Title Lock? Try File Activity Notification System - It's Free!

You don't need to spend money to monitor filings.

I noted before that Newt Gingrich was selling fear on Cable Television (which only old people watch anymore). Some "Sovereign Citizen" is going to file a bogus title document and steal your home out from under you!  If only it was that easy - every home in America would be stolen by now.

The reality is, if someone did try to file a bogus deed to your property, they still would not own it.  It might be a hassle to sort it out, but not impossible.  And the "Title Lock" companies, despite their name, do not actually lock titles.  For an annual fee, they agree to check to see if anyone has filed any documents relating to your property and then notify you, at which point, it is up to you (and your lawyer) to sort things out.

So these services are not a scam, just an unnecessary service that you probably don't need.

I was searching tax records online - it is amazing how many properties are tax delinquents and how many actually go to tax auction every year.  Yes, you can bid on such properties, but if they are encumbered by a mortgage, you would still have to pay that off.  And even if you "won" the auction, the owner would have a year to "cure" the defect and pay the back-taxes.  No one is giving away free houses.

But while I was searching for this, I came across a service called FANS - File Activity Notification System.  Once you log in (with your e-mail address and a login code sent to your e-mail address) you can enter names and addresses and the system will notify you if anything is filed in your name or address:

The Filing Activity Notification System (FANS), https://fans.gsccca.org, is designed to offer individuals the ability to receive a notification when certain real estate and personal property records are filed with, indexed, and data is transmitted by Clerks of Superior Court throughout the state of Georgia.

Individuals may opt-in to this voluntary system designed to send an electronic notification of the filing and of a document in select official county records when document index data entered and transmitted to the Georgia Superior Court Clerks’ Cooperative Authority by the Clerk matches the notification criteria you set. All notifications will only be forward-looking and generated for a document filed and index data received after the date the user creates a notification request.

All user notifications generated by the system are entirely dependent upon index data entered and transmitted by the Clerk of Superior Court in the county of filing. As a result, any notices generated by this system are not guaranteed by the Georgia Superior Court Clerks’ Cooperative Authority to be either comprehensive, accurate, complete, or current. The user of the system acknowledges these conditions as well as additional conditions and restrictions related to the type of notifications the user may define and the general terms and conditions of this website.

That is the only flaw in the system - it only works if your County is part of the Georgia Superior Court Clerks' Cooperative Authority.  If they didn't opt-in to this system (and not all Counties have) then you may not receive notices.  Also, if there is a typo in the address or name submitted, it may not match up with your search criteria.   However, it is a free service, so you can't beat that.

Whether they have this in other States, I do not know.  The best course of action is to not obsess about things like this, though.  Despite what Newt Gingrich says, your house is not going to be stolen out from under you.  Well, unless you got one of those reverse mortgages advertised by Tom Selleck!

You know what?  Whether it is Newt, or Tom, or "The Fonz", maybe it is just a bad idea to buy things off the television that are endorsed by washed-up celebrities.

Just a thought.

The Tunnel of Life

Life is like a tunnel.  Is there light at the end of it?  Or just a solid wall?

I had sort of a fever dream last night.  I was driving through a tunnel, a tunnel that was life.  At the opening, it was ten lanes wide and there was no other traffic.  I could steer this way and that - the possibilities were endless.

But as I drove along, the tunnel got narrower.  I had fewer options and had to steer more carefully, lest I plow into the wall of the tunnel.

Eventually, the tunnel came down to one lane - and even that got narrower and narrower.  Where would this tunnel end - at a blank wall I would hit at 70 MPH?  Or would there be "light at the end of the tunnel?"

Either way, the tunnel would end, one way or another.  I suppose if you are religious, you might believe there is light at the end of the tunnel.  "Walk toward the light!" they say.  And you end up in heaven and live forever and ever amen.  But I illustrated before that "living forever" in some sort of heavenly afterlife would be problematic.  Our minds cannot fathom infinity, and I suppose to primitive peoples, the promise of "eternal life" seemed to them like 100 years or so.

