Friday, January 7, 2011


















http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2011/jan/04/new-edition-removes-mark-twains-offensive-words/
The Post and Courier logo

New edition removes Mark Twain’s ’offensive’ words

By PHILLIP RAWLS
Associated Press
Tuesday, January 4, 2011

MONTGOMERY — Mark Twain wrote that “the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter.” A new edition of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer” will try to find out if that holds true by replacing the N-word with “slave” in an effort not to offend readers.

Twain scholar Alan Gribben, who is working with NewSouth Books in Alabama to publish a combined volume of the books, said the N-word appears 219 times in “Huck Finn” and four times in “Tom Sawyer.” He said the word puts the books in danger of joining the list of literary classics that Twain once humorously defined as those “which people praise and don’t read.”

“It’s such a shame that one word should be a barrier between a marvelous reading experience and a lot of readers,” Gribben said.

Yet Twain was particular about his words. His letter in 1888 about the right word and the almost right one was “the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

The book isn’t scheduled to be published until February, at a mere 7,500 copies, but Gribben has already received a flood of hateful e-mail accusing him of desecrating the novels. He said the e-mails prove the word makes people uncomfortable.

“Not one of them mentions the word. They dance around it,” he said.

Another Twain scholar, professor Stephen Railton at the University of Virginia, said Gribben was well respected, but called the new version “a terrible idea.”

The language depicts America’s past, Railton said, and the revised book was not being true to the period in which Twain was writing. Railton has an unaltered version of “Huck Finn” coming out later this year that includes context for schools to explore racism and slavery in the book.

“If we can’t do that in the classroom, we can’t do that anywhere,” he said.

He said Gribben was not the first to alter “Huck Finn.” John Wallace, a teacher at the Mark Twain Intermediate School in northern Virginia, published a version of “Huck Finn” about 20 years ago that used “slave” rather than the N-word.

“His book had no traction,” Railton said.

Gribben, a 69-year-old English professor at Auburn University Montgomery, said he would have opposed the change for much of his career, but he began using “slave” during public readings and found audiences more accepting.

SEE:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tomchivers/100050346/mark-twain-huckleberry-finn-and-nigger-jim-sense-or-censorship/

He decided to pursue the revised edition after middle school and high school teachers lamented they could no longer assign the books.

Some parents and students have called for the removal of “Huck Finn” from reading lists for more than a half century. In 1957, the New York City Board of Education removed the book from the approved textbook lists of elementary and junior high schools, but it could be taught in high school and bought for school libraries.

In 1998, parents in Tempe, Ariz., sued the local high school over the book’s inclusion on a required reading list. The case went as far as a federal appeals court; the parents lost.

Published in the U.S. in 1885, “Huck Finn” is the fourth most banned book in schools, according to “Banned in the U.S.A.” by Herbert N. Foerstal, a retired college librarian who has written several books on First Amendment issues.

Gribben conceded the edited text loses some of the caustic sting but said: “I want to provide an option for teachers and other people not comfortable with 219 instances of that word.”

In addition to replacing the N-word, Gribben changes the villain in “Tom Sawyer” from “Injun Joe” to “Indian Joe” and “half-breed” becomes “half-blood.”

Gribben knows he won’t change the minds of his critics, but he’s eager to see how the book will be received by schools rather than university scholars.

“We’ll just let the readers decide,” he said.


"The-Word-That-Must-Not-Be-Named”: Huck Finn, Joseph Conrad and the dreaded N-word

