So, here’s a “conspiracy theory” for you. This one is about the
global-capitalist thought police and their ongoing efforts to purge
society of “insensitivity.” Yes, that’s right, insensitivity. If there
is anything the global-capitalist thought police can’t stand, it is
insensitivity. You know, like making fun of ethnic or religious
minorities, and the physically or cognitively challenged, and
alternatively gendered persons, and hideously ugly persons, and
monstrously fat persons, and midgets, and so on.
The
global-capitalist thought police are terribly concerned about the
feelings of such persons. And the feelings of other sensitive persons
who are also concerned about the feelings of such persons. And
everybody’s feelings, generally. So they’ ossibly irreparably offend such persons, and persons concerned
about the feelings of such persons, and anyone who might feel offended
by anything.
By now, I assume you have seen the news about the “sensitivity editing” of Roald Dahl,
the author of books like James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory, The Witches, The Twits, and numerous others. What
happened was, Dahl’s publisher, Puffin Books, hired a little clutch of
“sensitivity editors” to substantively rewrite his books, purging words
like “fat” and “ugly,” and Dahl’s descriptions of characters as “bald”
and “female,” and inserting their own ham-handed, “sensitised” language.
What you may not be aware of is that Puffin Books is a
children’s imprint of Penguin Random House, a multi-national
conglomerate publishing company and a subsidiary of Bertelsmann, a
nominally German but in reality global media conglomerate. Penguin
Random House is one of the so-called “big five publishers” that control
approximately 80% of the retail book market. The other four are Simon
& Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette, and Harper Collins.
Together,
these five corporate behemoths, with their hundreds of divisions,
publishing groups, and imprints (e.g., Puffin Books), control the
majority of what everyone reads. Pull a few books off your bookshelves
at random and look up the imprints to see how many are owned by one of
the “big five” publishers or one of their divisions or publishing
groups....<<<Read More>>>...