Can o' worms...

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by davem

Interesting tangent to this story:

Huckleberry Finn loses the 'n****r' he loves, thanks to a publisher's ethnic cleansing http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture...nic-cleansing/

I find this interesting - we're (apparently) about to see a multi-racial Middle-earth (on film at least) & a possible crackdown on any appearance of smoking in the films. Will we ever see this kind of 'ethnic cleansing' in the books? Maybe we'll see an edition of the books at some point with the smoking excised - not to mention all those 'negative' references to 'black' ...

That is rather disturbing news, but in this case the "news" is not "new". There have been several attempts, mostly through library systems and public schools in the U.S., to exorcise the racist terminology from Mark Twain's literary works. It is ridiculous and a knee-jerk reaction to a piece of literature which accurately approximates that period of American history, particularly in the vernacular.

What is really humourous is that the publisher seeks to eradicate the N-word from a great piece of literature, while at the same time hundreds of rap songs contain the same word over and over in countless variations.

I guarantee more impressionable youngsters are getting their daily supplement of racial pejoratives from rap than, heaven forbid, reading a book.