Rod Dreher: Therapeutic Totalitarianism Comes For Roald Dahl

[Kamaji]

Therapeutic Totalitarianism Comes For Roald Dahl

'Sensitivity readers' helping to scrub children's classics of any non-inclusive, non-diverse verbiage

Rod Dreher
Feb 20, 2023

Above, Augustus Gloop, a right proper fatty-fatty fat-fat. You can't call him "fat" anymore, you bigot! Have you heard what Puffin, which holds the publication rights to Roald Dahl's books, is doing to them?:

Puffin has hired sensitivity readers to rewrite chunks of the author’s text to make sure the books “can continue to be enjoyed by all today”, resulting in extensive changes across Dahl’s work.

Edits have been made to descriptions of characters’ physical appearances. The word “fat” has been cut from every new edition of relevant books, while the word “ugly” has also been culled, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is now described as “enormous”. In The Twits, Mrs Twit is no longer “ugly and beastly” but just “beastly”.

Hundreds of changes were made to the original text – and some passages not written by Dahl have been added. But the Roald Dahl Story Company said “it’s not unusual to review the language” during a new print run and any changes were “small and carefully considered”.

In The Witches, a paragraph explaining that witches are bald beneath their wigs ends with the new line: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”

In previous editions of James and the Giant Peach, the Centipede sings: “Aunt Sponge was terrifically fat / And tremendously flabby at that,” and, “Aunt Spiker was thin as a wire / And dry as a bone, only drier.”

Both verses have been removed, and in their place are the rhymes: “Aunt Sponge was a nasty old brute / And deserved to be squashed by the fruit,” and, “Aunt Spiker was much of the same / And deserves half of the blame.”

Nobody asked for this! This absurd violence to beloved works of literature. I was a Gloop-sized fatso when I first read Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, and I don't recall being aggrieved by it.

I'd say this author has the credibility to put behind his just and correct opinion:

https://twitter.com/SalmanRushdie/status/1627075835525210113

If there is one profession in the world that should not exist, it's "sensitivity reader." What enemies of originality they are! If I am offended by Roald Dahl's calling Augustus Gloop fat, then I am welcome to not read the damn book. Why must all the edges be sanded off of everything to mollify the woke? Ben Sixsmith writes:

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Source:  https://www.theamericanconservative.com/therapeutic-totalitarianism-comes-for-roald-dahl/

[berdie]

This is another affirmation that we (the general we, not on this board) have too much time.

The lbtqabchnnn whatever, the rewriting of history, the rewriting of books and on and on.

As much as technology has helped us, it has also hurt us. Maybe, as bad as I dread it, it's time for a reset. When a person is worried about putting food on the table, keeping a roof over their heads and just surviving...a person doesn't really have time to think that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves or what pronoun they should use.