As I noted in that earlier posting, if you have all eternity, you will eventually meet every person who ever lived, learn every language, learn to play every instrument, read (and write) every book, do every possible thing - eternity is forever. You would, in fact, become a God yourself.  And as I understand it, that is sort of what Mormons believe - that you turn into Jesus and "get your own planet" to lord over.  Hopefully it isn't Pluto or something like that.

Some religions teach that you are reincarnated - which sounds almost worse than living forever.  You come back with no memory of your past lives (unless you are Shirley MacLaine) and are doomed to repeat life over and over again, in different forms.  Sounds like a form of hell to me.  Then again, so does living forever.

But getting back to our tunnel, I guess the reason I dreamt this, was a feeling that the world is indeed closing in on me. I mean, not dramatically, but as you get older, your options do become more and more limited.  And no, I don't want to read about some guy who became a concert pianist at age 70 or something.  Save that heartwarming shit for the evening news on a slow day.  The reality of life is that you have a lot of options when you are younger - not infinite options, of course, but options nevertheless.  As you get older, it becomes harder to change your life, change careers, change spouses, or whatever.  Not impossible, just harder.

And eventually, your body (and mind) start to falter and your options become very, very limited. If you've landed somewhere comfortable you can be quite happy about that. If not, it is much harder to change at that point.  That's why I am sad when I read some posting by a 20-something who declares, "I'll  never be able to afford to retire, so I might as well spend all my money treating myself now!"   It isn't that they can't afford to retire, just that they'd rather have fun now and impress people with status than plan for the future.  They'll hit the tunnel wall pretty quickly.

Maybe it was a stupid dream.  I have been sleeping weirdly since taking this Paxlovid.  But I think regardless of whether you believe there is a light at the end of the tunnel or not, it is undisputed that the tunnel comes to a finite end at some point, and you have to think about what you choose to do traversing the tunnel, rather than worry about the afterlife or simply face-planting into a wall out of spite.

Commercial Real Estate Meltdown?

Like dominoes, once a building goes bust, it takes down another.

I wrote before, how in law school, I took a course in real estate law, thinking it might come in handy some day if I wanted to do real estate closings.  The course turned out to be something different - taught by an attorney who represented a commercial office builder in the DC area.  He made money putting together "deals" in the 1980's and then made money taking them apart in the 1990's as the market for office space collapsed.

As I noted in an earlier posting, the problem was overbuilding, and once that happened, a domino effect occurred, which caused many building owners to go bankrupt:

In the late 1980's, this happened in many cities, and created a domino effect. In Washington DC, a new office building would go belly up, and the new owners, paying pennies on the dollar for the place, would offer it for rent at bargain prices. Tenants from adjacent buildings would then jump ship, leaving that building vacant, driving another landlord or builder bankrupt. Like giant dominoes, each building would in turn, topple another, with devastating effect.

I lived through this, as at the time, I was working for a good law firm with fairly inexpensive offices near Thomas Circle - a sort of sketchy area known at the time for prostitution and where Mayor Marion Barry was arrested for smoking crack.  The partners said they would "never move" as they had a low cost lease.  But then the real estate boom turned to bust, and their lease was up for renewal and they realized they could rent some high-class real estate in a brand-new building right above Metro Center for less money, so they moved.  The landlord at Thomas Circle was no doubt pissed-off that we left, as he had a mortgage to pay.

As my "professor" explained it, in the early 1980's, it was morning in Reagan's America and massive amounts of money were being thrown at military spending.  Every defense contractor and lobbyist needed new office space - government always gets bigger, even if government gets smaller.  Bill Clinton, for example, claimed to make government "the smallest it has been since the Kennedy administration" but accomplished this by firing government employees and contracting out their services.  That required yet more office space.  The game never ends.

