PC police coming for those running amok in literature

The librarian watched as a funnily dressed fellow wearing a doublet and hose, and a lacy ruff around his neck, sporting a receding hairline and a natty moustache and goatee beard, rummaged through the bookshelves, muttering to himself, “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou not here, Romeo? And Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, where have you gone, bro?’The librarian walked up to the man and said, ‘Sorry, chum, but all those names you mentioned, in fact all the stuff written by the same guy have been banned because of PC.’‘What varlet doth this PC be, who dareth ban plays quilled by me?’ asked the man angrily.‘Hey, that rhymes! You a poet, or something, mate? But PC isn’t a varlet, whatever that is, but stands for ‘political correctness,’ which means that anything which may offend the sensitivities of anyone, anywhere, at any time, in any way, must be banned. And it all began with the English Heritage condemning Enid Blyton as being racist and xenophobic, and Rudyard Kipling for being an arch imperialist.’‘Whoever this Blyton and Kipling be, what, prithee, have they to do with me?’ demanded the goatee.‘Well, like them, the fellow whose works you’re looking for offended PC by being an obvious anti-Semite who made Shylock the villain of The Merchant of Venice who gets targeted by anal neo-Nazis like Portia. And if that weren’t enough to get the goat of PC, the guy went on to racially profile Othello as an African immigrant, probably illegal, with homicidal tendencies. And what about that Mama’s boy, Hamlet, with his unresolved Oedipal complex and his passive-aggressive misogyny which drove poor Ophelia nuts. Or that predatory corporate raider, Macbeth, who was both sexist and ageist and referred to senior citizens of the feminine persuasion as witches. Can you beat that? What was the guy thinking of?’ said the librarian.‘Quotha, sirrah, ’tis strange tales thou tell! Are there others consigned by PC to hell?’ asked the goatee.‘You bet there are,’ replied the librarian. ‘There’s that Homer chap who had Helen abducted to Troy by Paris who was obviously a human trafficker, and should have had a red alert issued against him by Interpol.’The librarian paused for much-needed breath before continuing. ‘There was also this Spanish bloke who was obviously in denial of climate change and went around sabotaging alternative energy wind farms by tilting at windmills with a lance and who must have been an agent provocateur in the pay of the fossil fuel industry.’The man with the goatee was about to say something when the librarian, now in full flow, interrupted him.‘And that Frenchie, Something Hugo, you’d think he’d have had the common decency to call his book The Differently Enabled Individual of Notre Dame. But he didn’t, did he? So, serves him right that he got banned by PC. Which, incidentally, also banned that Yank who wrote about this loony captain who was dead set on not just killing common or garden whales, which are an endangered species, but a white whale which must belong to a doubly endangered species. In banning him, PC had a whale of a time, if you’ll pardon the pun.’But the man with the goatee was no longer listening, but was muttering under his breath, ‘’Tis a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’As he stalked out of the library, he declaimed to no one in particular, ‘Readers, writers, publishers, lend me your tears. PC comes to bury literature, not to praise it.’And left the librarian thinking, ‘Now why do I seem to recall hearing something like that before…?’

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/3yIL51R