8 ms·

We still don't know the answer to the most important question, IMHO: why?

irthomasthomas 4y ago
And an explanation of the specific substitutions made. Like, why erase Rudyard Kipling instead of having a conversation about the historical context of racism.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  Well, there's also a significant and growing contemporary movement based on not having conversations about the historical context of racism.
  - irthomasthomas 4y ago
    I think it's even broader than that. Just the destruction of context altogether.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  Because a lot of parents are reading these to their younger kids and don’t want to have a conversation about the historical context of racism, or if they do: they want to do it in the context of different books.
  - irthomasthomas 4y ago
    So, pretend racism wasn't a thing? Or just outsource the conversation to Netflix and Government?
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Most people's knowledge of Kipling is limited to 'wrote the Jungle Book,' if that.
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  This doesn't seem realistic. Imagine you're a ten year old sitting somewhere reading "Matilda" and came across that line. Maybe there's someone around you can ask who Kipling is, but there's a good chance they either don't know the issues or are going to be unwilling to have a conversation about the historical context of racism with some child over a one sentence mention of Kipling. More likely, the child will continue reading the book gaining at most a recommendation for future reading. I don't know if that small recommendation should be changed, but I don't see it's inclusion as some potential learning moment. The line has been in the book for thirty years, and I doubt it's taught many children about the historical context of racism.
  - irthomasthomas 4y ago
    The line has been in the book for thirty years, and I doubt it's taught many children about the historical context of racism. Indeed, because the vast majority of people only know Kipling for The Jungle Book and If. But we must destroy the mans life work because he happened to live in a time of colonialism.
- cld8483 4y ago
  Or why they tried to erase Joseph Conrad, despite Conrad being famous for his opposition to colonialism. (Probably because they judge Joseph Conrad by the outdated language he used, rather than by the ideas and values he presented. Because they are shallow fools.)
  - trieste92 4y ago
    Values like this? > A certain enormous buck n*** encountered in Haiti fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days. Of the n*** I used to dream for years afterwards.
    - cld8483 4y ago
      The values of opposing the European subjugation of Africa. Which you'd know if you read his books and weren't fixated on the outdated language.
      - lostlogin 4y ago
        Is the word the only issue, or the sentiment it is conveying? The passage and others in the book are not made ‘bad’ just because of that word.
        cld8483 4y ago
        The sentiment Joseph Conrad expressed in his books is that colonialism is evil and corrupts the souls of anybody who participates in it. If you can't read his books because you can't get past the dated language he used, then you are rendering yourself culturally impoverished.
        lostlogin 4y ago
        Have a look at criticism by Chinua Achebe and the latter rebuttals. It’s more complicated than you are making out.
- jpoesen 4y ago
  Exactly this. Similar example: Tintin in Congo is by today's standards absolutely racist, but reflects the era when it was published. The last decade the (Belgian) publisher was sued multiple times to try and force it off the shelves. Also: calls to remove statues of King Leopold II (who committed horrible atrocities in "his" Congolese colony). In both cases, why not leave access to the original books/statue/... intact but add an introductory section on why this is no longer appropriate today. Or place a contrasting statue, opposite King Leopold II, that embodies the struggle for independence / the colonial horrors / the blight that is racism / etc. Overall it feels like there's a drive to remove "inappropriate" materials from society, instead of leaving them accessible as living proof of the mistakes that were made, and to provide backstory, context, and the "appropriate" contemporary view.
  - mauvehaus 4y ago
    > Overall it feels like there's a drive to remove "inappropriate" materials from society, instead of leaving them accessible as living proof of the mistakes that were made, and to provide backstory, context, and the "appropriate" contemporary view. I share this view, but I also recognize that as a white dude, what is to me a learning opportunity about the things that folks (who mostly look like me) have done in the past isn't necessarily seen that way by everyone. Unfortunately, even if you get a whole mess of folks of different backgrounds to have an honest and meaningful conversation about what to do about these many things, you aren't going to please everybody. The easiest solution is to just remove the materials rather than having to continuously justify leaving them available and reinterpret the historical context for them from a contemporary standpoint.
    - irthomasthomas 4y ago
