text: Hello Observer,
  
  It is fascinating that you raise the fact that the book was written about thirty years ago, because your observation actually strengthens (not weakens) my commentary.
  
  Think about it. Another book that came out about thirty years ago (written in 1990, a few years after 1985's Handmaid's Tale) was Tom Clancy's "Sum of All Fears".
  
  Clancy's fictional novel was about nasty, scary Islamist terrorists getting hold of an atomic bomb and turning the world upside down.
  
  So, what did our arts community do the moment they decided to bring Clancy's novel of thirty years ago to the screen?
  
  Answer: They removed all references to Islam and Muhammad and Muslims and, after a proper scrubbing, voila, the nasty, scary terrorists were suddenly replaced by nasty, scary Christian neo-Nazis getting their hands on an atom bomb! Yay!
  
  Sorry, but the identification I made, of a double standard, cannot be wafted away by hand-wringing over a thirty year time scale. Nice try, though...