Many people today believe we are not being told the whole truth about current or historical events. Some say our history is whitewashed (using a broad definition for that word), and a recent survey found half of Americans believe the national news media is actually lying to us.

At the same time, the Ronald Dahl estate wants to edit their popular novels to avoid repelling new readers with details like these from an AV Club article on Saturday:

But it hasn’t stopped fans of Dahl’s books from passing around excerpts today of new versions of his work in which Matilda is no longer a fan of Joseph Conrad or Rudyard Kipling, or a version of The Witches that goes to pains to remind you that there are lots of good reasons for a woman to wear a wig that have nothing to do with her being a monster with an insatiable desire to murder children.

As one commenter on that article said, this kind of rewriting will encourage further sanitizing of history. I wonder if this means complaints about the age inappropriateness of some content is no longer book banning. That reminds me I want to buy some good editions of Longfellow before they get erased.