So in the early 1980's, you could propose a new office building and have every square inch rented before you even broke ground.  It was like shooting fish in a barrel, so everyone jumped in - capitalism at its best, and worst.  By the mid-1980's, you might have half the place rented before breaking ground, and the rest by the time the building was finished.  By the end of the decade, "see-through" buildings were going up with no tenants at all, even months after completion - which is how the partners at my firm scored a deal on prime office space for cheap.

But that meant tenants fleeing older buildings, which in turn went bankrupt, and were then sold for pennies-on-the-dollar, bankrupting the builder and the bank that financed it.  The new owners, with a low cost basis, could then poach tenants from other, high-rent buildings, and the process repeats, each building toppling over (figuratively speaking) like a row of ugly dominoes walking across downtown DC.

Eventually, the carnage stopped.  The lenders realized that if they didn't accommodate the building owners somehow, they would get slaughtered as well.  So the work-out was created, which created lots of billable hours for lawyers.  Some folks call it a "cram-down" and old Donald Trump was king of this - foisting off his problems onto his lenders, who should have know better to lend money to him in the first place.  Same shit, different year - casinos in Atlantic City were overbuilt.

It's like the old saying, "If you owe the bank $100,000, you've got a problem.  If you owe the bank $100,000,000, the bank has a problem!"  And banks don't like to have problems.

In a typical work-out, the lender assumes at least partial ownership of the building, and the building owner (who may be the developer) becomes the building operator, renting out the place, collecting lease money, doing routine maintenance, and taking a little off the top.  The lender has an asset on their books, so they no longer appear to be insolvent, and they have a nice income stream from it as well - that they don't have to manage.  Over time - a decade or so - the market eventually recovered and the lenders cashed out (perhaps selling back to the builder) and everyone was happy.

In a way, these workouts are not dissimilar from bankruptcy of a corporation - the lenders become shareholders and then take over the business.  Maybe management hangs on, but the shareholders are pretty much wiped out.

Maybe Elon Musk sees the writing on the wall, and by not paying the rent on his various Twitter office buildings, he can "cram down" the building owners, or even trigger their bankruptcy, before being evicted himself.  And even if evicted, no doubt some other low-cost real estate will become available or he could move the whole thing to the middle of Iowa.  The world of business is a pretty cruel world - but that's just business.

We may see this history repeating, albeit not in the same way.  In the 1980's interest rates were falling and demand for office space was increasing.  The problem then was overbuilding - too much space for too few tenants.

Today, interest rates are going up and most commercial real estate is mortgaged on variable-rate callable notes.  And with the pandemic, more and more people are working from home, at least part-time, and sharing office space one or two days a week, if that.  We were doing that at the Patent Office well over a decade ago!   Some building owners are already in default on their mortgages.  And others are cutting back on building plans, including Amazon with its ambitious plans for a "Second Headquarters" in Crystal City.

Some building owners are looking into converting undesirable office space into highly coveting residential space.  At least for the time being, the demand for residential space is high - although prices are dropping dramatically there as well.  The problem with converting office space to residential is that most office buildings are not properly zoned, configured, or located for residential use.  Think about your office - drop ceilings, cheap cardboard walls or even just half-height cubicle dividers - do you want to live there?  I mean, unless you work for Twitter, that is.

Not only that, but most office buildings don't have the proper plumbing to accommodate all those toilets, showers, kitchen sinks, laundry machines, and whatnot. They would have to be stripped to the bones and rebuilt, which costs as much - if not more - that building a new building.  Where do you vent the range hood above your stove in a 30-story building?  Just asking.  And if you can solve all those problems, you still have to fight with the zoning board, unless you own a unicorn known as residential/commercial, as I did once.

Then there is location - the three biggest elements in real estate: location, location, location.  Are there good schools near your office building?  Any schools near your office building?  What about other amenities like parks and green space and recreational opportunities, as well as places to shop and the like.  The sandwich shop at street level and the convenience store aren't going to cut it for a residential community.  Most office buildings are located in food deserts - so they are not readily convertible to residential space.

