Sunday, February 1, 2009

What shall we do with a drunken sailor? Exchange him for a grumpy pirate!

In an odd twist of censorship, a government-funded book project in the UK has remodeled another beloved nursery rhyme to make it more palatable to our children. Previous censorship of nursery rhymes in the UK have included neglecting to give an award to the story of the three pigs (it might offend Muslims) and changing "Baa baa black sheep" to the less racially offensive "Baa baa rainbow sheep". Now "What shall we do with a drunken sailor?" becomes "What do you do to a grumpy pirate?" leading us to ask the question of what is next. Four and twenty rainbow birds baked in a pie? Little Jack Horner sitting in a corner eating his not-religiously-afiliated pie during the month of December? Three visibility-impaired mice? At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to helping everyone feel comfortable in society, but we do not believe that drunken sailors, black sheep, or pigs will corrupt our children's minds or incite them to violence against their neighbors.

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