Is this another political agenda piece or is it honest old good storytelling?

>sexist and racist by today's standards.

There's the problem. Too many people apply "today's standards" to something from the past. The great majority of people used to smoke; not allowing that to occur in movies set before the Millennium is applying today's standards, and they're fake; Women were chattel to men: not allowing that to occur in movies set before the 20th Century is applying today's standards, and they're fake; Black entertainers weren't allowed to stay in the Vegas hotels they were performing in: not allowing that to occur in movies set before the mid-1960's is applying today's standards, and they're fake. I could go on, but people today look at the past with rose-colored glasses. They don't WANT to see how it really was, they want their SJW version of it. That way, they can pretend it never happened.

..Joe

Good old boys often told stories that were sexist and racist by today's standards

That's irrelevant. Current Hollywood stories are wrong by old Hollywood standards, or by Ancient Greek standards, or by Muslim standards, or by Italian Renaissance standards, or by sub-saharan African standards, or by 50 years from now Hollywood standards. And who knows if current movies will be labeled as racist and sexist in the future while 70s and 80s ones will be praised.

But that's just fashion.

What matters is whether the storytelling matters... or whether the writers are more interested in preaching their standards as the True Faith. You know, people have been discovering the Ultimate Final Definitive Moral Truth for the last 5000 years, so it's not strange for our generation to join the club. The problem happens when the writers are more interested in preaching the gospel than in telling a story.

And that happened before, but only in religious movies. Nowadays it's kind of mainstream. And it's making Hollywood movies boring, as boring as religious movies used to be.