It is a word that was once buried, yet rises from the grave with increasing rapidity to haunt all ears who hear the two-syllable pejorative uttered. Uttered frequently by Black people in casual conversation though scrubbed completely from white people’s vocabulary, this one word holds more power than Little Boy or Fat Man, capable of destruction beyond words.
If you have seen or read Harry Potter you are aware that Lord Voldemort is simply known as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” for the following reason:
He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named: Rowling got the idea for this from two 1950s London gangsters called the Kray Twins. "The story goes that people didn’t speak the name Kray. You just didn’t mention it. You didn’t talk about them, because retribution was so brutal and bloody. I think this is an impressive demonstration of strength, that you can convince someone not to use your name. Impressive in the sense that demonstrates how deep the level of fear is that you can inspire. It’s not something to be admired." (TLC). As soon as Voldemort took control of the Ministry in 1997, he reinforced this fear by putting a taboo on speaking his name. Anyone brave enough to say 'Voldemort' would have their locations immediately revealed to "snatchers" or other enforcement squads who would come and take you into custody (DH).
The word that was ceremoniously buried and is deemed an offense worthy of prosecution in New York City if uttered elicits a greater level of fear in the real world then the fictional Voldemort’s name conjured in the world inhabited by wizards and witches.
White people cringe when they hear this word spoken aloud, frantically searching around them to ensure that no Black person was in ear shot. When they see this word in print, that same fear washes over them and a sense of trepidation follows knowing that reading “The-Word-That-Must-Not-Be-Named” is the modern-day equivalent of sneaking looks at your dads Playboy.
People have been conditioned to cower in panic at the word, even phrases that sound similar yet have no racial connotations, such as the word “niggardly” and this hysteria has now seeped into other terms such as “black hole”, “black ice” or other variations of using the “black” to denote negativity.
The taboo surrounding “The-Word-That-Must-Not-Be-Named” is firmly in place and remonstrations against the vernacular noose that goes around the neck of the white person daring to utter it are exceedingly rare.
As in Harry Potter, few brave souls have the courage to stand up to Lord Voldemort and in Black Run America (BRA) few souls can be found who understand the rhetorical battle that has been won and the significance of what the fear surrounding “The-Word-That-Must-Not-Be-Named” means.
White people have capitulated to the power of BRA, and the one word that forever coerces this surrender is the power over “The-Word-That-Must-Not-Be-Named” and efforts must be made to remove every reference to this word from the annals of history:
A classic turn-of-the-century English novelist whose works have been read by countless millions of people is having his work sanitized for a new generation of readers.
Joseph Conrad, whose "Heart of Darkness" and "Lord Jim" have been scrutinized by English students on multiple continents for decades, wrote a lesser known novel in 1897 called "The Nigger of the Narcissus."
Now, in what critics are calling a blatant act of politically correct censorship, a Netherlands-based publisher has reprinted the novel under a new name: "The N-word of the Narcissus."
The new version is the first installment of WordBridge Publishing's classic texts series, featuring "texts with a message for moderns, made accessible to moderns."
But some critics say updating a Conrad novel by replacing all mentions of the offensive term "nigger" with "n-word" is just as offensive as the word itself.
"It's outrageous," said Niger Innis, spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality, a New York-based civil rights organization. "Are they going to go to Mark Twain as well and take out all of those references?
"It's censorship, and to blacken over a word does not mean that you can blacken over the history.”

One should never underestimate the enabling powers of Disingenuous White Liberals (DWLs) and yes, they did in fact go after Mark Twain:
What is a word worth? According to Publishers Weekly, NewSouth Books' upcoming edition of Mark Twain's seminal novel "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" will remove all instances of the N-word -- I'll give you a hint, it's not nonesuch -- present in the text and replace it with slave.


Race matters in these books," Gribben told PW. "It's a matter of how you express that in the 21st century."


Unsurprisingly, there are already those who are yelling "Censorship!" as well as others with thesauruses yelling "Bowdlerization!" and"Comstockery!"


Their position is understandable: Twain's book has been one of the most often misunderstood novels of all time, continuously being accused of perpetuating the prejudiced attitudes it is criticizing, and it's a little disheartening to see a cave-in to those who would ban a book simply because it requires context.


On the other hand, if this puts the book into the hands of kids who would not otherwise be allowed to read it due to forces beyond their control (overprotective parents and the school boards they frighten), then maybe we shouldn't be so quick to judge.


It's unfortunate, but is it really any more catastrophic than a TBS-friendly re-edit of "The Godfather," you down-and-dirty melon farmer.
He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future. By scrubbing“The-Word-That-Must-Not-Be-Named” from novels, the offending word is removed forever from entering the vocabulary of impressionable young people who don’t understand yet that BRA dictates every level of their life and thereby ensuring that the aura surrounding the word will never fade.
Just like in Harry Potter, where anyone standing up to Voldemort will be instantly crushed, those who dare use “The-Word-That-Must-Not-Be-Named” will find a fate just as severe as what awaits a Muggle, witch or wizard in the world of J.K Rowling:
A federal jury will be asked to decide whether it is acceptable for an African American person, but not a white person, to use the "n" word in a workplace.
U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick has ruled that former Fox29 reporter-anchor Tom Burlington's lawsuit against the station, claiming a double standard and alleging that he was the victim of racial discrimination, may go to trial. However, Surrick denied Burlington's claim of a hostile work environment.


