Gardening7 mins ago
Idiots Who Remove Roald Dahl’s Darkness Are Just Utter Wonkas
References to gender, weight, mental health, physicality and race in the fantasy world of Roald Dahl have been edited, slashed and, in parts, entirely rewritten.
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“You can’t go round pulling the hair of every lady you meet, even if she is wearing gloves. Just you try it and see what happens,” reads the original. In the latest edition, this reads: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that."
What? Anyone?
Wonder no longer why we're said to be entering a cultural war. This attack on our treasured literature is just one reason we need to. Barminess reigns but hopefully not for long. The worm needs to turn - and fast.
https:/
“You can’t go round pulling the hair of every lady you meet, even if she is wearing gloves. Just you try it and see what happens,” reads the original. In the latest edition, this reads: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that."
What? Anyone?
Wonder no longer why we're said to be entering a cultural war. This attack on our treasured literature is just one reason we need to. Barminess reigns but hopefully not for long. The worm needs to turn - and fast.
Answers
there's a brilliant article in the Telegraph today titled 'George Orwell’s chilling prediction has come true – it’s time to make a stand' - the summary then states 'The censorship of books, statues and history is an attempt to eradicate the past and enforce a single point of view.' As the article probably falls behind the DT subscription curtain, I'm copying...
14:14 Wed 22nd Feb 2023
It really is quite pathetic isn't it.
It reminds me of this thread and the linked article, where "a brilliant idea hit her" on a mug was laughably linked to domestic violence.
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It reminds me of this thread and the linked article, where "a brilliant idea hit her" on a mug was laughably linked to domestic violence.
https:/
there's a brilliant article in the Telegraph today titled 'George Orwell’s chilling prediction has come true – it’s time to make a stand' - the summary then states 'The censorship of books, statues and history is an attempt to eradicate the past and enforce a single point of view.'
As the article probably falls behind the DT subscription curtain, I'm copying over the first few paras that, to me, are right on the money.
'What is it about the past that some young people find unbearable? After all, no one is expecting them to live through it. Indeed, some of us who did find the present infinitely worse. The vandalism of Roald Dahl’s writings for children by “sensitivity readers” to make them “suitable”, has brought the wickedness of rewriting, or eliminating, the past and evidence of it to the forefront of our discourse. It would also have Dahl (with whom I once spent an evening: shrinking violet he was not) turning in his grave. Sadly, it goes far beyond children’s books, and indeed books generally: films, statues, television programmes, indeed, if they are allowed into the public arena at all. Are we really so delicate? Why tolerate this lunacy?
George Orwell, to whom the Thought Police (a term he invented in Nineteen Eighty-Four) have yet to apply themselves, wrote in that very novel of a Britain in which “every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
We have arrived at our own endless present, or Year Zero, where the record, historical and otherwise, is readily falsified. Its rules are designed to prevent what that arrogant and self-regarding minority who feel obliged to police and alter the thoughts of the rest of us consider the ultimate crime: giving offence. Most of us have spent our lives encountering things that could, if we wallowed in self-regard, offend us deeply. We were trained to ignore them and get on with life. Now, suddenly, we cannot be trusted to do that.
Therefore books, art, films and television programmes must be censored or suppressed, statues taken down as though the lives they commemorate never happened, streets and buildings renamed to eradicate thought criminals. Like Pol Pot, that minority feels a moral duty to erase the past to attain Year Zero. Sadly for us, their main qualifications are an overbearing self-righteousness, a profound ignorance of history and a deep misunderstanding of the idea of liberty that few of us share.'
As the article probably falls behind the DT subscription curtain, I'm copying over the first few paras that, to me, are right on the money.
'What is it about the past that some young people find unbearable? After all, no one is expecting them to live through it. Indeed, some of us who did find the present infinitely worse. The vandalism of Roald Dahl’s writings for children by “sensitivity readers” to make them “suitable”, has brought the wickedness of rewriting, or eliminating, the past and evidence of it to the forefront of our discourse. It would also have Dahl (with whom I once spent an evening: shrinking violet he was not) turning in his grave. Sadly, it goes far beyond children’s books, and indeed books generally: films, statues, television programmes, indeed, if they are allowed into the public arena at all. Are we really so delicate? Why tolerate this lunacy?
George Orwell, to whom the Thought Police (a term he invented in Nineteen Eighty-Four) have yet to apply themselves, wrote in that very novel of a Britain in which “every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
We have arrived at our own endless present, or Year Zero, where the record, historical and otherwise, is readily falsified. Its rules are designed to prevent what that arrogant and self-regarding minority who feel obliged to police and alter the thoughts of the rest of us consider the ultimate crime: giving offence. Most of us have spent our lives encountering things that could, if we wallowed in self-regard, offend us deeply. We were trained to ignore them and get on with life. Now, suddenly, we cannot be trusted to do that.
Therefore books, art, films and television programmes must be censored or suppressed, statues taken down as though the lives they commemorate never happened, streets and buildings renamed to eradicate thought criminals. Like Pol Pot, that minority feels a moral duty to erase the past to attain Year Zero. Sadly for us, their main qualifications are an overbearing self-righteousness, a profound ignorance of history and a deep misunderstanding of the idea of liberty that few of us share.'
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