SALMAN RUSHDIE and BRIAN COX PROTEST THE WOKE CHANGES TO CHILDREN'S BOOKS BY ROALD DAHL : SHAME ON THE PUBLISHERS

I dread to think what my old college creative writing program has turned into, since it was pretty damn Woke already when I attended; overall in literature discussions there was the attitude that if you wrote a character who was of a certain culture or sexuality, a Chinese transexual or a Jewish bisexual, as examples, you damn better BE a Chinese transexual or a Jewish bisexual. Everything you wrote was assumed to be coming from your own experience and some sort of personal point of view, even an agenda of activism, that characters were representative, not that your IMAGINATION was at work or even that you RESEARCHED to come up with a character.  

AT THE SAME TIME in literature classes author's writing was being deconstructed and had various THEORIES such as Marxism or Freudism applied, without regard of the author ....  We were to know nothing of the author, their heritage, background, politics, or point of view at the time in their life when they wrote what they wrote....  Try doing that to ARTISTS.

I wonder what would be SAFE to express verbally or in writing in that program today, how a student who wrote without concern for pleasing professors or TA's or fellow students would be treated by WOKE peers. (I can tell you that if their characters were perverted, that would likely fly.) I think of the day I made a comment about a Native American character and my peers seemed to bristle, as if they did not know if I had the right to make that comment out of some percentage of Native American in my DNA or if I could not be right because I had no percentage.  (I had taken a college class at another college about Native Americans of the South West and California and had also done quite a bit of research for myself on those who had lived in my neighborhood historically.)

I was witness to a vegan staring down another student who dared eat a tuna salad sandwich, kind of like the way young environmental activist Greta Thunberg stares down people with hatred, appearing to want to kill someone with intent. 

I wondered if my TA who smoked and ate lunch meat was doing so just to hold onto his own culture or as a kind of autonomy...

***

Salman Rushdie I last saw at a UCLA LA TIMES Book Fair.  I didn't get into his presentation, but as the fair was closing down I saw him alone, rolling his suitcase behind him, going to his transportation like all other stragglers. I thought about how he'd had to go into hiding because of a book he wrote that was deemed against Islam.  He has paid the price for being an author in this world. So I am glad that the attack hasn't censored him.

It is horrible  that he was attacked and lost his eyesight in one eye because of one more mentally ill, demon possessed person who kills others just because. I used to be one of those people who said that if killing was wrong we should not have the death penalty. (I should research to see how many states that have the death penalty are also against abortion.) Lately I rethink that. I'm through feeling sorry for criminals. 

This article from the Daily Mail is typical of their newspaper on line. You have to deal with irritating popups, articles that are clearly ads, articles that are duplicated in more than one space, a lot of celebrity trash including all those desperate for attention and showing off their selfies such as the Kardashians, and the chronic hatred of President of the United States Joseph Biden and all things Democrat (except for rock stars). I have sworn off reading it - I started during the Edward Snowden and Julian Assange reportage - and am weening myself. Finding what you're interested in reading in Daily Mail is like trying to find a diamond that fell in a pile of shit, icky but possible.

DAILY MAIL : RUSHDIE and COX LEADING BACKLASH AGAINST WOKE PUBLISHERS

EXCERPT:

'Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship,' Rushdie wrote on Twitter.

'Puffin Books an the Dahl estate should be ashamed.'

PEN America, a community of some 7.500 writers that advocates for freedom of expression, said it was 'alarmed' by reports of changes to Dahl's books. ' If we start down the path of trying to correct for perceived slights instead of allowing readers to receive and react to books as written, we risk distorting the work of great authors and clouding the essential lens that literature offers on society,' tweeted Suzanne Nossel, chief executive of PEN America. 

Laura Hackett, a childhood Dahl fan who is now deputy literary editor of London's Sunday Times newspaper, had a more personal reaction to the news.  'The editors at Puffin should be ashamed of the botched surgery they've carried out on some of the finest children's literature in Britain,' she wrote ...

C 2023  Christine Trzyna

BRITISH UNIVERSITIES WITHDRAWING BOOKS - WARNING LABELS ON CLASSIC LITERATURE ? MOLLYCODDLED STUDENTS! EXPOSE!

DAILY MAIL : REMOVED BOOKS READING LIST  by Laurence Dollimore

"Universities are accused of 'mollycoddling' and 'patronizing' students as books are removed from reading lists over 'challenging' content and trigger warnings are slapped on 1,000 texts including works by Dickens, Shakespeare, and Chaucer."

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I know I swore off reading Daily Mail UK but sometimes Daily Mail UK is the publication that breaks the news, and has articles like this one that make me come back for more. 

