I will as a continuity buff tell you how TCW has changed my perceptions:

Pre-TCW continuity was sacrosanct, with the errors exceptions or GL's arrogance that was thankfully limited to a few films of limited content. Part of this perception was my own ignorance. I wasn't aware of all the subtle bits of info out there that clearly stated just how little continuity mattered to the VIPs. That ignorance (read: perception) helped me live by and perpetuate the notion that continuity was sacrosanct.

Post-TCW continuity is a gift, by contrast. The errors are par for the course of creating multi-medium stories at the rate the LucasMachine does. I've learned that even EU errors are accepted unless they can be easily fixed in a jiffy, made a note of for a later retcon, and then shipped out in the guise of C-canon. What I learned from that was the perception that C-canon didn't mean "true to what came before", it meant "somewhat true to what came before, with a complete fix on the way sometime in the far future". It was compounded by TCW's T-canon meaning "not particularly true to what came before, by order of the allmighty head honcho himself". I learned that continuity was a gift to be grateful for, not something I could expect. That continuity or canon didn't mean "truth" after all, just "a little more truth than the fanfic I read online yesterday for free".

So when I talk about perception, I talk about what it does to fans and creators to watch GL himself trample the continuity we assumed existed, and this on primetime TV with wider exposure than any EU has. To me, it opened the floodgates to reexamine what I thought I knew of EU continuity, to open my eyes, only to figure out it was just as continuity-unfriendly as TCW was, only the scale was smaller.

It changed my perception, and I was for a while tempted to throw the EU away as glorified fan fiction. Only one thing stopped me. One thing: An obscure throwaway Leland post from years back, where he mentioned as part of a different point, that a tiny retcon existed somewhere solely to clear up an equally tiny error in an RPG supplement. To me that small fact held the promise that all errors, no matter how small, will sooner or later be caught and rectonned. It brought the promise of the holy land, that everything has the potential to be 100% coherent, and there are efforts made to make it so. Even if new errors are introduced along with the retcons, I believe I can at any point in time stop and say: Every error currently in existence will be cleared up eventually, no matter how small.

This, boys and girls, is the sole thread I hang onto! And for any VIP reading this, you can't expect such leniency from all fans...

I find the idea that it's "Orwellian" in any way rather off putting, since we are talking about a company managing it's creative property and more importantly, it's a matter of the creator of said property going in the direction he wants to versus spin-off material that already knew this was a possibility and indeed a likelihood from the get-go. From the point of view of G-canon there never is a discrepancy to be had because G-canon is G-canon. It doesn't have to conform itself to C-canon. So if someone is speaking from the perspective of being involved in the creative process of a product that is of G-canon status(or T- in this case) for them there really isn't a contradiction with the EU. The EU is the one contradicting G- and T-canon and has to make itself conform to the higher level of canon. That's been policy since the early 90s. TCW could work with established EU material, GL chooses not to and he's given permission to the people working on the Star Wars flagship to contradict the EU if they feel they have a better idea that works for the story I guess. In-house when they discuss continuity I think it's probably necessary for LFL to say just what they've been saying publicly... anything G-level or T-level has to be "this is the way it's really always been" rather than to give the EU a higher standing. Their in-house policy just isn't that the EU has any standing except with itself and that it has to conform to what's a step or two higher than it. At this point the entire EU is C-level. G- and T-level or more identical to each other and form a consistent continuity between film and TCW but at this point it's safe to say that TCW actually is not EU material. TCW is what happened between AOTC and ROTS for certain. The mircroseries may even be in doubt, I think it's still classified as C-level.