Dear Rush, a VERY appropriate--and timely--question!
Here's a link to The Rap Sheet's recent blog about "Censoring Christie" (as in Agatha Christie), and how reissues of James Bond, Agatha Christie, Hercule Peroit, etc. are being reworked for politically correctness:
I took a look at the article (and noted your appropriate comment as well!). What we are witnessing is a cultural "cleansing" that is little better than a modern-day version of the book burnings of the 1930s. We hear about "cancel culture," and this "purifying" of classic books is another example of those dark tentacles reaching out to strangle whatever is within reach. Today, at an alarming rate, up is down, hate is love, evil is good, darkness is light, war is peace...
Sadly, this cultural upheaval will certainly get much worse before there is any chance of things getting better. But that will be very difficult, indeed, for our western culture that is, tragically, in the throes of a suicidal decline. Perhaps we can all cherish what we still have while we still have it. Charlie Chan still remains a prime target of the "enlightened" mob...
Lou and Rush, How right you are about the PC crowd taking over. The crazy part is (as if there is just one crazy part) by censoring this stuff the censors do an injustice to the very narrative and historical thread that led to their current point of enlightenment. If they don’t know where they’ve been how can they know how they got here and the cultural ideals that allowed it to happen? If there were no founding fathers (as flawed as modern historians want to portray them) there would be no constitution that codified the unalienable principles that provided the very laws that broke slavery and injustice.
How many know that our own Charlie Chan was a positive step forward from the earlier “yellow-peril” stereotypes.
On a final note. That is why in this age of streaming (where the content provider can alter the content at will) I have hard copy DVD’s and books of my favorite films and stories. Some day when humans have “evolved” into the Eloi of the Time Machine or our world turns into “1984”. Some of us will know the real truth.
