There was a movie on the “They Stole My Baby” network this morning, “The Whales of August”. I remember when the film came out, I never saw it but I knew it was well received by critics and audiences. It was a serious drama, beautifully filmed with excellent performances by a fine ensemble cast.

The film was a character study about two elderly widowed sisters, one of them blind, who spend their summers on a beach house in New England. Most of the movie was about their interaction, but there were flashback scenes played by younger actors covering events in their youth. I presume these scenes helped flesh out the story and led to insight into the relationship between the two main characters after they aged.

But I didn’t find out about these flashbacks until they ran the credits, and then I verified what I missed by googling the film. The network had cut out the flashbacks. They were gone. All the flashback scenes had been edited out, presumably so they could cram in a few extra commercials.

Who are these people? What makes them so fucking greedy and insensitive? Don’t they understand that they are not only cheating the TV audience, but the artists and technicians who made the film (not to mention the investors and producers who risked their fortunes and time to make it). Their art, their work, is being butchered so some fatass scumbag businessman can add a few coins to his stash. What gives them the right? Who the hell do they think they are? The point can be made that they are even cheating the merchants who purchased time on the network to advertise their products.

I understand that serving up the product is expensive, it costs money to secure the film and more to broadcast it. Fine, I understand that, I’m willing to watch a few commercials to pay my share. But this theft of another man’s labor for their own personal profit is inexcusable. It is truly “theft of intellectual property”, and you can’t blame this robbery on the Chinese. They have vandalized a work of art just so they could squeeze one or two more commercials into a slightly shorter timeframe.

You’ll have to excuse me, but I don’t see this unrestricted entrepreneurial activity as something of value, or something worth preserving or protecting. I see it as a glaring symbol of everything that’s wrong and ugly about our ethics–not to mention our economy and our civilization. These people are vile and they are criminals, and so is the social and political system that represents them and makes excuses for them.