Why would they do that? Because a handful of snowflakes took seriously the criticism penned by the New York Post's Lou Lumenick back in June of 2015. The alleged film critic wrote that the 1939 Oscar-winning film "buys heavily into the idea that the Civil War was a noble lost cause and casts Yankees and Yankee sympathizers as the villains, both during the war and during Reconstruction." He suggested it should "go the way of the Confederate flag" and be phased out of American culture.
The Orpheum caved right sharpish after several patrons complained about an August 11th screening, saying the film was "racially insensitive". In what way? Well, black people are referred to a couple of times as "darkies". That would have been a mild usage for the Civil War period, and the director, Victor Fleming (who won an Oscar for Best Director for GWTW) struggled to get the N-word excised from the original script.
Walt has seen GWTW countless times and feels that all of the black characters were shown sympathetically, with the possible exception of "Prissy" (played by Butterfly McQueen) who is portrayed as rather dim-witted, just as in the Margaret Mitchell novel. No race, black, white or striped, is comprised solely of geniuses!
The president of the Orpheum Theatre Group was quick to take the side of the snowflakes. "While title selections for the series are typically made in the spring of each year," he told Entertainment Weekly, "the Orpheum has made this determination early in response to specific inquiries from patrons. As an organization whose stated mission is to 'entertain, educate and enlighten the communities it serves', the Orpheum cannot show a film that is insensitive to a large segment of its local population.... This is about the Orpheum wanting to be inclusive and welcoming to all of Memphis."
Walt says, pass the sick bag... quick!
Further reading about "darkies": "Politically correct toothpaste makes your smile brighter", WWW 21/1/12.
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