MONTECITO MURMURS: OLD JOURNOS DOING DRINKS

The Underbelly of America's Most Expensive ZIP Code

A former newspaper publisher, a former TV news anchor and me, a round table, shooting the breeze one end, blowing wind out the other, a cocktail each, reminiscing 200-plus years reporting between us.

Turns out, we were all in NYC, none of us known to one another, on 8 December 1980 when Lennon got popped, touched now by that mutual connection, otherwise bound by a love of words and the info biz, all of which have gone to hell in a handbasket, the lament of every fading generation about the world in general.

I’m swigging a Negroni, the most balanced potion ever created—one part gin, one part Campari, one part sweet vermouth, rocks, slice of orange—heaven in a glass. 

“You never want to free pour this,” I tell the other two. “It has to be perfectly measured.”

I’ll call the other two old journos Old Fashioned and Martini, their cocktails of choice. Old journos doing drinks.

“Did you see they’re rewriting Roald Dahl?”

“How can anyone rewrite Dahl?”

“Because you can’t call characters fat or ugly anymore.”

“Why can’t you call characters fat or ugly?”

“Because fat, ugly people supposedly get offended—or at least thin, pretty people think they should be.”

“Well, maybe fat people shouldn’t eat so much.”

“That doesn’t help with ugly. But I guess the argument is, some folks can’t help being fat, hormones or genetics.”

“It’s not just that. Oompa Loompas from Willy Wonka are no longer small men.”

“What are they?”

“Small people. You can’t write men are men or women are women anymore.” 

“So if I write up this dialog, I can’t call you a man?  That’s idiotic.”

The two men, uh, persons shrug.

“Whatever happened to midgets?”

“You kidding? Midgets got cancelled a long time ago. You call them short people. And by the way, now the word idiot can’t be in Roald’s books.”

“But how can you offend an idiot? Idiots can’t even read!"

“And the Terrible Tractors in Fantastic Mr. Fox?  They’re no longer black, in case it offends black people—or offends younger white people who think blacks should be offended.”

“Roald Dahl never would have allowed his writing to be altered like this. Must be the greedy beneficiaries of his estate, worried they’ll get cancelled and royalties will dry up.”

“Salman Rushdie addressed this. He called out the estate and the publisher, accused them of, and I quote, ‘absurd censorship’.”

“Salman lost an eye, didn’t he?”

“And got stabbed ten times.”

“Because of what he wrote.”

“Oh my God!” Martini stares at his phone, having just googled the matter. “Roald wrote, in a children’s book, ‘You can’t go round pulling the hair of every lady you meet, just to see what happens.’ They changed it to, ‘There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.’”

“Changed the whole meaning, but they forgot to change women to people.” 

“Shame on them.”

“Who’s next—Hemingway?”

“The chauvinist, misogynist and heavy boozer he was, I’m surprised he’s not already cancelled.”

“I’m sure they’re working on it.”

“Who’s they?”

“In Dahl’s case, it’s something called Inclusive Minds.”

“Sounds like exclusive stupidity.”

“They’re doing the same thing to Ian Fleming’s books.”

“Oh no—not James Bond!”

“Is Octopussy going to become Octoambiguousgenitalia?”

“Probably. What I read was, no more races and ethnicities.”

“No more color and character?”

“So what will they do with all their original books with the offending words—burn them?”

“They won’t have to—all books will be digital within a decade. And it doesn’t seem like anyone under forty reads books anymore anyway, print or digital.”

“So you’re saying it will be like Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the books will get burned and nobody will notice?”

“In Bradbury’s novel, any houses where books are found get burned too.”

“They’re already pulling down statues. Just a matter of time before they get around to landmark houses of cancelled historical figures, with or without books.”

“First to go, Arlington House at Arlington National Cemetery, Robert E. Lee’s old digs.”

“I read a study recently saying mainstream publishers cater to elderly liberal Jewish women over 60 because most book readers are in that category.”

“Where’d you read that?”

“I don’t recall. I tried to find it. Gone. I think it got deleted.”

“Why?”

“Because you can’t write elderly and you can’t write Jewish and you can’t write women. They probably should have called that category senior religious persons.”

“But that would apply to men too. And what I understand you to be saying is, women are generally book readers and men generally are not.”

“And that’s exactly the point: Generalizing is no longer tolerated.”

“So if words are restricted, how are we supposed to know the meaning of studies that are supposed to tell us what the market is for what authors write—or anything else?”

“There’s another issue here. How come I can dress up like a woman and read sexually explicit books to a group of kids at a library but I can’t refer to women as women, liberals as liberals and Jewish people as Jews?” 

A server arrives, but not to take a food order. She says, “Someone sitting at another table is objecting to your conversation.”

“What did we say that’s objectionable?”

“They said you’re making derogatory comments about elderly Jewish women.”

I point to Old Fashioned. “All he did was cite a study that makes elderly Jewish women look smart.”

“They say it’s offensive.  Maybe you can talk more quietly?”

“We’re hardly raising our voices,” says Martini, raising his voice.

“If you’re going to give me attitude, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“You mean, like, cancel us?”

“We can’t allow you to create a disturbance in here.”

“We’re not creating anything, we’re drinking, a social break from creating word patterns.”

She plunks our check on the table. “Sorry but you’re going to have to settle up and drink elsewhere.”

“Are you kidding?”

No, she’s not.

Eighty-sixed (again).

Because of words.

I later asked artificial intelligence platform DALL-E to create an image of "James Bond 007 changing gender."

Here's what I got...

A second image provided 007 with a new nickname: "Jondy Joid."