against doing this. “But Augustus was deaf to everything except the call of his enormous stomach,” writes Dahl. And then Augustus Gloop experiences humiliating punishment for his gluttony.

Part of the impulse to “clean up” Dahl’s writings is to make sure that people wouldn’t be offended.

But who knows how many children might have been warned into avoiding a life of excessive overeating and the consequent deleterious effects on health that flow from it? God warns against gluttony and other sins because they are harmful for us.

With our cultural revolution, which can’t tell men from women, if you say that some behavior someone engages in is wrong, you might hurt their feelings. Well, there is a Constitutional freedom of speech. But there’s not a Constitutional right to not be offended. Besides, hurt feelings might actually lead to needed changes.

The Bible is frank about man being sinful. The founders of America acknowledged that reality and created the most durable governing document in history, the U.S. Constitution, because it conforms to the empirical reality that we are sinful.

John Adams, a key founding father, commented on man’s sinful nature by observing that those in power tend to become like “ravenous beasts of prey.” Thus, the founders separated power so that no one group could lord it over the others.

The Scriptures say that we have all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. They also explain how God forgives sin for those who repent and call on Jesus who died for sinners and rose again from the dead.

However, in our post-Christian society, there is a major push to make everything woke—even by whitewashing classic children’s literature. Where does it all stop? When can children be children again?

When can sin be viewed as sin again? Isn’t it better to admit wrongdoing than to try to redefine what is wrong in the first place? There are moral standards that come from beyond ourselves. As Cecil B. De Mille once noted, “We cannot break the Ten Commandments. We can only break ourselves against them.” Thus, endeth my Lenten meditation.

This article was originally published at JerryNewcome.com.

When it comes to media reporting today, the saying, “Don’t trust, verify” has never been more relevant. Quite literally, you simply cannot trust what you read or even seen without digging deeper and verifying. All the more does this seem to be the case when it comes to Donald Trump, who is on the front pages again after his interview with Piers Morgan.

As headlined in the UK’s The Sun, “GRUMPY TRUMPY. Dramatic moment Donald Trump storms off explosive Piers Morgan interview raging ‘you’re a DISLOYAL FOOL’.”

Yes, “DONALD Trump stormed out of a world exclusive interview with Piers Morgan in a blazing row over the ‘stolen’ U.S. presidential election.

“The ex-President reached boiling point after Piers blamed Trump’s refusal to admit defeat in the 2020 vote for last year’s deadly riots at the Capitol.”

If you didn’t believe the article, you could simply watch the video highlights. Trump was guilty as charged.

Only it appears that he wasn’t – at least, when it comes to him storming out of the interview in a rage. As other news outlets have reported,

“Audio provided by former President Donald Trump’s team to Breitbart News of the end of Trump’s interview with Piers Morgan proves that Morgan and his team deceptively edited the interview to make it appear as though it was a contentious ending when it was not.

“A 30-second promotional clip that Morgan released on Wednesday afternoon seemed to show Trump flying off the handle and walking out mid-interview as a righteous Morgan asked him tough questions about his views on the 2020 election. But the full story seems to indicate that Morgan’s team deceptively edited the clips together to make it as nasty as possible for Trump—and to drive up the ratings for Morgan’s new show.”

Specifically,

“Trump spent more than an hour with Morgan, and the way the promo clip cuts together what it calls ‘Morgan Versus Trump’ moments to promote the interview which will air on this coming Monday night is particularly deceptive. Most of those moments had nothing to do with the election issue at all, and the full audio of the last bit of the interview shows that Trump standing up and walking away and saying ‘turn the camera off’ came after Morgan ended the interview and thanked Trump for a “great interview.”

The audio recording of the last 7+ minutes of the interview, provided by Trump’s team, seems to confirm this scenario, reminding us again of the need to verify before trusting.

But that’s just the beginning of the apparent misreporting and deception.

The Sun claimed that, “Trump screamed that his interviewer was ‘dishonest’, ‘a FOOL’ and barked at the shocked TV crew: ‘TURN THE CAMERAS OFF!’”

And, we are told, “Piers tells how the President stared at him with ‘undisguised fury’ and was ‘almost foaming at the mouth’.”

But when you listen to the audio of the interview, you hear something very different.

Trump certainly did have some harsh words for Morgan, but they were spoken very calmly, in typical Trump demeanor. And he did not “scream” that Morgan was dishonest nor did he “bark” at the camera crew. Listen to the audio for yourself, linked in the article here.

Based on the audio tape, Morgan wanted to ask Trump one more question before they were done, wanting him to tell the story about getting a hole in one while golfing recently with former great Ernie Els.

After recounting the story, Trump and Morgan laughed together and Morgan thanked him for a great interview. Then, with everything done, Trump said to the crew, “Turn the cameras off.”

That’s it. Nothing explosive. Nothing out of control. Noting spoken in a fit of rage.

Just some laughing together about the golf story, some mutual appreciation for the interview, and a simple, “We’re done” (as in, “Turn the cameras off”).

So, in this case, what you saw (the video) and what you read (the article) was terribly misleading.

Do not trust, but verify!

It could be that Trump said some stupid things in the interview. It could be that he made himself look bad with some of his comments. And he certainly had some harsh things to say about Morgan.

But the way things were presented in major news headlines and the way the video was edited gave a very false impression.

Unfortunately, this happens every day of the week, as alleged news reporting puts a dramatic spin on things, shaping the way you will hear and see them.

How many articles have you read about “the internet exploding” after a certain event or comment, only to find out that several people on Twitter had something to say?

Or how many times have you seen headlines about an embarrassing moment for a politician, only to learn that the embarrassment was primarily in the eyes of the beholder?

A few years ago, I was asked to film an interview for a major cable TV channel about a controversial cultural issue. I agreed to come on if the interview was aired live, but they told me it would be prerecorded.

I then requested that my ministry would be allowed to video tape the entire interview for our own archives, not to air publicly (we would put this in writing) unless they deceptively edited the interview.

Not surprisingly, they declined, because of which I declined the invitation.

I had seen what happened to some of my colleagues where the deceptive editing was completely over the top. (I’m talking about showing the person smiling laughing after being asked about something like the Holocaust or slavery in America, whereas they had spliced in the laughter from a different segment.) I was not going to let that happen to me.

But it is not just this particular channel that was guilty of deceptive editing (or reporting). This misreporting is rampant today, often right in front of our eyes, without us having the slightest clue.

So remember to verify the details carefully before trusting. The deception is only going to get worse.

This article was originally published by AskDrBrown.org.

Written by Peter Heck

On an ordinary day I would have regarded what Indiana State Attorney General Curtis Hill did as an aberration, a stroke of common sense in a society waging war against it. Hill refused to enact a policy change made by the Bureau of Motor Vehicles that would have created a new “Gender X” option for state drivers’ licenses.

It seems to be Hill’s view that not requiring the official government license to hold official, factual information rather than the desires or wishes of the carrier is a bad idea. He has a point, of course. As others have pointed out, should the carrier be allowed to decide what eye color, hair color, weight and height they wish they had and list that? If so, what’s the point of the document in the first place?

But that’s not the way we think anymore in the West. That’s why I would have been tempted to regard Hill’s refusal to bow the knee to the mob of inmates that now runs our cultural asylum as an isolated act of courage. But signs continue to emerge that perhaps the transgender madness has pushed a bit too far and society is starting to push back.

For instance, it was just days ago that avowed leftist Piers Morgan tweeted this: