JOHN NOLTE: Woke Gestapo at HBO Max Erase Cigarettes from Iconic Movie Posters.

This is not only censorship; it’s an unnecessary from of censorship and, therefore, a grotesque act of virtue signaling and moral exhibitionism. There’s no reason HBO Max had to go to the extremes of photoshopping to protect the world from the evils of tobacco use. All HBO had to do was choose the McCabe poster without the cigar. Like, say, this one. If no poster exists that meets your lofty moral standards, you don’t need a poster for the streaming menu. Instead, you can use an unoffending still from the movie.

Believe it or not, America was once a country where the following took place…

A mere 16 years ago, a video store chain called CleanFlicks purchased copies of movies and removed stuff like the sex, violence, and vulgar language. So all CleanFlicks did was edit copies it legally owned. Once that was one, those censored copies were rented to Mormon customers who would not have watched the unedited versions.

Hollywood sued CleanFlicks right out of business.

Well, look at Hollywood now: censoring, disappearing, and purging its own art. Hollywood used to ridicule the Moral Majority, to decry McCarthyism and censorship. Now the industry is either so scared or so warped and broken; they’re doing all these un-American things to their very own product.

This isn’t all that new a development. In 2003, the BBC reported, “United States poster companies have airbrushed the classic Beatles Abbey Road album cover to remove a cigarette from Paul McCartney’s hand. The move was made without the permission of either McCartney or Apple Records, which owns the rights to the image.” But expect such airbrushing to accelerate in today’s PC-obsessed overculture.