Excerpt: The University of Sussex has 'permanently withdrawn' Miss Julie from an undergraduate literature module due to its discussion of suicide - a decision made after students complained about the potential 'psychological' and 'emotional effects' of the material.

*****

I was in the fifth grade when forced to read Anne Frank.  My focus was on Anne's crush on Peter. I start realizing humans could be more horrible than I could, in my innocence, imagine.  I preferred reading two Nancy Drew Mystery Stories a night. Nancy was independent, fast-thinking, adventurous and clever; she always solved the mystery.  (She was also a motherless only child with a father who was supportive of her and she had a mention-worthy boyfriend who could be called in if she really needed help as well as having some nice girlfriends.)

I think fifth grade was too soon for The Holocaust. That year, because I was a very advanced reader, I was also forced to read British classics including Dickens and recall hating the world he depicted - the real world he lived in by the way - so much I swore I would never be an English major or an English Literature major. By the time I did go to college one could, if they found the right college and program and qualify for it, study literature in the English language without having to focus on the whole English historical and cultural dominance, 

If a student is intelligent enough to qualify for college, subjects such as suicide should not be too hard to handle. 

I'm beginning to think there is a genetic problem in younger generations, that the average one of them could never have survived daily life in the past when it was so much more harsh.  What no hot shower? 

So many on prescription psychotropics!  Self-spared the full range of human emotions through these prescriptions or self treatment with pot or booze or substances.

THE JOY OF BLOGGING OPINION and DAILY MAIL UK - and MAIL ON LINE - AN AMERICAN REPUBLICAN BIAS and DISRESPECT OF PRESIDENT JOSEPH BIDEN , THE KARDASHIANS, HARRY AND MEGHAN (2)

About the KARDASHIAN SISTERS and their other mother,  which does tie into HARRY AND MEGHAN.

You see, most of the articles in Daily Mail UK - MAIL ON LINE are desperate to go against Harry and Meghan, and that's easy because it seems like Harry and Meghan have gone against Harry and Meghan.

Applying British notions to this couple, their choice in INTERIOR DECOR AND FURNITURE has even been attacked by an opinion personality at Daily Mail UK - MAIL ON LINE.  So to set the record straight, their home is a California home, a home that is in the sunshine and weather of Southern California. I don't know anyone here who wants to live in an interior that looks like it's in England, where is is mostly colder, rainier, darker, and where many people are living in housing so old and decaying it would get the wrecking ball here. 

The closest to stereotypical British décor I've ever seen in Southern California is in homes where the owners like antiques and clutter their spaces with them, including paintings and art all over the walls, and the use of dark paint or wallcoverings that give a cave-like experience. Our weather is better, we spend more time outdoors and don't seem to be so home bound as those who live in the colder, rainier, and older areas of the country.  There is a more casual attitude about the use of homes in general when you're tracking in sand and fine soil. 

On it goes, but the thing that has taken up so much media space, that has pitted the couple against the Royal Family in the media, is that someone yet to be disclosed had the nerve to wonder what skin color their children would have.

I'm going to state the obvious.  This kind of wondering is NOT in itself any evidence of bigotry, prejudice, or anti-Black or anti-White sentiment and it takes someone really looking for shit to find it in that wondering.  This kind of wondering is NOT something just people with "White" skin do.  This kind of wondering and acknowledgement of a range of skin colors as possible even links into why some Black people name their children to honor their skin color such as Ebony, Amber, and even Snow.  And I, and just about everyone I know has wondered about the range of skin colors of the White hued Kardashian sisters children who have been begot with Black hued men. It's why people for generations have looked at newborns and declared who they look like!  People don't just comment on skin color, they comment on hair, and eye color, and toes and noses.  It's just curiosity and most often in it is found beauty.

Further, if we go back a bit, we learn that Princess Diana has a "person of color" in her heritage as well, that person having been born of India, so red headed, blue eyed Harry is not 100% White.  In fact he has "one drop" of East Asian.

No, if there is any weirdness at all, it is the way some cultures or subcultures claim a person as theirs over "one drop."  We are all amazed at the advances in DNA testing and the acknowledgement that humans over generations have traveled, collided with other cultures, and mixed up their genetics, be that by loving consensual relationships or rape. Rape being the horror it is since forever, I wonder where aspects of my own DNA came in and maybe it was the 12th century.

This curiosity about skin color was once extended to the singer-dancer Michael Jackson and his children, be they begot with the woman he married or not, and still is.

I have no idea which Royal actually SAID something that might be construed as bigotry over what was probably curiosity, but I can bet it was a common curiosity, stated or not, of them all as well as that of the public. So if I were asked, and I won't be, I would advise Harry and Meghan to drop it, to not make an International case for bigotry over it.  

