Are woke editors coming for you?: Gutfeld
Greg Gutfeld and guests discuss how Roald Dahl’s stories, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, have become 'wokified' on ‘Gutfeld!’
Greg Gutfeld poked fun at a publisher's changes to Roald Dahl's children's books, removing potentially offensive language in an effort to ensure the books "can continue to be enjoyed by all today."
"Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee do, are woke editors coming for you?" Gutfeld joked during Monday's show.
Puffin, the publisher of Dahl's classic works, has hired sensitivity readers to make changes to certain portions of the author's words in the U.K. editions.
The publisher's rewrite, first reported by The Telegraph, altered numerous descriptions of certain characters' physical appearances, removed references to some characters being fat, and changed some language to be gender-neutral.
Roald Dahl, the author of several popular works, including Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. (Tony Evans, E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service)
One of the beloved stories that saw changes was "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."
"For example, in the original version of Oompa Loompas are called Small Men. But in the woke version, they're small people, which is weird," Gutfeld explained. "So they're gender-neutral now, but still used as slave labor, thank God."
Another change was how one of the golden-ticket winners, Augustus Gloop, was characterized.
"Remember Augustus Gloop, while he's no longer described as fat, but instead enormous which actually sounds worse," Gutfeld said.
In "James and the Giant Peach," the character of Miss Sponge is no longer described as "the fat one," Miss Spider’s head is not "black" anymore, and the Earthworm has given up its "lovely pink" skin for "lovely smooth skin."
In Dahl's "The Witches", first published in 1983, a paragraph noting that witches are bald beneath their wigs includes a new line that reads: "There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that."
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Puffin, along with the Roald Dahl Company, made the changes in coordination with Inclusive Minds, which is described by the spokesperson as "a collective for people who are passionate about inclusion and accessibility in children’s literature."
The "Gutfeld!" guests did not agree with the move, as former CIA operative Mike Baker responded to the changes arguing, "If you can't handle it, don't read it."
"The world is an incredibly stupid place right now," he added.
"Sensitivity experts, this is a thing now?" Fox News contributor Tulsi Gabbard asked, adding that no children are asking for these changes.
"It's these adults. … They are not letting us live our lives. They have to go into these children's books and fulfill their mission of conversion, essentially, that we all have to comply. We all have to not only accept and tolerate their view in their narrative, we have to celebrate it."
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Dr. Drew Pinsky asked where these revisions will end.
"Where are we going? Is Shakespeare next, Dostoyevsky? … What's the plan, everybody? When is it pure enough?" he argued.
Fox News' Kyle Morris contributed to this report.
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