Censorship By Any Other Name …
by AnonyMoose on Aug.24, 2008, under Observations
Don’t piss off Wal-mart. Asda, a company owned by the giant conglomerate, persuaded Random House to pull the best-selling children’s book My Sister Jodie by Jacqueline Wilson after a reader found, oh my, a ‘dirty word’ in the story. Damn, being a writer and trying to write something that will please an agent, an editor and the publisher’s marketing department, not to mention Barnes & Nobel, is difficult enough. Now we have to make sure we don’t upset the delicate sensibilities of Wal-Mart.
Nor the sensibilities of anyone else, for that matter. In the same article linked above, it’s noted that Random House pulled a book about Mohammed for fear it would offend Muslims. If this keeps up, we’ll all be down to reading Dick and Jane books. No, wait, gender stereotypes. I’m sure that must offend someone so forget about Dick and Jane.
Man, the more I think about this, the more I see how far we could run with it. I say let’s don’t just pull them from the shelves, let’s have us a real ’save the world’s sensibilities’ book burning bonfire. We’ll be heroes!
We could start with all of Clive Cussler’s books cause I know for a fact they offend a friend of mine on Backspace. For myself, I would love to see all of James Patterson’s books burned because, really, they are all the same story over and over and I find his lack of creativity offensive. And I can’t be the only one who finds stories with long drawn out middles and no beginning or end offensive so pull Glimmer Train and other such post-modern literary mags off the shelf and toss them in the fire.
Might McCain supporters find Obama’s books offensive? Pull those puppies and burn em.
Ghosts, goblins, witches and warlocks, vampires even? We know these horribly satanic things offend some so off to the fire they go. Violence? Sex? Violence and Sex? Sex and Death? Death? Books about gays? Books about gays as normal, loving couples? OH MY! Burn baby burn and then superheat the ashes.
Mark Twain and Jon Clinch both used the *N* word in their respective books about Huckleberry Finn. I’m pretty sure that must offend someone so off to the bonfire with their work.
Richard Dawkins‘ book The God Delusion offended a whole lot of folks. Come to think of it, so does Dawkins himself, or so I’ve heard. Hell, throw em both on the fire.
I could go on and on but let’s face it, we already know it’s gonna be a tough job just as we know the job must be done. The really tough and important tasks in life are like that. And, as big and powerful as they are, it’s really too much and too important a job to leave to the likes of Wal-Mart and Random House alone. We’ve got lend our collective hand in this noble cause. We can start by burning down all the bookstores and public libraries, narrowing our objective to personal and private libraries once the larger objective is accomplished. We’ll remove all the people from harm first, of course. After all, these poor, misguided seekers of the written word know not what they do. We don’t want to hurt anyone. We’re just trying to save their delicate sensibilities.
