Ask Me Help Desk - Cancel culture's war on children's books authors continues

Here's the problem . Dahl's estate was sold to Netflix in 2021. When I was a subscriber they had some excellent content . But Netflix pushed the political correctness agenda . I believe this coincided with them adding advertisements into their format (for a fee you can have ad free content now) .

But the Jacobins eventually feast on their own. Netflix had (from what I hear ) a well made Adam's Family spinoff about the daughter Wednesday directed by Tim Burton . It lasted 1 season before it was cancelled .

What was the problem ? The accusation made by the woke mob was that it was racist . The main antagonist portrayed by black actress Joy Sunday is a mean girl .AND the Black mayor owns a museums that celebrates Pilgrims (oh the horror ! ) .

How far they take the plunge is unclear . I don't believe we will be seeing any more Dave Chappelle specials on the network. But who knows ? Their plunge in subscriptions last year may have been caused by their woke agenda.

For balance ;Earnest Owens at Rolling Stone says that cancel culture is good for democracy.

Why Cancel Culture Is Good for Democracy – Rolling Stone

He says it allows the marginalized to hold the powerful accountable . I liken it more to an uncontrolled mob with pitchforks and a guillotine at the ready.

And then the question comes, to hold them responsible for what? For using some words that I don't like?

https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxne....jpg?ve=1&tl=1

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomder55

For balance ;Earnest Owens at Rolling Stone says that cancel culture is good for democracy.

Why Cancel Culture Is Good for Democracy – Rolling Stone

Excellent link, tomder - one of the best ever! Thanks.

A superb example of critical thinking. Everybody should read that link.

as I said

I liken it more to an uncontrolled mob with pitchforks and a guillotine at the ready.

Owens says cancel culture "has leveled the playing field for those who can’t always rely on the government to protect them" and "Cancel culture is the poison to those in power that have benefited from unchecked free speech."

Cancel culture is a poison alright . But one thing we have learned this year is that it is very much a tool of the government .It is a clear threat to free speech and the government has used various media platforms to make sure speech the government doesn't approve of is systemically suppressed .

The reasons used by one group to justify their speech/thought control over another group seem to be endless.

Gotta love U-Turns, or has common sense won through....
https://news.sky.com/story/roald-dah...books-12818769
Roald Dahl classic texts to be kept in print after outrage over changes to books

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomder55

one thing we have learned this year is that it is very much a tool of the government .It is a clear threat to free speech

Nonsense. It encourages accurate speech. Like anything, some will abuse the idea.

I think it's a good thing to understand that the man who wrote "All men are created equal" owned human beings and raped one of them since she was an article of property belonging to Thomas Jefferson.

"Accurate speech"? Liberal code for, "You will speak as we dictate." The concept is "FREE speech". That means we don't have to please liberal speech police.

"...raped one of them since she was an article of property belonging to Thomas Jefferson." Funny comment coming from someone who just advocated for "accurate speech". That is far, far from being a proven truth.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jlisenbe

"Accurate speech"? Liberal code for, "You will speak as we dictate." The concept is "FREE speech". That means we don't have to please liberal speech police.

And liberals don't have to please conservative speech police. Oh my! Now what???

Quote:

And liberals don't have to please conservative speech police. Oh my! Now what???

You have an example of this? I doubt it, but even if you do, I will agree that speech in general should be non-policed by government agencies, be they liberal or conservative, or by self-appointed experts in the general population. Will you agree with that?

Quote:

I think it's a good thing to understand that the man who wrote "All men are created equal" owned human beings and raped one of them since she was an article of property belonging to Thomas Jefferson.

if that is all you know about Jefferson then you are being taught a biased and unfair history . I have plenty of issues with Jefferson .I happen to think that it was lucky for the nation that he was away on assignment in Paris during the Constitutional Convention . But I think he was one of the greatest men in our history , He is essentially cancelled even in his home .