Converting to residential might save some buildings, but I suspect it will be a small percentage - maybe 10% would be located and amenable to such conversion, but at great cost, and at a time when the residential housing market is cooling off.

Is this an exact replica of the commercial real estate meltdown of 1989?  No, it is far worse.  Far worse because interest rates are climbing, not sagging, and far worse as "work from home" is killing the demand for office space.  This isn't a matter of the market over-building office space by 10% or so, but the market decreasing demand by 50% or so - and permanently, too.  Despite all the hoopla about "back to office" I suspect that "work from home" is here to stay.

Like I said, the Patent Office has been doing this for well over a decade - perhaps two - and shows no signs of going "back to office" simply because there is no advantage to doing so, only increased costs. They literally would have to buy new office buildings to accommodate all the Examiners.  And since the area they moved to is now "built out" with the Federal Courthouse and residential spaces, they would have to move the whole kit and kaboodle somewhere else.  I doubt that would happen.

No, people are not going to start magically going back to the office and drive up demand for office space.  This could be a commercial real estate debacle that makes 1989 look tame in comparison.

Divorce Coach? WTF?

Maybe in five years or so, we will ditch this whole "coaching" nonsense.

It started maybe a decade ago, with "life coaches" - people who sometimes were revealed to not have their own shit together were telling other people how to live their lives.  What was funny about it was that the people who hired a "life coach" clearly had a lot of excess money to throw around, so it sounds like they aren't doing too badly in the game of life, even without coaching.  If you can afford a life coach, chances are, your life doesn't need coaching.  Catch-22.

The fad sort of sputtered and died, particularly as a lot of people with sketchy credentials got into the game and were later exposed as charlatans.  I suppose, too, the cost was just too much.  I noted before that in the swinging 60's and depressing 70's, it was trendy to see an "analyst" - as was illustrated in movies such as Annie Hall or the Bob Newhart Show on television.  At a cocktail party, you would name-drop what your "analyst" said and that was a total status move - illustrating that you not only had enough money to pay an analyst, but also enough free time on your hands to see one, and to naval-gaze for hours on end.  The guy working 10-hour days in the sewers doesn't have the money or time to get in touch with his feelings.

But back then, the cost was less and many company insurance plans covered the costs.  In the layoff era of the late 1970s and 1980s, it became less and less affordable for a lot of people to "see an analyst" and I think the cachet disappeared as well.  In the new dog-eat-dog world of the 1980s, it wasn't seen as status to see an analyst, but weakness.  Besides, with all the drug-addled homeless clogging the streets, the Psychiatrists and Psychologists had their hands full with people with real problems.

But people seek out gurus. They listen to podcasts - to hear what pearls of wisdom "Dr." Jordan Peterson or Andy Taint have to dish out.  They join cults or religions (the difference being?) and pledge their lives to old stories written in a book - sometimes only decades old.  They follow celebrities or stars or politicians, convinced someone else has the answer, and if they just looked hard enough for the right guru, they might find it.  It is sad, because they never think to look for the answers themselves.

So the "Life Coach" and "coaching" became popular, but since the field was largely unregulated, it was prime for abuse - much as religion is.  At least with an "analyst" they have some sort of degree in Psychology or Psychiatry - and the licensing bodies of those fields at least nominally prevent abuses.

But "coaching?" - far less regulated.

A reader writes, asking me about this latest trend - the Divorce Coach. This raised the hairs on the back of my neck, because the divorce industry makes money when people get divorces. It is the fundamental problem with any profession, and I have seen abuses in the medical and legal fields before - abuses that the abusers don't recognize as abuse or even realize as abuse.