An example would be Prince Albert II of Monaco and his son with African born Nicole Coste, with whom he had a long romantic relationship with, they being in the news lately as their son, who appears "mixed," reaches the age of 18.  Albert is not apologizing, he's recognizing. The media condemnation that is difficult and abusive is the suggestion that he only married his wife, Princess Charlene, for her biology, as someone who might look more like his mother and keep their Mediterranean heritage more on the Nordic side.

Americans understand Harry's need and Meghan's, to be independent and earn their own living, pay back their debts, and to find usefulness and happiness in their lives. The transition into Americanism is a more difficult one for Harry, who is out of his element and who was raised to not give any opinions at all.  He has to suffer being made the target of insults just like our President Joseph Biden does from Daily Mail UK - MAIL ON LINE.  However, dropping the use of titles while in America is the American thing to do.  The British Press needs to keep the titles of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

There is so much need out there, who can condemn anyone who is attempting to make service to society their reason for being?

C 2021 Christine Trzyna

THE JOY OF BLOGGING OPINION and DAILY MAIL UK - and MAIL ON LINE - AN AMERICAN REPUBLICAN BIAS and DISRESPECT OF PRESIDENT JOSEPH BIDEN , THE KARDASHIANS, HARRY AND MEGHAN (1)

One of the joys of blogging is being able to express your opinion, especially as it's not the prevailing popular opinion.  That said, I confessed that during Covid, I got hooked on the publication out of Great Britain called DAILY MAIL - UK, also known as MAIL ON LINE, which is full of opinions, and opinions by British people who do not even live in the Unites States about American politics. (It seems to me there is an overlap of articles but I haven't checked - it would be a never ending task.) I'm in the process of getting un-hooked by using my knowledge of the reputation of other publications to chose which ones I read on line.  Also, this publication is a TABLOID, yet it's too bad, because some decent journalism and journalistic photography does get lost in the mix.

Here is how I got hooked.

I got into the important news story of Edward Snowden's disappearance into the airport in Moscow and thought the Daily Mail coverage was quite good. Prior to this I was not at all hooked on any news story.  

The Daily Mail format is that it almost appears a jumble of articles, and there is a repetition of articles, so basically your eyes go over articles you might not otherwise read, searching for ones you are interested in and it works like getting caught in a maze; you loose time.

Through Covid I began checking Daily Mail repeatedly, way too much.  I own this.  I've never applied to be interrupted by news by any news outlet so I do not use apps or sign up to be alerted.  I was compelled to interrupt my own thoughts by checking the news.  At some point, I realized that my interested in Covid and all that was happening due to the disease was more important to me than Edward Snowden or the issue of us being spied upon my our government or lied upon by our government when it was about national security.  Both Covid and national security are about our survival.

Lately I've realized just how biased the choice of articles and how not journalistic many of the HEADLINES at Daily Mail UK - Mail On Line are. The headlines and articles are usually uncomplimentary to President Joseph Biden, and disrespectful to start by not using the title President. To me, a country that is obsessed with titles, the publication starts their disrespect by refusing to use the person's title.  This would be like calling Queen Elizabeth, Liz, Queenie, or Lilibet.  For years Kate was used instead of Catherine, and to this day the Princess, who goes by Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, as married to Prince William, who goes by the Duke of Cambridge, is referred to as Kate Middleton. The press is making her earn her title long after the Royal Family did.

Is the Daily Mail UK - MAIL ON LINE referring to people incorrectly to save space?  They are not.  Daily Mail sometimes runs titles that pretty much tell the whole article or they used the same text beneath a picture that they use in the article so there is no space saving motive to not use titles.

There fails to be a mention in articles that read against President Joseph Biden that the Afghanistan war/problem goes back four Presidential administrations.  Therefore these articles are not historically correct or making an attempt to be historically correct.

Daily Mail UK is read by many a Republican husband of Democratic friends of mine and they are the type to basically look for the cheese-cake - the sexual photos of the Kardashians and other desperate-for-attention celebrities who show off their bodies and post selfies or other photos that sometimes are porn. Church on Sunday and then the cheese-cake. There is never an equivalent photo run of males.  I have no idea if males try to appear in the publication or are refused by a decision maker at the publication.

At the time that I began to loose time to Daily Mail UK - MAIL ON LINE , I didn't know who the Kardashians were.  I heard of them but could not name the sisters. (Now I can and find them of interest due to their presence in pop culture, but I still have never seen any of their reality shows nor do I intend to and I'm critical of them.)

Our President, whoever it is, should be referred to as President Joseph Biden or President Biden, not Joe, not Biden, and not "Sleepy Joe" a derogatory term that the bombastic President Donald Trump started, that only belongs in quotes attributed to him.  The use of this term otherwise by any media is an attack.

C 2021 Christine Trzyna