Thank God civility is returning to literature! Thanks to some faceless editor at New South Books and alleged Twain scholar Dr. Alan Gribben, a new sanitized versions of “Huckleberry Finn” will be published. The word so offensive that it can’t even be printed here has been removed. All is now safe.
Dr. Gribben is afraid that the language in the book has stopped people from reading Twain. I am sure this brilliant move will encourage students everywhere to put down the video game controller. It will also save overworked teachers from actually having to teach the context of the use of the word. In order to do that, they might have to do some research and, heaven forbid, read the books themselves. What teacher has time for that when there are condoms to be distributed and prayer circles to be broken up?
Of course, elitists who have jumped up to protest this censorship. Movie reviewer and social gadfly Roger Ebert made the mistake of using the word that shall not be spoken or written in a tweet opposing the new edition. He thought because of his lifetime of liberalism and marriage to an African-American woman he was on the white guys allowed to use the word which shall not be spoken or writtenlist, but alas he was not and was roundly “critweeted.” (This is a new word I have invented to describe the criticism of a tweet by tweeting.)
via bighollywood.breitbart.com
As a relic who is still primarily a literary person, one who was raised in the South during a historic time when great change in racial equality made many major gains to better ends, witnessed firsthand--it hurts my heart to see the works of one of the finest writers, thinkers, and proponents of racial equality for blacks, changed for the sake of supposed political correctness.
It was because of the use of such language, not inspite of, that racism in America was brought to my recognition, subtly enough to be read, but coarsly enough to be incongruent with what was right, in fact-based story-telling that caused young men and women such as I, who upon reading about both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, to view the injustice of the racial inequality that Mark Twain himself observed in a life-changing way.
Sometimes lessons are better learned gently when it goes against one's cultural norms than it is ever learned by beatings and slander. Some of my friends and peers of the time who were not influenced by good literature either took years longer to begin to change their racial views or they never have changed. This act of political correctness seems from my viewpoint, which I recognize as only one viewpoint, to be SO VERY WRONG. It is almost as obscene as Mark Twin had the capacity to be--but which he thoughtfuly withheld within these works. To me it is such a mistake.