You go to a tire store with your car, chances are, they will try to sell you tires.  That's their business, and they don't pay the rent and overhead by telling you that your tires are just fine.  Besides, if they did, and you left the shop and had a blowout and a wreck, you could sue them.  So they sell you tires.  When the only tool you have is a  hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

So when you go to a doctor, particularly a specialist, they tend to look for the problem they are trained to look for.  And living on Old People Island (average age 74 and climbing), I hear a lot of "horror stories" about "unnecessary procedures" that occur because the doctor in question specializes in those procedures and tends to look at the world through that narrow lens.  They are not committing malpractice, they are just subject to tunnel vision.

The same is true of lawyers.  You go to a lawyer wanting a will drafted or a trust set up, and they will mostly likely oblige you.  Few, if any, will tell you that maybe in your circumstances (where you have few assets and are married) that you might not need one.  They make money doing these services, and when a client comes in the door demanding such services, well, you take their money and given 'em what they want.  If you don't, the client goes down the street to the next lawyer and he takes their money.

And in the case of divorce attorneys, well, the same is true.  People hire a divorce attorney and there is this monetary incentive for the lawyer (whether it is recognized by them, or subliminal) to proceed with a divorce, rather than, say, suggest counseling.  What's more, there is a financial incentive to drag out the proceedings and be as antagonistic as possible with the attorney for the estranged spouse, rather than try to amicably resolve issues.  If the client wants to "win" at the game of divorce, it only ensures that the lawyers win.

A divorce attorney friend of mine pointed this out - she noted that if people would just take their emotions out the equation and agree to a fair and amicable separation of assets, the lawyers wouldn't be making as much money, and everyone could move on with their lives.  But people are emotional beings and many "adults" have the temperament of a small child.

And sadly, the Internet comes into play here.  Online discussion groups for men and women (which are, of course, separate) encourage divorce and acrimony.  I think our Russian friends are helping this trend along to encourage people in America to be miserable.  On some "relationship advice" groups for women, I have seen the same knee-jerk reaction that "if he even so much as looks at another women, you should divorce him right away!"  And they say this, because that is what they did and they want you to join the bitter, angry, divorced women's club, too!  Misery loves company.

On "men's groups" online, the misogyny rages.  Women are no damned good and the testosterone pushes men into making divorce into a game of mortal combat.  And in this regard, I am not exaggerating.  Every day, it seems, you read a story about a man who murders his wife and kids (and sometimes her parents) thinking that "I'll show them who's right and wrong!" - but only shows the world how wrong they were and how right their wife was.  What is really puzzling are the people who kill their own children because "they love them so much" and thus won't give up custody.  We all know now, why you lost custody in the first place.

And yes, women also fall into this category as well - murdering their own children to show the world they care.  But they didn't.  And children become trophies in the game of divorce, with parents fighting for custody even if they really don't want it.  It becomes a bargaining chip in the game - along with the child support payments.  I met a guy who hired a "men's divorce lawyer" (another trend) to "win" at his divorce, using scorched-earth tactics.  And part of this was fighting for custody by tearing down his ex-wife's reputation.  Since she couldn't afford an expensive lawyer, he ended up getting custody of the kids - and then promptly ignored them.  He really didn't want custody so much as to not pay child support and to not let her "win" at the game of divorce.

What a waste.  And the children have no choice in the matter - I feel sorry for them.  And I feel sorry for society, as in 18 years we will have to deal with the fallout of children who are now adults, having to cope with the emotional scars.

So, I have great trepidation when I hear about Divorce Coaches.  Is this just another professional or quasi-professional you now have to pay in addition to your lawyer - thus draining your bank account even further?  Divorce is a serious and expensive business.  You and your spouse will double your living expenses by maintaining two homes.  Sounds stupid, but during the post-2008 recession, the divorce rate plummeted as people couldn't afford it.  I met a guy that I bought a used washer and dryer from, who was living in the basement in-law suite of their mini-mansion.  He and the wife wanted to get divorced, but there was no way she could afford the mortgage on her own, and they were "upside-down" on the house, so they were stuck with each other.