If you have studied the tremendous contributions of the extraordinary Thomas Jefferson, you may not recognize the person depicted at his home at Monticello. You will learn almost nothing of the wisdom, patriotism, and Herculean efforts he made to build America. Instead, you will hear and see only information about enslaved people. While this is important, the noble man is completely lost. Hopefully in the years to come, Monticello will balance the present narrative. While all of the people working as guides are TREMENDOUS, the emphasis has become off balance.in their effort to balance history . one reviewer of the experience wrote ;

“The tour guides play ‘besmirchment derby,’ never missing a chance to defame this brilliant, complex man,”

NYC removed his statue from City Council

What cancel culture has become is the Taliban destroying the Budda statues of Bamyan . They are not balancing history .They are erasing it .

Quote:

Originally Posted by jlisenbe

You have an example of this? I doubt it, but even if you do, I will agree that speech in general should be non-policed by government agencies, be they liberal or conservative, or by self-appointed experts in the general population. Will you agree with that?

Definitely agree!

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomder55

Athos: I think it's a good thing to understand that the man who wrote "All men are created equal" owned human beings and raped one of them since she was an article of property belonging to Thomas Jefferson.

if that is all you know about Jefferson then you are being taught a biased and unfair history .

Did he own human beings and rape one or more of them?

He had many slaves.

Rape ? ...undetermined ...it is a matter of historical debate at best .

There was a lot of slander about him during the very contentious 1800 election. Much of the charge comes from that election .

There is no evidence ;including DNA that proves Sally Heming gave birth to his child.

Jefferson Was Falsely Accused — Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society (tjheritage.org)

As far as I can tell ;the accusation is an accumulation of salacious rumors and irresponsible scholarship ,inspired by political grudges, academic opportunism, and the woke trend of historical revisionism that seeks to drag the reputation of the Founding Fathers through the mud.

Quote:

Did he own human beings and rape one or more of them?

The "accurate speech" police will be coming after you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jlisenbe

The "accurate speech" police will be coming after you.

I put on my librarian hat and spent some time researching this. Rape is probably the wrong word. But Jefferson very likely fathered all her children.

likely ? again rumor and innuendo without any proof.

As for the slave trade in post colonial America ;it was the creating of the nation that compelled the end of the trade in a generation of the nation's founding as I explained previously

Half the new states began the process immediately after the revolution.1777, Vermont's constitution outlawed it . Massachusetts and New Hampshire also outlawed slavery 6 year later. Pennsylvania passed a law outlining a process of gradual emancipation in 1780.New York and New Jersey, where slavery was more prevalent, pass gradual emancipation laws 1799 and 1804. Before the Republic was founded; the Northwest Ordinance in 1787, which organized new territory west of the Appalachian Mountains and north of the Ohio River, prohibited slaveholders from bring slaves into the territory . The dominance that the slave holding states in the south had at the beginning of the Republic gradually weakened. .Emancipation was inevitable . The trans-Atlantic slave trade was abolished by the Constitution in 1808 .
The flaw in all this revisionism is that 21st century values are attributed to people of the 17th and 18th century. The founding of America propelled the changes .

Quid declares war on American parents (askmehelpdesk.com)

Quote:

Rape is probably the wrong word. But Jefferson very likely fathered all her children.

Change "very likely" to "possibly" and we have a deal. Tom's "accurate speech" concerning Jefferson's legacy is worth reading.

https://bcdbimages.s3.amazonaws.com/...abody_logo.jpg

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomder55

likely ? again rumor and innuendo without any proof.

She was a "house slave." Jefferson was the master and the only male in the house. Think about that. How did she get pregnant six times?

Wikipedia states: Multiple lines of evidence, including modern DNA analyses, indicate that Jefferson impregnated Hemings over the span of many years, and historians now broadly agree that he was the father of her six children.^[2]
[2] Stockman, Farah (June 16, 2018). "Monticello Is Done Avoiding Jefferson's Relationship With Sally Hemings". The New York Times. Retrieved July 15,2018.

Quote:

How did she get pregnant six times?

