Censoring Dahl & Naff Disco Choons

 I know I'm a bit behind the 8-ball posting this NOW, but I've been thinking about the actions taken by the publishers Puffin to the classic Roald Dahl books to bring them into line with modern-day sensibilities. Hang on, I might have typed that wrong. Perhaps what I should have written is this: arse-hattery carried out by some numpties in charge of a publishing house to cater to a trend of pussy-arsed sookery. 

This less than admirable accomplishment was achieved by hiring sensitivity readers, which is apparently the polite term for pussy-arsed sooks who can't read for context or nuance, and who have no functioning resilience to cope with the world. They do not know the power of the correct adjective, by which I mean the Oompa-Loompas are now 'small' and not 'tiny'. August Gloop is no longer 'fat'. He is described as 'enormous', but the word 'fat' was removed. Apparently, someone hit the global search-and-replace function and eliminated the word 'fat' from every original occurrence in the book. 

Seriously, what ails you people? August Gloop is FAT. That's Eff Ay Tee FAT. Fat. He's a fat-fat-the-water rat. He eats constantly, and furthermore, eats the wrong food constantly. He pigs into unhealthy fattening foods, and whilst I do not claim to hold any credentials that would qualify me as a dietitian, I have been around the sun enough times to know that if you binge and gorge on fattening foods, you're going to end up fucking fat, okay? Deal with it. 

Yesterday, I was reminded of the Joe Tex disco song Ain't Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman). I'm adopting a vulture-like crouch of embarrassment as I type this: I - shhhhhh! - like that song. It has some great funk delivered with a gravelly voice juxtaposed with the naffest concept imaginable: this dude is at the disco and finds himself the unwilling partner of some she-behemoth who wants to do the then-fashionable dance The Bump. Being corpulent and enthusiastic, she delivers a bump of a force that apparently sends him airborne, whereupon he crashes down and almost breaks his hip. Don't judge me. It's funny, okay? Anyway, these sensitivity readers would be screeching for a red pen as they slash through the lyrical fat-shaming like sugar cane cockies going through a crop. 

But on the bright side, I have just read Penguin and Puffin have backed down after the backlash. As for hiring sensitivity readers, why not just have a disclaimer that the work contains material that does not align with the company's cultural inclusive values and/or may contain material that could be in today's world be considered culturally insensitive? 

If you're reading something that is giving you the icks, either put it down or learn to contextualise. Lave the original art alone! Would you draw eyebrows on the Mona Lisa because it might upset people who don't have eyebrows? Pffffft!