Human relationships are foremost economic agreements, but people like to think they are emotional ones.

You can get a certification in Divorce Coaching, but I would not put too much faith and credit in that.  As a lawyer, I am licensed by the State of Georgia and the Commonwealth of Virginia - and subject to the disciplinary boards of both.  When I was practicing, I could have lost my license - and livelihood - if I did something wrong.  I am not sure how this applies to Divorce Coaches - unless they are also Attorneys.

So what are Divorce Coaches, anyway?  The American Bar Association, which is a lobbying group for lawyers, defines it as follows:

Divorce coaching is a flexible, goal-oriented process designed to support, motivate, and guide people going through divorce to help them make the best possible decisions for their future, based on their particular interests, needs, and concerns. Divorce coaches have different professional backgrounds and are selected based on the specific needs of the clients. For example, some divorce coaches are financial planners, mental health professionals, lawyers, or mediators who have experience dealing with divorcing clients. (gobbledegook in italics)

This is interesting, as indeed, in a divorce, there may be emotional issues (the cause of most divorces) and if you can separate emotions from the deal, you are more likely to come to an amicable agreement. And a big part of divorce is financial as well - and many people fail to figure out how much divorce will actually cost them - and it does cost them. One reason why a lot of people fall down the economic ladder from the middle-class is due to divorce.  A single Mom trying to raise three kids on her own will struggle, even with child support payments. A remarried Dad will also struggle as he now has two families to support.  It is often a lose-lose situation.  No one "wins" at the game of divorce.

But of course, there are legitimate reasons to get divorced.  If you spouse abuses you, then maybe it is time to seek the exit.  And abuse can be physical, emotional, sexual, or financial.  The number one cause of domestic disputes is financial - spouses don't talk about money and as a result, end up with debt problems.  They try to discuss it and it turns into a raging argument about money.  "You buy too many shoes!"  "Oh, yea, well what about that new fishing rod you bought last month!"  A race to the bottom ensues.

Of course, the easiest way to avoid divorce is to not marry the wrong person.  What do I mean by this?  Well, the tell-tale "red flags" usually manifest themselves early on in a relationship.  If your boyfriend or girlfriend has severe mental health issues, those are not going to go away, but likely get worse over time.  My Dad married my Mom, knowing that she attempted suicide more than once.  Why they got married is anyone's guess - I think my Dad thought she came from a wealthy family.

I knew a woman who married a man who was a drunk.  He loved to party in bars and drink with strangers - buying a "round for the house" with his paycheck.  Fun and games when you are in your 20's, but when that paycheck has to pay the mortgage and a Dad should be home with his kids on a weeknight, it becomes a nightmare.   They also had radically different values - she a Liberal Democrat  agnostic, he a Bible-thumping fundamentalist and right-wing Republican. They made each other miserable for 20 years.  What was the point of that?

You read all the time on "relationship advice" columns about boyfriends who spend all their free time hanging out with their "buds" and drinking and doing drugs or bar-hopping or just sitting around playing video games.   These are young men who don't want a real relationship with a woman but a "bang-maid" who will pick up after them, make them food, do the dishes and laundry, vacuum the rugs and perform sex acts.  Sort of like a Roomba with an attached Fleshlight.  And no, he isn't going to change magically overnight, once you put that ring on him.

Sadly, it is a common occurrence. People get married in their 20's when their minds are not fully formed.  Worse yet are people who marry in their teens - often after an unwanted pregnancy.  These things are set to self-destruct in most cases.

Could a Divorce Coach help once the whole thing falls apart?  Perhaps.  But I am guessing that the vast majority of Americans can't afford to pay yet another person in addition to their attorney, just to get some common-sense advice.   Then again, a lot of Americans have no common-sense and get all their cues from the television, which encourages them to think emotionally, not logically.  And when you think emotionally, other people make a lot of money from you.