That it is possible is definite. That it is definite is highly questionable. But one way or the other, it seems unlikely she was raped, and just because she got pregnant six times means nothing. Did he impregnate all of the other slave women who became pregnant as well?

I think we can all agree that slavery is terrible. Still, Bill Clinton was a repeated womanizer, but no one seems to think it necessary to mention it at every possible moment. Perhaps it would be good to have a balanced approach.

She was half-sister to Jefferson's wife and approximately three-quarters white.

The author of the Nature Magazine's 1988 study on Jefferson's possible paternity was pathologist Eugene Foster . He admitted that other Jefferson family members could've been father . Jefferson's son Randolf and uncles were known to have had relations with slaves .

Asked why they didn't mention Randolph or his sons in their previous article, also published in Nature, Foster says it was because they weren't suspects. For years, members of the Jefferson family had claimed that sons of Thomas Jefferson's sister--Peter or Samuel Carr--had most likely fathered Hemings's children. The DNA study aimed to settle that question, Foster says. He agrees that the Nature headlines on the initial report and on an accompanying comment by geneticist Eric Lander of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and historian Joseph Ellis of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley were "misleading," but both articles were hurried into print, he says, to beat the popular media, which had learned about their results and were poised to publish.Thomas Jefferson Off the Hook? | Science | AAAS

I take nothing out of Monticello as serious. They have sold out Jefferson's legacy to the woke mob.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomder55

I take nothing out of Monticello as serious. They have sold out Jefferson's legacy to the woke mob.

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation states that the evidence for Jefferson fathering Sally Hemmings' children is conclusive.

Read why here:
https://www.monticello.org/thomas-je...sally-hemings/

Naturally, like all good Republicans when faced with testimony against whatever it is they're proposing, they simply denounce it as a pack of lies.

It seems that the primary order of business has become the defaming of the founding fathers in an effort to undermine the Constitution by belittling its authors. Not exactly a good example of "accurate speech".

It's hard to imagine TJ fathering six children with this woman. The risk of public censure would seem to have been great. Maybe 18th century colonials just winked at such behavior, but that still seems pretty extreme.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wondergirl

Rape is probably the wrong word. But Jefferson very likely fathered all her children.

When the slave Master approaches his slave with sexual advances, and the slave has no power to refuse those advances, I call it rape. If others (not you, WG) wish to call it a romantic love story, that is their privilege.

https://www.monticello.org/thomas-je...sally-hemings/

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomder55

What cancel culture has become is the Taliban destroying the Budda statues of Bamyan .

The Taliban removed the Buddha statues because of their religious bigotry.

The Jefferson controversy is based on his FACTUAL ownership of human beings as slaves.

Hardly the same thing.

Quote:

If others (not you, WG) wish to call it a romantic love story, that is their privilege.

Except, of course, that no one here has posted that. As I understand it, this arrangement was supposedly put together while TJ and SH were in France where she was, for that time, free due to the fact that France did not allow slavery. She could have chosen to stay, but instead came back to Virginia with the condition that any children she bore would be set free. Or at least that is what has been alleged by some parties. That he even fathered children by her is far from proven. Perhaps someone else knows the details better.

Quote:

not you, WG

"No liberal shalt at any time be critical of another liberal."

That was the lifestyle back then centuries ago -- the plantation master was the master. Full stop. Everyone -- his wife, his children, his slaves -- bent to his wishes.

Wikipedia: In the fall of 2001, the National Genealogical Society published a special issue of its quarterly devoted to the Jefferson–Hemings controversy. In several articles, its specialists concluded that, as the genealogist Helen M. Leary wrote, the "chain of evidence": historical, genealogical, and DNA, supported the conclusion that Thomas Jefferson was the father of all of Hemings' children.^{[69]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff...gs_controversy}

Quote:

That was the lifestyle back then centuries ago -- the plantation master was the master. Full stop. Everyone -- his wife, his children, his slaves -- bent to his wishes.

