Changing History so People Will Forget The Not So Great Parts

Am I the only one that gets annoyed when watching a movie or a sporting event from the past and finding that it has been digitally altered to suit some group that thinks the material is no longer apropriate? Or maybe it's changed because of something undesirable. I'm currently watching the first ever WW...ahem..."WWF SummerSlam 88", and everytime someone says WWF...the "F" is censored out so apparently I'm watching video as presented by the WW {smudge}. This is because the World Wildlife Foundation sued the World Wrestling Federation for stealing it's acronym. The same WWF, now the WWE because of the aforementioned lawsuit, has essentially removed late superstar Chris Benoit from their history...I mean, sure...the guy killed his family, allegedly from a situation involving steriods, but everyone knows that the guy was a wrestler. He was a champion. Nobody forgets about that, just because the company is embarrassed and deletes him from a bunch of web pages. I don't think anyone blames the WWE because one of their wrestlers went crazy. I wouldn't be surprised to find the Orton/Benoit match on the SummerSlam DVD set to be edited in some way...I'll report on that when I get to SummerSlam 2004.

The same thing has happened in movies. In ET, Steven Spielberg changed a line of dialogue shouted as ET and Elliot flew over the authorities to escape the CDC. The original line was "Shoot them!"...and in the special edition, the guns have been digitally removed and the line was changed to "Get em"...I imagine to suit our society which has gotten soft and squishy...touchy feely. A society that changes the smallest things so as to not offend ANYONE. I don't think anyone thinks it's necessary to remove the World Trade Center from the New York City skyline in DVD releases, but it's been done. What the f*ck?! The events that took place there were tragic, but we don't need to pretend it never existed to feel better about it.

History is history folks...the good and the bad of it. Just because it's not always bright and sunny, doesn't mean we should invent bright and sunny to keep our society all glowy happy. I would personally prefer to remember the truth than to be protected from it.