Censorship and My Issues with it

Last night, I was watching my favorite movie of all time: The Godfather. I was watching this on AMC, which is having a celebration this week for the movie's 40th anniversary. I understand that there are certain things that you cannot put on TV. You have to censor some of the content.

But who decides what is offensive and what is not?

I ask this because of the editing in this scene:


"Piece of ass" was edited to "piece of stuff,"  but a sentence later "guinea charm" was not edited.

Now, I don't see what is offensive about "piece of ass." Are they censoring that because it might be offensive to women? Are we going to pretend like misogyny doesn't exist? Meanwhile, we can keep the slurs towards Italian people. It just seems hypocritical to me that they are censoring for one group of people, but not another. It sends a mixed message.

Now, I would say that the Italian slurs are essential to what makes The Godfather The Godfather since it is a story about an Italian family in a developing and changing America. However, I'd also say that the existence of misogyny at the time is important to the integrity of the movie's setting.

I hate censorship. I understand that certain content, such as nudity (Apollonia wedding night scene always gets cut), cannot be aired on basic cable. However, words are words, and this is America. What's the First Amendment? Oh yeah, something about free speech? If you're going to air The Godfather, you should do so with the entire dialogue in tact. You know what you're going to air, and there's no reason to change it. They're just words.

The GM-Peugeot Partnership

Not quite sure what the executives in Detroit are doing.

So GM plans to take a stake in Peugeot, and I'm not sure why. Well, we have an explanation:

LONDON—General Motors Co. is to take as much as a 7% stake in smaller French rival PSA Peugeot Citroën SA as part of a new auto-making alliance the two companies are negotiating to prop up their unprofitable European operations, people familiar with the talks said Tuesday.

But that explanation still makes no sense to me. I'm talking about the core concept of the matter:

In buying a stake in Peugeot, GM would make the French auto maker its primary partner in Europe to share engineering and development costs as well as provide funds to help the French company in its drive to reduce debt by selling assets, the person said.

This type of agreement has been done before. It did not work out well. GM hurt its public perception by trying to produce cars through parts sharing. A lot of their cars shared the same uninspired characteristics. This bean counting cut car quality and put GM in the hole that led to the 2008 bailout.

We've also seen brands within the GM conglomerate fail including Oldsmobile, Pontiac, and Saab. Making the same cars with different grills is not the way to success. It remains to be seen what this partnership with Peugeot holds in store, but I'm skeptical because of past failures in execution. On paper, it makes sense. However, history says otherwise.