Politically Correct Bullshit Alert!

[elfs]

From the New York Times:

In a newly revised edition of Goodnight Moon, a book which has lulled children to sleep for nearly 60 years, the publisher, HarperCollins, has digitally altered the photograph of Clement Hurd, the illustrator, to remove a cigarette from his hand.

Comments

Well...

[(Anonymous)]

at least they haven't revised Magritte's "Betrayal of Images" to be an empty picture...

Joshua Sasmor

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Gah.

I remember back when I was a senior in high school when my English teacher brought in a newspaper article about how they were re-writing Peter Rabbit to make it "easier" for children. The rest of the class couldn't figure out why I and the teacher were so horrified.

[casualprofessor.livejournal.com]

I just sent the link to my spouse - she's a senior designer in HarperCollins children's dept. She hasn't mentioned this to me...

[kengr]

Arthur C. Clarke predicted this *years* back. It was a minor plot/background element in one of his books (Ghost from the Grand Banks?)

He had them doing it to movies too.

Censorship in general...

[(Anonymous)]

According to the Wikipedia article about Fahrenheit 451, a 1967 version of the book was released without the words "damn" or "hell" so that the books could be distributed to schools. When Bradbury objected to censoring a book about censorship, the words were restored and an afterword was added with Bradbury's comments about "well-intentioned censorship."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451

Ironic, eh?

Joshua Sasmor