When I searched on the image above, I found lots of cheery images about divorce coaching, including lots of photos of smiling women divorce coaches as well as lists of "reasons why you need a divorce coach" in pastel colors in curlicue font.  Just a guess here, but this nonsense is being aimed at women.  I guess all those "Huns" whose MLM schemes fell apart, needed a new line of work!  There is life after divorce, and life after MaryK.   The way these "Divorce Coaches" pitch themselves makes it seem like a divorce is a spa treatment and pedicure rolled into one (ask for the package discount!).

Maybe it makes sense.  But maybe while you are talking to your "certified divorce coach" your soon-to-be ex-husband is talking to a pit-bull divorce lawyer and is already in the process of having you evicted from your own home.  Think logically, not emotionally - hire a lawyer, not a "coach" and try to figure out an amicable distribution of assets.  And try marriage counseling first.  If you are getting divorced over money, well, your money problems are just starting. And if you are getting divorced over "infidelity" - maybe counseling might help.  If you are getting divorced because of abuse, then hire a damn good lawyer.

A divorce coach?  Only if you really can afford that - and most of us, can't.

Whatboutism - Roald Dahl and "Cancel Culture"

There is more than a little irony that the party that wants to remove books from libraries for objectionable content, criticizes the other side for editing books to remove objectionable content.

Whatboutism or Tu Quoque is the classic grade-school taunt of "I know you are but what am I?"  The Soviet Union was famous for this.  If we criticized them for killing off millions of their citizens and throwing millions more into gulags for criticising the government, they could come back with an "Oh yea?  Well what about the blacks being lynched in the South?  What about that, smart guy?  What about that!"

And that sounds like a snappy comeback until you realize that the two things are not even remotely comparable.  Lynchings, while abhorrent, were illegal and not officially sanctioned by the government.  Yes, there might have been a Sheriff or two under those Klan robes, but on paper, at least, what was being done was against the law.   In the Soviet Union, what they were doing was the law and the people doing it were above the law.  In addition, while lynchings were abhorrent, there were not millions upon millions of them.  Stalin committed genocide. Comparing that to the actions of the Klan is like comparing a handful of sand to the beach.

But that is the beautiful thing about whataboutism - it is a quick, clever comment that takes paragraphs to debunk, and by then, the whataboutist (and the press covering him) have left the room, laughing.

Roald Dahl has always been a problematic writer - most are.  I was never into his writings as a kid.  My brother read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and saw the original movie (I was too young to go).  In retrospect, it is a creepy book, in that Willy Wonka was basically a child abuser. During the tour of the factory, various children are "eliminated" in dark ways (and initially appear to have been killed).  They survive the ordeal, at the end, but go through a lot of physical abuse along the way.  Recovered early drafts seem to indicate that Dahl wanted to "eliminate" even more children, but the number was edited down perhaps for length reasons, or perhaps his editor thought the book was turning into a child-snuff novel.

I digress here, but editing books in subsequent editions (as Dahl himself did) is nothing new, and in fact, is quite common.  Sometimes it is to correct typographical or formatting errors, sometimes because an author changes their mind about something or got some fact wrong.  Sometimes it is to rewrite history, as Bill Gates did, to change "The Internet is a fad" to "I saw, early on, the vast potential of the Internet!"  When you are Bill Gates, you can do that.

According to some sources, Charlie himself was supposed to be black - but was changed to white at the suggestion of an editor, who thought white child readers would better identify with a white main character.  I am sure Governor DeSantis agrees with that editorial decision!

The Ommpa-Loompas were more problematic, being written originally as pygmies from Africa who were basically enslaved by Willy Wonka.  Kind of an odd message to send to children, but at the time it was written, it wasn't considered controversial - after all, "everyone" knows that Africans are a lesser species of mankind - right?

So, editors (and Dahl himself) did a snip here and a tuck there - back in the 1960's! - to make the books more palatable - and to sell the movie rights as well.  Yes, it's all about the money.  It is like George Lucas editing Star Wars so that Han didn't shoot first.  That was also a crime, but you don't see people crying "cancel culture" over that do you?

