The New Bowdlerism

“To avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community.” --Disney

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Trigger Alert! "Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming."—Coach John Wooden, UCLA Head Basketball Coach of 10 national championships

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“Today’s CEOs are the last generation to lead exclusively human workforces.” --Benioff

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“It is easier to start a war than to end it.”--Gabriel García Márquez

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The New Bowdlerism

The author who invented Western man in drama is under attack for being too Western. Prim investigators at Shakespeare's Birthplace Trust have been hard at work. Already, several tortured words have confessed.

The process of "decolonizing" Shakespeare’s work reportedly includes researching "the continued impact of colonialism" on world history and how "Shakespeare's work has played a part in this." The effort, which roughly means distancing work from Western perspectives, reportedly began after concerns were raised that the celebration of Shakespeare enables "White supremacy."

The trust has also warned that some items in its collections and archives relating to the iconic 16th century playwright may contain "language or depictions that are racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise harmful."

Shakespeare's Birthplace Trust reportedly worked on a research project with the University of Birmingham's Dr. Helen Hopkins. It concluded that praise of Shakespeare as a "universal" genius "benefits the ideology of White European supremacy." Their research concluded further that "colonial inculcation" spread European ideas about art and used Shakespeare as a symbol of "British cultural superiority" and "Anglo-cultural supremacy."

Celebrating Shakespeare’s work, the research argued, was part of a "White Anglo-centric, Eurocentric, and increasingly ‘West-centric’ worldviews that continue to do harm in the world today."

One of the solutions proposed by the project is for the trust to "present Shakespeare not as the ‘greatest,’ but as ‘part of a community of equal and different writers and artists from around the world.’"

The Telegraph also reported that the trust has worked to make Shakespeare’s legacy more international by organizing events like "celebrating Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali poet, and a Romeo and Juliet-inspired Bollywood dance workshop."

Censorship always has a presumed beneficiary--children and mothers, young girls, uneducated pagans--generally some subset felt by the Chief Arbitrators as incapable of making their own judgments and coming to their own conclusions. But the modern bluenose is breaking new ground. He is not trying to sanitize the world, he wants to attack what he feels is the threat to world stability: Quality.

Quality as a destabilizing force in the world is a chilling vision of man.