“FEMA Photographer Asked Church Volunteers Not to Wear Religious T-Shirts in Video on Tornado Aftermath” 
“Jackson, Miss. (AP) - The top officer for FEMA said one of the agency's videographers was "absolutely wrong" to ask Mississippi church volunteers not to wear religious T-shirts for a video about tornado cleanup.
 
Angelia Lott and Pamela Wedgeworth, who are sisters, told The Associated Press that the FEMA worker videotaping the cleanup on Saturday in the small town of Ebenezer asked them to do on-camera interviews but requested that they change out of their T-shirts because of a Salvation Army logo.”
– Reference (1) at bottom.

Filtering information, by those who are supposed to be capturing is-what-it-is-facts, has reached epidemic levels in America.  The filtering always seems to involve some unstated ideological criteria that serve as the basis for the filter. 

The article, referenced at the top, illustrates how, apparently, even low-level employees have come to believe that they have a right to filter information according to some ideological standard.  Not surprisingly, to those of us who have long-since ceased to trust publicity people (news people included), the criteria is usually leftwing, anti-Christian, and/or anti-America, or simply anti-conservative. 

The photo-filterer discussed in the referenced article revealed one of his own ideological filter-criterion when he stated: 

"We would like to ask you to change your shirt because we don't want anything faith-based."  

The offending T-shirts displayed Salvation Army logo.

"...we don't want anything faith-based."

One has to ask, who is we?   

According to the FEMA administrator who apparently employed the filtering-photographer the we was not FEMA, "Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Craig Fugate said in a statement issued Monday that the man's actions 'in no way reflect FEMA's policies or priorities.'" 

So we was not the organization for whom this photographer apparently worked.  So who is we?  One can speculate, and I think correctly, that we is the horde of leftwing publicity creators, news people, and government bureaucrats who have adopted the attitude that they have an absolute right to manipulate, by filtering, the information that millions of Americans receive each day. 

The FEMA director stated that "the photographer had been fired."  Good.  But, I'm still bothered by one question: Why did the photographer feel he had a right to demand of people being photographed, "... we don't want anything faith-based."?  

I think there are, at least, three plausible answers:

1) The photo-filterer sincerely and/or thoughtlessly believed that he had the personal, unilateral right to edit-out any public expressions of faith (in this case T-shirt icons) in any photo session that he was conducting; or

2) the photo-filterer had previously done this, or seen it done by someone else without any repercussions; or

3) the photo-filterer somehow believed that Obama-administration statements, opposing taxpayer-funded “faith-based” programs, should apply to volunteer "faith-based" efforts. In a recent Obama-administration statement:  "Attorney General Eric Holder told the House Judiciary Committee yesterday [May 14, 2010] that the Obama administration does not support religiously based hiring discrimination in taxpayer-funded “faith-based” programs." 
– Reference (2) at bottom.   

I am inclined to believe the answer is likely number three above.  Liberal stagers of photo-ops and government bureaucrats are notorious for their desire to apply restrictions, in any and every possible area, to actions and ideas that they oppose (especially those that are Christian and/or conservative).  A major leftwing initiative, for a number of years, has been the push to apply so-called separation of church and state to every imaginable facet of American society.  

My hypothesis is that the photo-filterer believed he was confronting a case of separation of church and state.  And you know what?  In the arrogant, Progressive, constitutionally-distorted, thinking of liberals such as the Reverend Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans united for separation of church and state, the photo-filterer will more likely be excused or applauded than condemned.     

With the ever present potential for this sort of information-filtering, is there any wonder that so many people, myself included, have abandoned the traditional news channels and switched to the open diversity of news found on the internet? 

FOOTNOTES:

(1)  FEMA Photographer Asked Church Volunteers Not to Wear Religious T-Shirts in Video 

(2)  Attorney General's Statement On 'Faith-Based' Job Bias Is Encouraging...