Burlington, who is white, was fired after using the "n" word during a June 2007 staff meeting at which reporters and producers were discussing reporter Robin Taylor's story about the symbolic burial of the word by the Philadelphia Youth Council of the NAACP.


Burlington, who began work at the station in 2004 and is now working as a real estate agent, was suspended within days and fired after an account of the incident was published in the Philadelphia Daily News. He alleges that he "was discriminated against because of his race," according to court documents. He claims in his lawsuit that at least two African American employees at Fox29 had used the word in the workplace and were not disciplined.


The dispute began after Taylor, who is white, used the phrase the "n" word during the 2007 staff meeting. She said participants at the burial had said the full word "at least a hundred times or more," according to court records.


"Does this mean we can finally say the word n-?" Burlington asked colleagues, according to depositions.


Nicole Wolfe, a producer and one of the three African American employees among the nine people at the meeting, exclaimed: "I can't believe you just said that!"
We at SBPDL have long looked at “The-Word-That-Must-Not-Be-Named” with curiosity, knowing full well the power the word has, yet feeling uncomfortable letting it escape our lips.

No more. Defiance to BRA means “The-Word-That-Must-Not-Be-Named” must be shouted aloud and one day, people will be mandated to say it 100 times over or for as long as it takes to forever remove the sting that the word holds.

A toleration of the continued censorship of “The-Word-That-Must-Not-Be-Named” means the continued existence of a world where men and women possessing the grace and stature of those who frequent The Nightly News or Thug Report will be continually celebrated.

You can’t bury the past, just as you can’t bury a word. Attempts make the past more palatable to the current zeitgeist only show the fear in the hearts and minds of those who pull BRA’s levers. Those who can see grow in number, with each passing event like the Mayfair Mall incident showed.No act of defiance in BRA is greeted with such exacting repercussions as what awaits the person who dares utter “The-Word-That-Must-Not-Be-Named” and expunging historical documents, fictional works and movies of such references to it forever ensures BRA’s hegemony over white people.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2007/mar/28/therearetwodisneyfilms
http://www.thefakelife.com/blog/2006/12/whats-left-song-of-south-and-censored.html






The Student Loan Debt Bubble And The Great College Education Scam

BILLIONS FOR WARS TO PROTECT OIL COMPANY PIPELINES AND ENSURE THE OPIUM AND HASHISH TRADE-ZERO FOR UNIVERSITY, TRADE SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS. $80,000 IN STUDENT LOAN DEBT TO GET A $30,000 A YEAR JOB WITH SOCIAL SERVICES! RIDICULOUS! THE BASTARDS!


As you read this, there are over 18 million students enrolled at the nearly 5,000 colleges and universities currently in operation across the United States. Many of these institutions of higher learning are now charging $20,000, $30,000 or even $40,000 a year for tuition and fees. That does not even count living expenses. Today it is 400% more expensive to go to college in the United States than it was just 30 years ago. Most of these 18 million students have been told over and over that a "higher education" is the key to getting a good job and living the American Dream. They have been told not to worry about how much it costs and that there is plenty of financial aid (mostly made up of loans) available. Now our economy is facing the biggest student loan debt bubble in the history of the world, and when our new college graduates enter the "real world" they are finding out that the good jobs they were promised are very few and far between. As millions of Americans wake up and start realizing that the tens of thousands of dollars that they have poured into their college educations was mostly a waste, will the great college education scam finally be exposed?

For now, the system continues to push the notion that a college education is the key to a good future and that there is plenty of "financial aid" out there for everyone that wants to go to college.

Recently, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visited students at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia and encouraged them to load up on college loans....

"Please apply for our financial aid. We want to give you money. There’s lots of money out there for you."

So where will Arne Duncan be when those students find themselves locked into decades of absolutely suffocating student loan debt repayments?