      The easiest solution is to just remove the materials And so doom us to repeat the mistakes of our forebears and bring violent racisim back into fashion? It is racists, more than anyone, who wish to hide the historical roots of racism. That we might find it impossible to recognise it's impending revival.
      - 4y ago
- Veen 4y ago
  Particularly since Kipling was critical of many aspects of empire and colonialism, and Jane Austen, who they replaced him with, was not.
- TheCondor 4y ago
  This is the proper solution but it also shifts the goal posts in a way that is dramatically easier for the certain groups to attack and win. You also have to equip the teachers with the materials and skills for that conversation and they have to be up to that task. There are bad teachers that just want to have the kids read books and then test them on content. There are also different theories of interpretation, there is a school of thought the divorces the artist from the art and wants to study the art on its own merit regardless of the views of the artist. I think it's dramatically easier to attack a particular conversation about the artist and historical views and fight to remove that from a class than to "ban a book." There are efforts like the 1619 project which basically exist because of that. I think there are also a lot of class rooms where the teachers don't want to have those conversations just due to classroom culture and dynamics; think a suburban class room with 19 white, probably heterosexual, middle class kids and 1 black kid; how do you have that discussion and not single that student out? Roald Dahl is a very interesting target here, editing "fat" out of the description of Augustus Gloop, I assume, was to be more gentle towards more portly folks. The character seemed to have a real eating disorder though, those are real issues that real people also suffer with. Does a discussion of bulimia and anorexia need to accompany Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Is it read at an age appropriate for that? Was this edit even material? It seems like the real theme is one of greed and humbleness and the eating disorder is just a foil.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  > why erase Rudyard Kipling instead of having a conversation about the historical context of racism. This sounds like critical race theory. That gets people far more fired up than changing a few words in some kids books ever will. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory
Frondo 4y ago
> possibly even make money Hate to say it, but I think this is the only reason why. Thank the absurd copyright laws that grant a piece of work two lifetimes of money extraction (70 years after the death of whoever made it) for whoever "owns" it.
- kzrdude 4y ago
  Good point. This debate got the queen consort and PM of UK to speak out, I wonder if you can get them to actually speak out on the incentives that actually matter for this issue here - among them copyright. (Of course we won't see anything like that.)
fullshark 4y ago
You should read about sensitivity readers and the impact they are having on young adult literature in particular. It's a fundamental aspect of all new books being published and they wanted to generate renewed interest in Dahl's library of books for the new generation. https://reason.com/2022/07/05/rise-of-the-sensitivity-reader/ https://reason.com/2022/07/05/rise-of-the-sensitivity-reader...
- secondcoming 4y ago
  Oh, this is so terribly sad.
  - flir 4y ago
    Reason's pretty niche, of course, and the first nine paras there are about an agent. A perspective closer to the centre of society: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/08/stop-moaning-sensitivity-readers-diversity-publishing https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/08/stop-m...
    - hombre_fatal 4y ago
      Dunno, Rosenfield's take seems a lot more reasonable than the pandering Guardian article that also infantilizes the reader by saying they are just moaning about sensitivity editors while using new words like "cisgender" that 90% of society doesn't even know. The Guardian might be closer to your views. Fine. But why try to appeal to some notion of the center of society instead of just posting the link? I'd wager outside of HN and Twitter, the Guardian article is obnoxious and trite.
    - yosefk 4y ago
      Isn't Reason, niche as it might be, closer to the center of society than The Guardian, which is somewhat closer to the left side of society?
      - cableshaft 4y ago
        At least according to AllSides, while The Guardian leans left a bit more than Reason leans right, it's not too much different. Guardian[1] has -2.4 out of -6, while Reason[2] is 1.8 out of +6. From what articles I've seen from Reason, they seemed to clearly lean right to me, that's why your comment came across as odd, albeit technically correct (it is slightly closer to center than the Guardian). Your comment suggested to me that they are a lot more in the middle than that, though. [1]: https://www.allsides.com/news-source/guardian https://www.allsides.com/news-source/guardian [2]: https://www.allsides.com/news-source/reason https://www.allsides.com/news-source/reason
yrro 4y ago
