A Hong Kong airline was forced to apologize for streaming the “Family Guy’s Tiananmen Square” joke in-flight

When the social media outrage in China is over Family manThe admittedly tame Tiananmen Square joke caught the attention of Cathay Pacific and they quickly jumped on it South China Morning Post to beg for mercy before the inevitable backlash from the Chinese Communist Party. In a statement translated by The Guardianthe airline said: “We emphasize that the content of the program does not reflect Cathay Pacific’s position and have immediately ensured that the program is removed as quickly as possible.”

The Cathay Pacific spokesperson further claimed that a third party is managing their in-flight entertainment options and that the airline has directed this mysterious, censorship-defying cartoon company to thoroughly investigate the oversight and increase its monitoring of non-CCP-friendly comedy that could be countless Chinese minds corrupt at 35,000 feet.

The student-led demonstrations against the corruption, nepotism and oppression of the Chinese Communist government and the subsequent CCP murder of a few hundred to several thousand protesters in the late spring of 1989 remain one of the most sensitive and censored topics in mainland China. After the CCP expanded its draconian influence in Hong Kong following pro-democracy protests in 2019, the Tiananmen Square massacre became an even more taboo topic in the special administrative region, and Hong Kong police have made several attempts to hold public vigils to organize a commemoration, the censored event was forcibly stopped.

Any pro-democracy travelers in Hong Kong who had hoped to mark the event with a quick continental flight on Cathay Pacific will be dismayed to learn that the airline has given them such a powerful anti-propaganda tool in Death Has a Shadow has withheld. – but I’m sure there are a lot of them Family man Bootleg DVDs of the first season are circulating across the continent and are available to anyone interested in comedic resistance.