What young high school students are never told is that not even bankruptcy can get you out of student loan debt. It will stay with you forever until you finally pay it off.

Today each new crop of optimistic college graduates quickly discovers that there are simply not nearly enough jobs for all of them. Thousands upon thousands of them end up waiting tables or stocking the shelves at retail stores. Many of them end up deeply bitter as they find themselves barely able to survive and yet saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt that nobody ever warned them about.

Sadly, the quality of the education that most of these college students is receiving is a complete and total joke.

Take it from someone that has graduated from a couple of very highly respected institutions. I have an undergraduate degree, a law degree and another degree on top of that, so I know what I am talking about. Higher education in America has become so dumbed-down that the family dog could literally pass most college courses.

It is an absolute joke. The vast majority of college students in America spend two to four hours a day in the classroom and maybe an hour or two outside the classroom studying. The remainder of the time these "students" are out drinking beer, partying, chasing after sex partners, going to sporting events, playing video games, hanging out with friends, chatting on Facebook or getting into trouble. When they say that college is the most fun that most people will ever have in their lives they mean it. It is basically one huge party.

Of the little "education" that actually does go on, so much of it is so dedicated to pushing various social engineering agendas that it makes the whole process virtually worthless. Most parents would be absolutely shocked if they could actually see the kind of "indoctrination" that goes on inside U.S. college classrooms today.

A college education can be worth it for those in very highly technical or very highly scientific fields, or for those wanting to enter one of the very few fields that is still very financially lucrative, but for nearly everyone else it is just one big money-making scam.

Oh, but you parents please keep breaking your backs to put money into the college funds of your children so that they can be spoon-fed establishment propaganda all day and party like wild animals all night for four years.

It really is a huge scam. I was there. I saw it with my own eyes.

But if you will not believe me, perhaps you will believe some cold, hard statistics. The following are 16 shocking facts about the student loan debt bubble and the great college education scam....

#1 Americans now owe more than $875 billion on student loans, which is more than the total amount that Americans owe on their credit cards.

#2 Since 1982, the cost of medical care in the United States has gone up over 200%, which is horrific, but that is nothing compared to the cost of college tuition which has gone up by more than 400%.

#3 The typical U.S. college student spends less than 30 hours a week on academics.

#4 The unemployment rate for college graduates under the age of 25 is over 9 percent.

#5 There are about two million recent college graduates that are currently unemployed.

#6 Approximately two-thirds of all college students graduate with student loans.

#7 In the United States today, 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.

#8 The Project on Student Debt estimates that 206,000 Americans graduated from college with more than $40,000 in student loan debt during 2008.

#9 In the United States today, 24.5 percent of all retail salespersons have a college degree.

#10 Total student loan debt in the United States is now increasing at a rate of approximately $2,853.88 per second.

#11 There are 365,000 cashiers in the United States today that have college degrees.

#12 Starting salaries for college graduates across the United States are down in 2010.

#13 In 1992, there were 5.1 million "underemployed" college graduates in the United States. In 2008, there were 17 million "underemployed" college graduates in the United States.

#14 In the United States today, over 18,000 parking lot attendants have college degrees.

#15 Federal statistics reveal that only 36 percent of the full-time students who began college in 2001 received a bachelor's degree within four years.

#16 According to a recent survey by Twentysomething Inc., a staggering 85 percent of college seniors planned to move back home after graduation last May.


Words and music by John Kay, Jerry Edmonton, Nick St. Nicholas and Larry Byrom

(Monster)
Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision
Far from the reaches of kingdom and pope
Like good Christians, some would burn the witches
Later some got slaves to gather riches

But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light

And once the ties with the crown had been broken
Westward in saddle and wagon it went
And 'til the railroad linked ocean to ocean
Many the lives which had come to an end
While we bullied, stole and bought our a homeland
We began the slaughter of the red man

But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light

The blue and grey they stomped it
They kicked it just like a dog
And when the war over
They stuffed it just like a hog

And though the past has it's share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But it's protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it's a monster and will not obey

(Suicide)
The spirit was freedom and justice
And it's keepers seem generous and kind
It's leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won't pay it no mind
'Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
And now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told
Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watchin'

Our cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner
We can't pay the cost
'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watching

(America)
America where are you now?
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster