some thoughts under a rock..

living under a rock, i did not know about the new dahl editing, but it is no surprise. the presumption that this is in anyway acceptable is an outrage, but only for people who actually care about culture and artistic expression and not ONLY about their bottom line. these are hard times for the publishing industry. there are no conspiratory lizard people that force things in this direction. no these dire straights are self imposed. the economuc pressure for publishers to compete these days (there's about just four left that have a wide circulation) is such that anything that even carries a whiff of ethnocentrism or racism or sexism or any currently unpopular ism is banned or purged. why would an editor, or marketing officer, risk his stature on the very narrow field of publishing for something MEANINGFUL, when thatvis not their job discription. it is much more marketable to re-touch an old masterpiece, to make it fit in with mainstream expectations. better yet, if the writer is dead, then surly they don't mind, if new books are cloned from their genius, cleaned up and branded as part of their universe of creation. thus writers that lived in a very different age , are subject to this idiocy or malicious rewriting, and the trend is not slowing.

in the end, corporations dont care about people as emotional and intellectual entities. they see them as consumers. ideally a consumer is fanatically loyal, needs no variety, has no reaction to dissatisfaction or suffering of others, and considers itself as morally correct nonetheless. while publishers are just a really just a small particle in this, they do much to promote this cultural automaton. it is not a willful decision tjat they made, a long term plan to make everything the same, but they will definitely do very little to move it in another direction.

if this trend of censoring what needent be censored continues, verything will be so "corrected" that it will be bland beyond words. and the people that will be revolted to read such "whitebread and mayo" and avoid reading altogether will be more and more stupid accordingly- in other words- improved consumers. it would be a self imposed dark age.