Margaret Mitchell’s classic novel “Gone With the Wind” has been slapped with a “trigger warning” by its publisher to alert unwitting readers that the book contains “hurtful” or “harmful phrases” that might offend sensitive consumers.
“We want to alert readers that there may be hurtful or indeed harmful phrases and terminology that were prevalent at the time this novel was written and which are true to the context of the historical setting of this novel,” publisher Pan Macmillan said in a note in the book’s 2022 edition.
Oh, but it gets even worse.
The 1936 novel, Pan Macmillan continues, “includes problematic elements including the romanticisation of a shocking era in our history and the horrors of slavery,” including “the representation of unacceptable practices, racist and stereotypical depictions and troubling themes, characterisation, language and imagery.”
Because it’s a book written in the 1930s about the fall of the South in the Civil War.
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On top of the trigger warning, the publisher asked historical novelist (and resident white woman) Phillips Gregory to pen a forward to the book, in which she said Mitchell - who is long since dead and unable to defend herself - “defends racism” and “glamorises and preaches white supremacy” in her novel - the award-winning film adaptation of which led to the first Oscar won by a black woman for Best Supporting Actress.
Asking a black author to write the forward, Pan Macmillan explained, would have forced them to endure “emotional labour.” So they had a white lady do it, instead.
It seems leftists need to be protected, coddled, and sheltered from all mention of anything that might offend their delicate sensibilities - even historical facts or literature - lest they be “triggered” by something “hurtful," which Pan Macmillan seems to care an awful lot about.
As for me, frankly, I don't give a damn.