Marketing. A canny publisher wouldn't quietly discontinue the "original" (ignoring the fact that the books have been revised before) editions. They're merely announce that they're a limited run and that stocks are running out...
matthewdgreen 4y ago
I imagine people (aka customers) were getting uncomfortable reading their kids children’s books that talked about how Willy Wonka enslaved the Oompa-Loompa tribe and shipped them over in packing crates. While people will portray this as censorship, what I see is a for-profit company relentlessly optimizing for book sales at any cost. No: I am not defending it. I am just explaining it.
- recuter 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    No, I am actually explaining it. Publishing houses want to make money. You make money on popular children’s books that parents have nostalgia for. Parents want children’s books to be safe and unproblematic. There is always going to be a financial temptation to make these goals align, even at the cost of tampering with classic literature. Not sure why this is even surprising.
    - recuter 4y ago
      > Parents want children’s books to be safe and unproblematic. No. All these books were fine for countless decades until the woke fad. By your own logic they would simply switch to trendy "unproblematic" books instead of continuing to sell classics -- but that would mean having actual principles. Also it would also mean going broke. There are no masses of people getting bent out of shape about Oompa-Loompas demanding edits. Everybody knows and agrees those candy midgets had it coming.
      - matthewdgreen 4y ago
        This woke "fad" apparently began in 1973 when Dahl re-wrote the book to recast the Oompa-Loompas in a less racist manner. I don't know how old you are, but it's likely that the "classic book most people read as a child" is actually the rewrite. https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Roald_Dahl_and_Philosophy/sa0JBAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Roald+Dahl+oompa+loompas+hippies&pg=PA139&printsec=frontcover https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Roald_Dahl_and_Philo...
anigbrowl 4y ago
We do: money. The publishing company holds the copyrights, they make a lot of money from Roald Dahl, but they're worried about the long term prospects for that revenue stream due to social change. Maybe they have additional feedback from retail buyers or customers. They decided to take an approach of retooling their product to fit with changing mores, and either went too far or made a poor PR job of releasing the information. As far as I know, nobody asked for this. It's fairly well known (at least in the UK) that Dahl harbored many prejudices typical of his generation and demographics, and himself watered down some of them to make his books more salable, eg the original Oompa-Loompas were modeled on African pygmies.
- cld8483 4y ago
  > The publishing company holds the copyrights, they make a lot of money from Roald Dahl, but they're worried about the long term prospects for that revenue stream due to social change. If they were following public demand, then why did they get so thoroughly blindsided by public opinion? They were clearly listening to a handful of fringe nuts and didn't actually have their finger on the pulse of the mainstream zeitgeist. They have now realized their error and are trying to backtrack from it.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Why does any company's product launch fail? Arrogance, intellectual laziness, chasing a trend off a cliff. Same way company owners sometimes check out and hand over the reins to management consultants. I am not privy to their sales data; perhaps it looks terrible and they panicked. While there has been a big backlash, I don't think adult nostalgia is as profitable as childhood enthusiasm; parents might buy Roald Dahl for their kids, but there are plenty of other authors competing for their attention.
    - cld8483 4y ago
      So you're evidently privy to the company's reasoning when it comes to the initial decision to censor the books, but when it comes to the backtrack you just don't know. Got it.
chimeracoder 4y ago
> We still don't know the answer to the most important question, IMHO: why? Because the copyright holders (Netflix, in this case[0]), decided it would be more more profitable. This wasn't the result of an outside public campaign; it was initiated by the rightsholders. Netflix makes money if they can market an entire franchise (akin to the MCU, albeit less crossover). If they feel that a more "palatable" version of the books helps them do that, they will. [0] The editing began before Netflix acquired the Roald Dahl company, but it continued under them and they're the ones who decided to publish them (and now walk back the decision)
wnevets 4y ago
> We still don't know the answer to the most important question, IMHO: why? To get people talking about these books again with the intend of increasing sales.
colechristensen 4y ago
Everyone keeps saying "money" this isn't all it. The publishing industry has been taken over by a certain kind of person. The same kind of mildly privileged, free of adversity person who is looking for something to suffer from and fight against who is pushing this kind of "woke" nonsense all over the place.
- apple10 4y ago
  [dead]
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    Uh, no.
- cld8483 4y ago
  [flagged]

