GOODBYE, DAHLLY

And he smoked cigarettes!

Right-wingers have gotten plenty of well-deserved flack due to their insistence on banning books from schools. Those on the left want to keep all books available -- as long as they're censored.

Penguin Books, the publisher of Roald Dahl's kid-friendly novels like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory have rewritten certain "insensitive" words and entire sentences to protect someone, somewhere from being offended. Those words include "bad", "fat", "crazy", "boys and girls", "mothers and fathers", and "female". At the risk getting cancelled: Is it insensitive to call this stupid? 

Per NPR: In his 1983 book The Witches, [Dahl] writes that witches are bald beneath their wigs. According to The Telegraph, an added line in new editions says, "There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that." Well, there's plenty wrong with that editorial decision, as is the title character in Matilda now reading Jane Austen instead of Rudyard Kipling as Dahl had written. Who needs ChatGPT to spit out bland prose when real live people are doing it with even less style? And probably for free! I mean, I bet they're paying the publishers cash money to suppress words they don't like.

... to censor their books.

The folks at Penguin say they're only looking out for readers' feelings. Well, I'm a reader, and I'm offended by wholesale censorship from people offended on behalf of others who never said they were offended. What Penguin really means by "readers' feelings" is Twitter scolds who spend their days tracking down alleged transgressions with such fervor as to make Sherlock Holmes envious.

It's not like this kind of thing hasn't happened before. "Flashlight" eventually replaced "electric torch" in the Nancy Drew mysteries. That's fairly benign -- when was the last time you said, "Honey, where's the electric torch?", unless it was a private slang for something I'd rather not hear about. 

Now that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is ripe for rewrites, what's to stop Big Brother from deciding that adult literature is now up for grabs? When Scarlett O'Hara, at the end of Gone with the Wind, asks Rhett Butler "If you go, where shall I go, what shall I do?", the reply will eventually become, "Frankly my dear, that's entirely up to you. It's not my place as a man to tell you how to live your life." Hey, why stop at literature? Let's go for movies and records! Hell, let's change the damn titles while we're at it!

                              

The Enslavement of the Empowered Woman By a Typical Example of Toxic Masculinity

                                           

Colossal Misunderstood John

Slacks of Color

Plus-Sized Adult Male and Height-Challenged Younger Person Currently Identifying as Binary

The Diary of a Young Female Racist Zionist Who Probably Got What Was Coming to Her Anyway

Non-Adults Proudly Exploring Their Sexuality Without Shame

Ardent Asiatic People Who, Through No Fault of Their Own, Have Fallen for Western Society's Definition of Success

It's About Damn Time

(Oops, look at the publisher! They must think Winston Smith is the bad guy.)                                    

                                         

                  ***************

UPDATE: No doubt bowing to my righteous indignation, Penguin has decided to continue publishing the Dahl books as originally written as "The Roald Dahl Classic Collection", while keeping the censored versions available for purchase. Kind of like that old Classic Coke brouhaha. Any chance this whole thing was done to juice up sales?