It was recently discovered that the late author Roald Dahl’s family had added a note to his web site. It was hidden, as Washington Post’s Ron Charles noted, “like a Golden Ticket hidden inside a Wonka Bar.” (The note took Snarly seven minutes to find, even though she was looking for it — it’s in a small box midway down the “About Us” page.)

It reads as follows:

Apology by Mr. Harry Wormwood.

This is a bad apology. First of all, we cannot apologize for others’ conduct, only for our own. The Dahl family could have apologized for profiting from their antisemitic relative’s work, but they have no standing to apologize for that relative’s views. Especially since they distance themselves from his unpleasantness even as they hand-wring over it; see the phrases “incomprehensible to us” and “stand in marked contrast to the man we knew.” Well, bully for you, Dahl family! It’s perfectly LOVELY that Roald was perfectly lovely to you! Hitler was perfectly lovely to his German Shepherd, Blondi!

Speaking of Hitler, Dahl once said in an interview, “There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity…even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.” Well then! He also railed against “those powerful American Jewish bankers.” called the American government “utterly dominated by the great Jewish financial institutions,” and said that Jews owned the media.

The note doesn’t say, thankfully, that the family had no idea Dahl held these views, which were pretty common knowledge. (Snarly is still horrified that around two years ago, she met a nice woman at a family concert with a lovely daughter named Matilda, and blurted, “Oh, we almost named my second kid Matilda! But then we didn’t because Roald Dahl was a horrible antisemite!” The nice woman blanched, Snarly stammered for a bit about how Matilda was still a beautiful name and a great literary character, and then Snarly slunk off to the bar.)

Dahl, who was in constant pain from a war injury and had a life filled with tragedies (WHICH IS NOT AN EXCUSE), including losing a child to measles before there was a vaccine, having another child seriously hurt and left with brain damage after a car accident, and coping with the severe stroke of his wife Patricia Neal (who called him “Roald the Rotten”), was unpleasant in a multitude of ways. He was repeatedly unfaithful in marriage, screamed at his loved ones (his granddaughter Sophie referred to him as “a difficult man…roaring around the house), and oh yes, originally wrote the Oompa Loompas as near-naked Black pygmy savages imported from Africa to work in the chocolate factory. When the NAACP threatened to boycott the impending movie, Dahl called this “real Nazi stuff.” (Why, it was cancel culture! And just as in most cases of cancel culture, Dahl was not actually cancelled!) The Oompa Loompas turned tangerine; the movie went on; the Dahl estate still rakes in a ton of money.)

The Dahl family’s apology refers to “prejudiced remarks” but doesn’t say what they were. This minimizes them and dulls their impact. Saying “that’s not the man we knew!” is not only weaselly (Patricia Neal and Sylvie Dahl clearly knew that man), but also hurtful, because it implies that someone who could be lovely can’t also be vicious. An honest apology could have said that Dahl was a complicated, sometimes loathsome man capable of creating wonderful stories. Even children can understand complexity and darkness. (Hence the popularity of Dahl’s work. The Witches and James and the Giant Peach in particular are full of loss, fury, bleakness and terror.) A toothless statement like “We hope that, just as he did at his best, at his absolute worst, Roald Dahl can help remind us of the lasting impact of words” is dismaying. First, because it is an awkwardly written sentence. This is an ironic bummer given that it’s about the power of words. Second, because the statement says nothing. How does Dahl’s “absolute worst” remind us of the impact of words if you won’t tell us what those words were?

The Dahls can’t apologize for Roald’s words, but they can apologize for profiting from them. Donate some of that shmoney to organizations that combat antisemitism and prejudice. Remedy the fact that no one from the family reached out to any Jewish organizations before publishing their pallid statement.

The family is clearly charitable, though Snarly had trouble figuring out exactly what the existing Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity does: it solicits donations for its work involving children’s nurses, but what does that mean? Drilling down several levels into the RoaldDahl.com site shows that the charity has funded 79 pediatric nurses in the UK. Which is great! Snarly could not find an accounting for precisely how the money is spent, but it surely exists off the site. (We are an apology site, not Charity Navigator.)

There is also a prominently touted “Marvellous Nurse Inventing Room,” funding research projects pitched by nurses. Also cool!

But the Room ran from 2014-1017, even though the web site design makes this look like an ongoing project. Again, Snarly is unclear on how much money it gave away. (Even the Executive Summary doesn’t say.) So it would be good to be more transparent, and to expand the charity’s range of causes and recipients in a way that’s relevant to this apology.

SO! Back to SorryWatch’s rules! 1. Use the word “sorry” or “apologize” (the Dahls did, yay!). 2. Say specifically what you’re sorry for. (Nope. Say the words, even if they’re horrifying. Because they’re horrifying. As the BFG put it, “Don’t gobblefunk around with words.”) 3. Show you understand why you’re apologizing. (Nope. They didn’t understand that they have to apologize for themselves, not for Dahl.) 4. Don’t make excuses. (OK! We’ll give them this one!) 5. Fix things moving forward. (Nope.) 6. Make reparations. (Nope.)

All this said, we’d argue that no one should feel guilty to continue loving Dahl’s books. Just own the nuance. Don’t dismiss the artist’s badness as irrelevant. Matilda is still awesome, even if her creator wasn’t.

“It was her turn now to become a heroine.”