And an explanation of the specific substitutions made. Like, why erase Rudyard Kipling instead of having a conversation about the historical context of racism.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
Well, there's also a significant and growing contemporary movement based on not having conversations about the historical context of racism.
- irthomasthomas 4y ago
  I think it's even broader than that. Just the destruction of context altogether.
matthewdgreen 4y ago
Because a lot of parents are reading these to their younger kids and don’t want to have a conversation about the historical context of racism, or if they do: they want to do it in the context of different books.
- irthomasthomas 4y ago
  So, pretend racism wasn't a thing? Or just outsource the conversation to Netflix and Government?
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Most people's knowledge of Kipling is limited to 'wrote the Jungle Book,' if that.
boomboomsubban 4y ago
This doesn't seem realistic. Imagine you're a ten year old sitting somewhere reading "Matilda" and came across that line. Maybe there's someone around you can ask who Kipling is, but there's a good chance they either don't know the issues or are going to be unwilling to have a conversation about the historical context of racism with some child over a one sentence mention of Kipling. More likely, the child will continue reading the book gaining at most a recommendation for future reading. I don't know if that small recommendation should be changed, but I don't see it's inclusion as some potential learning moment. The line has been in the book for thirty years, and I doubt it's taught many children about the historical context of racism.
- irthomasthomas 4y ago
  The line has been in the book for thirty years, and I doubt it's taught many children about the historical context of racism. Indeed, because the vast majority of people only know Kipling for The Jungle Book and If. But we must destroy the mans life work because he happened to live in a time of colonialism.
cld8483 4y ago
Or why they tried to erase Joseph Conrad, despite Conrad being famous for his opposition to colonialism. (Probably because they judge Joseph Conrad by the outdated language he used, rather than by the ideas and values he presented. Because they are shallow fools.)
- trieste92 4y ago
  Values like this? > A certain enormous buck n*** encountered in Haiti fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days. Of the n*** I used to dream for years afterwards.
  - cld8483 4y ago
    The values of opposing the European subjugation of Africa. Which you'd know if you read his books and weren't fixated on the outdated language.
    - lostlogin 4y ago
      Is the word the only issue, or the sentiment it is conveying? The passage and others in the book are not made ‘bad’ just because of that word.
      - cld8483 4y ago
        The sentiment Joseph Conrad expressed in his books is that colonialism is evil and corrupts the souls of anybody who participates in it. If you can't read his books because you can't get past the dated language he used, then you are rendering yourself culturally impoverished.
        lostlogin 4y ago
        Have a look at criticism by Chinua Achebe and the latter rebuttals. It’s more complicated than you are making out.
jpoesen 4y ago
Exactly this. Similar example: Tintin in Congo is by today's standards absolutely racist, but reflects the era when it was published. The last decade the (Belgian) publisher was sued multiple times to try and force it off the shelves. Also: calls to remove statues of King Leopold II (who committed horrible atrocities in "his" Congolese colony). In both cases, why not leave access to the original books/statue/... intact but add an introductory section on why this is no longer appropriate today. Or place a contrasting statue, opposite King Leopold II, that embodies the struggle for independence / the colonial horrors / the blight that is racism / etc. Overall it feels like there's a drive to remove "inappropriate" materials from society, instead of leaving them accessible as living proof of the mistakes that were made, and to provide backstory, context, and the "appropriate" contemporary view.
- mauvehaus 4y ago
  > Overall it feels like there's a drive to remove "inappropriate" materials from society, instead of leaving them accessible as living proof of the mistakes that were made, and to provide backstory, context, and the "appropriate" contemporary view. I share this view, but I also recognize that as a white dude, what is to me a learning opportunity about the things that folks (who mostly look like me) have done in the past isn't necessarily seen that way by everyone. Unfortunately, even if you get a whole mess of folks of different backgrounds to have an honest and meaningful conversation about what to do about these many things, you aren't going to please everybody. The easiest solution is to just remove the materials rather than having to continuously justify leaving them available and reinterpret the historical context for them from a contemporary standpoint.
  - irthomasthomas 4y ago
    The easiest solution is to just remove the materials And so doom us to repeat the mistakes of our forebears and bring violent racisim back into fashion? It is racists, more than anyone, who wish to hide the historical roots of racism. That we might find it impossible to recognise it's impending revival.
    - 4y ago
Veen 4y ago
Particularly since Kipling was critical of many aspects of empire and colonialism, and Jane Austen, who they replaced him with, was not.
TheCondor 4y ago
This is the proper solution but it also shifts the goal posts in a way that is dramatically easier for the certain groups to attack and win. You also have to equip the teachers with the materials and skills for that conversation and they have to be up to that task. There are bad teachers that just want to have the kids read books and then test them on content. There are also different theories of interpretation, there is a school of thought the divorces the artist from the art and wants to study the art on its own merit regardless of the views of the artist. I think it's dramatically easier to attack a particular conversation about the artist and historical views and fight to remove that from a class than to "ban a book." There are efforts like the 1619 project which basically exist because of that. I think there are also a lot of class rooms where the teachers don't want to have those conversations just due to classroom culture and dynamics; think a suburban class room with 19 white, probably heterosexual, middle class kids and 1 black kid; how do you have that discussion and not single that student out? Roald Dahl is a very interesting target here, editing "fat" out of the description of Augustus Gloop, I assume, was to be more gentle towards more portly folks. The character seemed to have a real eating disorder though, those are real issues that real people also suffer with. Does a discussion of bulimia and anorexia need to accompany Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Is it read at an age appropriate for that? Was this edit even material? It seems like the real theme is one of greed and humbleness and the eating disorder is just a foil.
lostlogin 4y ago
> why erase Rudyard Kipling instead of having a conversation about the historical context of racism. This sounds like critical race theory. That gets people far more fired up than changing a few words in some kids books ever will. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory

Frondo 4y ago

> possibly even make money Hate to say it, but I think this is the only reason why. Thank the absurd copyright laws that grant a piece of work two lifetimes of money extraction (70 years after the death of whoever made it) for whoever "owns" it.

kzrdude 4y ago
Good point. This debate got the queen consort and PM of UK to speak out, I wonder if you can get them to actually speak out on the incentives that actually matter for this issue here - among them copyright. (Of course we won't see anything like that.)

fullshark 4y ago

You should read about sensitivity readers and the impact they are having on young adult literature in particular. It's a fundamental aspect of all new books being published and they wanted to generate renewed interest in Dahl's library of books for the new generation. https://reason.com/2022/07/05/rise-of-the-sensitivity-reader/ https://reason.com/2022/07/05/rise-of-the-sensitivity-reader...

secondcoming 4y ago
Oh, this is so terribly sad.
- flir 4y ago
  Reason's pretty niche, of course, and the first nine paras there are about an agent. A perspective closer to the centre of society: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/08/stop-moaning-sensitivity-readers-diversity-publishing https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/08/stop-m...
  - hombre_fatal 4y ago
    Dunno, Rosenfield's take seems a lot more reasonable than the pandering Guardian article that also infantilizes the reader by saying they are just moaning about sensitivity editors while using new words like "cisgender" that 90% of society doesn't even know. The Guardian might be closer to your views. Fine. But why try to appeal to some notion of the center of society instead of just posting the link? I'd wager outside of HN and Twitter, the Guardian article is obnoxious and trite.
  - yosefk 4y ago
    Isn't Reason, niche as it might be, closer to the center of society than The Guardian, which is somewhat closer to the left side of society?
    - cableshaft 4y ago
      At least according to AllSides, while The Guardian leans left a bit more than Reason leans right, it's not too much different. Guardian[1] has -2.4 out of -6, while Reason[2] is 1.8 out of +6. From what articles I've seen from Reason, they seemed to clearly lean right to me, that's why your comment came across as odd, albeit technically correct (it is slightly closer to center than the Guardian). Your comment suggested to me that they are a lot more in the middle than that, though. [1]: https://www.allsides.com/news-source/guardian https://www.allsides.com/news-source/guardian [2]: https://www.allsides.com/news-source/reason https://www.allsides.com/news-source/reason

yrro 4y ago

Marketing. A canny publisher wouldn't quietly discontinue the "original" (ignoring the fact that the books have been revised before) editions. They're merely announce that they're a limited run and that stocks are running out...