Which does not even come close to proving that TJ fathered children with SH.

Quote:

the "chain of evidence": historical, genealogical, and DNA, supported the conclusion

Note the use of "supported", indicating that the evidence falls short of "proved" or "demonstrated". So again, it is possible but not certain.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jlisenbe

So again, it is possible but not certain.

We'll find out once we're in Heaven.

I already did my commentary on the woke TJ Foundation The Foundation has turned Monticello into a single issue horror of slavery exhibit . .A tour of his home is a revisionist history that smears one of the great inventors, thinkers, architects, and statesmen of all time . It is an exercise in cancel pure and simple . The story can be told and still respect Jefferson's contributions to the country and to Western culture Enlightenment .

Yes the American cancel culture is EXACTLY like the Taliban that has waged war on Afghanistan's poetry, film, music, art, artifacts, antiquities, statues, museums, history . If unchecked the Afghan culture pre-Taliban will have successfully been erased from memory in a generation .

Yes all the children will be taught Jefferson was a slave holder while the fact that he eliminated the transatlantic slave trade to the United States; that he was instrumental in the creation of a free Midwest that led to a weakening of the slave states ...doubled the size of the nation with free states ;and led directly to a Civil War that freed the slaves a generation later . That abolitionist movements took shape after he penned 'all men are created equal' will be erased and the only thing the kids will retain is that he had slaves .

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomder55

'all men are created equal' will be erased and the only thing the kids will retain is that he had slaves .

Comparing the Taliban to your "woke/cancel" nonsense is ridiculous. No one has argued that Jefferson's accomplishments should be erased - no one beside you, that is.

Bringing our history up to date with truths that have been ignored for centuries is a good thing. You don't like it because it disturbs your jaundiced and false view of a USA that never existed. Time to grow up and acknowledge the evil committed along the way to the present day. That does NOT mean ignoring the good, even tho that seems to be what you want. I wonder why.

I'm not the one toppling statues .

Quote:

I'm not the one toppling statues .

Great reply.

Could add that when the story of Jefferson becomes centered around his owning slaves, then it basically amounts to an erasing, or at least diluting of, Jefferson's accomplishments.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomder55

I'm not the one toppling statues .

Neither is anybody else.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jlisenbe

Could add that when the story of Jefferson becomes centered around his owning slaves, then it basically amounts to an erasing, or at least diluting of, Jefferson's accomplishments.

Of course it dilutes Jefferson's accomplishments. Why wouldn't owning slaves do that? Did you expect it to improve his reputation?

Quote:

https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/custom...quote_icon.png Originally Posted by tomder55 https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/custom...post-right.png
I'm not the one toppling statues .

Neither is anybody else.

From city hall to woke cancel culture mobsters ,to school districts to colleges, to the Jefferson Foundation and home in Monticello ,Jefferson's being cancelled

A Thomas Jefferson statue is removed from New York City Hall after 187 years | CNN

Portland Protesters Topple Thomas Jefferson Statue at Jefferson High School (wweek.com)

Thomas Jefferson removed from elementary school's name because he owned slaves | WCIV (abcnews4.com)

UVA students want Jefferson ;who founded the college in 1819 ,cancelled from the University.

"Our physical environment — from statues to building names to Jefferson’s overwhelming presence — exalts people who held the same beliefs as the repugnant white supremacists"

EDITORIAL: To create “citizen leaders,” U.Va. must do more - The Cavalier Daily - University of Virginia's Student Newspaper

“The tour guides play ‘besmirchment derby,’ never missing a chance to defame this brilliant, complex man,”
Monticello draws criticism after trashing Thomas Jefferson (nypost.com)

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomder55

From city hall to woke cancel culture mobsters ,to school districts to colleges, to the Jefferson Foundation and home in Monticello ,Jefferson's being cancelled

Taliban and Buddha - Jefferson. Apples and oranges.

Then they came for Ian Flemming

Ian Fleming’s James Bond books rewritten to remove ‘offensive’ references | The Independent