No, I’m not ready for the epic job of defenestrating Seth Abramson for his ethics-anti-matter “justification” of re-witing Roald Dahl’s works. It’s not that its going to be difficult— most readers here could do it as well as I can—it’s just going to be tedious and infuriating, and I’m on edge already.

Right now I want to pose a related issue: the song you can hear above from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Fifties Broadway hit “Flower Drum Song.” I hadn’t heard it myself for a very long time, and when it was played on the Sirius-XM Broadway channel, I almost drove off the road. It’s a famous song; Rodgers, as usual, provided a memorable melody to Oscar’s lyrics…but wow. Are there any demeaning female stereotypes that aren’t endorsed in this song? Here are the lyrics:

I’m a girl and by me that’s only great!
I am proud that my silhouette is curvy,
That I walk with a sweet and girlish gait,
With my hips kind of swively and swervy.

I adore being dressed in something frilly
When my date comes to get me at my place.
Out I go with my Joe or John or Billy,
Like a filly who is ready for the race!

When I have a brand-new hairdo,
With my eyelashes all in curl,
I float as the clouds on air do—
I enjoy being a girl!

When men say I’m cute and funny,
And my teeth aren’t teeth, but pearl,
I just lap it up like honey—
I enjoy being a girl!

I flip when a fellow sends me flowers,
I drool over dresses made of lace,
I talk on the telephone for hours
With a pound and a half of cream upon my face!

I’m strictly a female female,
And my future, I hope, will be
In the home of a brave and free male
Who’ll enjoy being a guy
Having a girl like me!

I enjoy being a girl!
I enjoy being a girl!

I flip when a fellow sends me flowers,
I drool over dresses made of lace,
I talk on the telephone for hours
With a pound and a half of cream upon my face!

When I have a brand-new hairdo,
With my eyelashes all in curl,
I float as the clouds on air do—
I enjoy being a girl!

When someone with eyes that smoulder,
Says he loves every silken curl
That falls on my ivory shoulder—
I enjoy being a girl!

When I hear a complimentary whistle
That greets my bikini by the sea,
I turn and I glower and I bristle—
But I’m happy to know the whistle’s meant for me!

Oh, baby, that whistle’s meant for me!

I’m strictly a female female,
And my future, I hope, will be
In the home of a brave and free male
Who’ll enjoy being a guy
Having a girl like…ME!

Clearly, by the criteria adopted by Puffin Books, that song would have to be re-written and censored, because they “regularly review the language to ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today.” I know women whose teeth would be set on edge right from the title, in which a fully grown woman refers to herself as a girl. As the song proceeds, she checks all sorts of sexist other boxes too, including expressing secret approval of sexual harassment.

The natural reaction of the woke producer, director and critic is, of course, to change the song, and have Linda, oh, I don’t know, sing about her aspirations of being a working executive while her stay-at-home partner takes care of the kids, or croon about her karate classes and how if a man whistles at her she kicks him in the nuts. Make those edits, and the song becomes a lie. literally nobody found the song offensive or even unrealistic in 1958. It’s a cultural marker: how far we have come, and in a relatively short time! Feminists should love that song. It needs to be judged as part of the society that spawned it, and today it gives us an invaluable insight into the past. “Updating” the lyrics destroys that perspective.

As it happens, “Flower Drum Song,” which ironically was a project by Rodger’s and Hammerstein to add diversity to their repertoire, has been doomed to obscurity by that very diversity. The show requires an almost entirely Asian cast. Making up white actors to appear Asian is now “racist” (it’s just make-up, but I’m not going into that issue again here); making an Asian character white is “white-washing” (but making a white character Asian is “equity and inclusion”), and Asian-Americans decided that the portrayal of Asian-Americans was unrealistic, “stereotypical and patronizing” towards Asians, (while the portrayal of whites in, say, “Guys and Dolls” and “The Music Man” is completely flattering and dignified). When the show was revived in 2002, the Rodgers and Hammerstein group that own the rights and that, like Dahl’s publishers, cares only about money while the integrity of the works that allow it to exist is a minor consideration, commissioned a completely new book to avoid racial controversies. (It did not change the lyrics of “I Enjoy Being A Girl,” which is still the best known song from the show.)

The politically-correct version bombed.

Good.