Back in February, I wrote a piece about publishers cleaning up writers who’d fallen out of fashion, or more to the point, whose work would sound offensive to the contemporary ear – specific examples being Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, and Agatha Christie. This is a practice commonly known as bowdlerization, after Dr. Thomas Bowdler, who published a 19th-century edition of Shakespeare with the naughty bits eliminated. Aside from the insult to the authors, my chief complaint is that it irons out context.
Mencken once remarked that a Puritan is someone who’s afraid that somebody, somewhere, is having fun.
The latest iteration of book-banning has dragged in Satan worship and the predatory sexual grooming of children, so plainly, calmer heads haven’t prevailed. It’s belaboring the obvious to say that the fight against Woke is consciously a fight to marginalize the ‘other,’ and personally, I think the rest of us would be better off if these mouth-breathers were out of the gene pool, but far be it from me.
Which brings us to Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis is fighting above his weight class, going after the Mouse. Disney is going to wipe the canvas with him. And instead of being a savvy, calculating political animal, triangulating his every advantage, he’s advertising himself as a vindictive little shit, who simply isn’t ready for prime time. Are we meant to take any of it seriously?Here’s the next wrinkle.
A group ofBertelsmann has a dog in this fight. The way to wrap your head around it is to realize the big money isn’t in James Paterson or Diana Gabaldon, no disrespect. The big money’s in textbooks. And a state like
The most interesting thing about this new lawsuit is that it doesn’t challenge
See you in court.