matthewdgreen 4y ago

I imagine people (aka customers) were getting uncomfortable reading their kids children’s books that talked about how Willy Wonka enslaved the Oompa-Loompa tribe and shipped them over in packing crates. While people will portray this as censorship, what I see is a for-profit company relentlessly optimizing for book sales at any cost. No: I am not defending it. I am just explaining it.

recuter 4y ago
[flagged]
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  No, I am actually explaining it. Publishing houses want to make money. You make money on popular children’s books that parents have nostalgia for. Parents want children’s books to be safe and unproblematic. There is always going to be a financial temptation to make these goals align, even at the cost of tampering with classic literature. Not sure why this is even surprising.
  - recuter 4y ago
    > Parents want children’s books to be safe and unproblematic. No. All these books were fine for countless decades until the woke fad. By your own logic they would simply switch to trendy "unproblematic" books instead of continuing to sell classics -- but that would mean having actual principles. Also it would also mean going broke. There are no masses of people getting bent out of shape about Oompa-Loompas demanding edits. Everybody knows and agrees those candy midgets had it coming.
    - matthewdgreen 4y ago
      This woke "fad" apparently began in 1973 when Dahl re-wrote the book to recast the Oompa-Loompas in a less racist manner. I don't know how old you are, but it's likely that the "classic book most people read as a child" is actually the rewrite. https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Roald_Dahl_and_Philosophy/sa0JBAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Roald+Dahl+oompa+loompas+hippies&pg=PA139&printsec=frontcover https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Roald_Dahl_and_Philo...

anigbrowl 4y ago

We do: money. The publishing company holds the copyrights, they make a lot of money from Roald Dahl, but they're worried about the long term prospects for that revenue stream due to social change. Maybe they have additional feedback from retail buyers or customers. They decided to take an approach of retooling their product to fit with changing mores, and either went too far or made a poor PR job of releasing the information. As far as I know, nobody asked for this. It's fairly well known (at least in the UK) that Dahl harbored many prejudices typical of his generation and demographics, and himself watered down some of them to make his books more salable, eg the original Oompa-Loompas were modeled on African pygmies.

cld8483 4y ago
> The publishing company holds the copyrights, they make a lot of money from Roald Dahl, but they're worried about the long term prospects for that revenue stream due to social change. If they were following public demand, then why did they get so thoroughly blindsided by public opinion? They were clearly listening to a handful of fringe nuts and didn't actually have their finger on the pulse of the mainstream zeitgeist. They have now realized their error and are trying to backtrack from it.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Why does any company's product launch fail? Arrogance, intellectual laziness, chasing a trend off a cliff. Same way company owners sometimes check out and hand over the reins to management consultants. I am not privy to their sales data; perhaps it looks terrible and they panicked. While there has been a big backlash, I don't think adult nostalgia is as profitable as childhood enthusiasm; parents might buy Roald Dahl for their kids, but there are plenty of other authors competing for their attention.
  - cld8483 4y ago
    So you're evidently privy to the company's reasoning when it comes to the initial decision to censor the books, but when it comes to the backtrack you just don't know. Got it.

chimeracoder 4y ago

> We still don't know the answer to the most important question, IMHO: why? Because the copyright holders (Netflix, in this case[0]), decided it would be more more profitable. This wasn't the result of an outside public campaign; it was initiated by the rightsholders. Netflix makes money if they can market an entire franchise (akin to the MCU, albeit less crossover). If they feel that a more "palatable" version of the books helps them do that, they will. [0] The editing began before Netflix acquired the Roald Dahl company, but it continued under them and they're the ones who decided to publish them (and now walk back the decision)

wnevets 4y ago

> We still don't know the answer to the most important question, IMHO: why? To get people talking about these books again with the intend of increasing sales.

colechristensen 4y ago

Everyone keeps saying "money" this isn't all it. The publishing industry has been taken over by a certain kind of person. The same kind of mildly privileged, free of adversity person who is looking for something to suffer from and fight against who is pushing this kind of "woke" nonsense all over the place.

apple10 4y ago
[dead]
- colechristensen 4y ago
  Uh, no.
cld8483 4y ago
[flagged]