Oh, wait, was that an example of whataboutism?  Mea Culpa!

Oddly enough, the reasons for doing so were the same.  When the original Star Wars came out, it was entertainment for adults, as well as children.  But a lot of the themes in the series were a little dark - with people being gruesomely murdered on a regular basis, and whole planets being blown up. Then there is the whole incest thing between Luke and Leia - because the whole brother/sister thing wasn't written until the sequels.

So they edited Star Wars to make it more family-friendly.  Han didn't shoot first, because anyone who has ever watched a Western knows the "good guys" don't shoot unless shot at, and Han is a "good guy" - or was, once the movie was edited (badly, I might add).   Now, Star Wars is safe for Disney!

So they edited Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to make it safe for the kiddies - and avoid an NAACP boycott of the movie in 1971.  A half-century later, the GOP cries "foul!".  There was nothing "dirty" in terms of sex scenes, to edit out, but the racism (which was also edited out of the Johnny Depp movie as well) and other coarse language was changed.  And Conservatives are outraged!

Well, not so much outraged as happy to have ammunition for a round of whaboutism.  As the Nazis dance around a pile of burning books, they can scream at the top of their lungs, "What about Roald Dahl?  You  Democrats canceled him! Ha-ha, losers!"

But of course, there is a big difference between editing a book and wholesale banning of books. In Florida right now, they have pulled every book off the shelf of school libraries. None will be allowed back until reviewed and approved by a board appointed by the Governor.  We are not talking about changing a word or two, but banning books outright.

And no doubt, under DeSantis, black pygmy Oompha-Loompas enslaved in a chocolate factory would pass muster under these new laws.  In fact, I suspect only the edited version would be banned.

I was never into Dahl, but not because his books were creepy and weird (something Johnny Depp picked up on by riffing on Michael Jackson in his playing of Wonka).  All literature is pretty creepy and weird, if you think about it.  Most books portray violence and sex - even children's literature.   These are things that interest humans.  Turn on the television - all there are, are cop shows and murder mysteries - and everyone, it seems, is having an adulterous affair on television.

Granted, maybe primary readers like Dick and Jane are pretty innocuous. But once you get into YA or "Young Adult" literature, it starts to get dark.  Young girls love to read Vampire romances, where sexual titillation is always on the horizon and someone is always getting bitten on the neck or staked through the heart.  Pretty gruesome stuff and I am sure many on the Christian right would find it satanic as well.

But that is the nature of literature - all literature.  It is written to provoke and inspire.  You don't have much to write about, if all you write about is an endorsement of the status quo, or a mere recitation of pleasantries.   In that regard, all literature - all good literature - has been controversial, at least at some point in time. Every author - every good author - has had the words "indecent" and "subversive"  used against them.  Most wear it with pride.

I for one, am not too worried about kids reading a "sanitized" version of  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  It won't scar them for life to not learn about enslaved pygmies in a candy concern.  The rest of the book, might.  But then again, there is sort of a life lesson in the book - the children who succumb to their basest instincts end up getting their comeuppance.  No doubt, the GOP would edit the book further to have the factory the subject of a leveraged buyout by Veruca Salt's wealthy parents.  After all, young Charlie should pull himself up by his boostraps!  Just giving away a candy factory to a "poor" is Socialism!  And we can't have that, can we?

Of course, this is all a distraction, like sexy M&Ms and the whole overblown "trans" thing. They want to make it seem like they are doing something, when they are, in fact, doing nothing at all.  It is like the bill introduced in Florida - clearly unconstitutional - that proposes that Bloggers can fined for saying bad things about Governor DeSantis.  This from the party of "free speech" and "the constitution."

You know something?  I give up!

And I guess I am going to be fined by the State of Florida, now, just for blogging.

Free Speech Absolutism, my ass!