One more reason the copyright period should be shortened
Enid Blyton (dead author) has stories (classics) vandalized by publishers (jerkwads) aiming to squeeze a few extra bucks from of a generation of parents (dolts) worried that exposure to words like ‘dick’ and ‘fanny’ might corrupt their children (brats).
I’m at a loss here, really. I remember when the Golliwogs were removed from Toy Town (too black), and when Noddy and Big Ears were no longer allowed to share a bed (too gay), and I was as flabbergast then as I am now.
Were Blyton’s work in the public domain, this would be a non-issue. But because a bunch of idiots still hold the rights and still see a few dollars roll in when Ma & Pa Burkett make a nostalgia-fuelled purchase of the Secret Seven, they think it’s a great idea to modernize all those socially-outdated parts of Blyton’s books. You know, the parts where people have mid-20th–century names and use the word ‘queer’ to mean ‘odd’ instead of ‘homosexual’.
It brings a mind a memory of a small girl I once knew. Her parents, ever creative, used the word ‘tuppence’ in place of ‘vagina’ for all hygiene-related instruction. God forbid she should use grown-up words. Hilarity ensued when, one summer afternoon, said girl-child was sat in front of the television to watch the classic and ever-family-friendly Mary Poppins. Cue song whose first lines are “feed the birds, tuppence a bag” and you have one very confused child asking lots of questions that, for reasons that still baffle me, embarrassed the parents.
Seriously, kids need to be exposed to things. Just things in general. Things they can ask questions about. It makes them into people, believe it or not.
But now I’m way off my original point. Sonny Bono was a jerk.