NIGGARDLY
~ nigger nigrah neejair ~
Remember that pol who correctly used 'niggardly' but resigned on the instant when ignorami went on the rampage? England has now overtaken America in this gadarene kneejerk asinine pol correctitude.
My guru Chris Howse nails it."Striking out the word nigger every time it appears in Huckleberry Finn is a kind of ethnic cleansing, a pretence that in the land of the free no one referred to black people by a demeaning term once the Civil War had been won."
I'm past despairing.
9 comments :
I feel like the campaign scarred centurion, the experienced old boy in blue who never got promoted because his bosses knew he was best left on the mean streets. He agreed. He encounters a typical hubbub on his daily beat. "Hullo hullo hullo, what's happening here then." (shrieks, yells, mass shouting as crowd gathers - they've bowdlerised Huck Finn!!! end of civilisation! etc etc. ) "Yes yes sir, Now calm down sir please and the rest of you, move on, please, be good people now. It's over now. Nothing to see. Move on. Right sir, I can see your very disturbed, What seems to be the problem, sir? Was it something you read in the newspapers?":
Seriously tho' check the context. Gribben sees Twain being removed from Southern grade school reading lists because of Huck's repetition of 'nigger', so he proposes to La Rosa the excision option - an unholy row was bound to follow. It's one edition (along with a planned TS). Paradox of unintended consequence - the controversy will resolve the problem. Had a friend who shared her view Kipling was bad as Goebbels based on that 'lesser races' phrase and 'white man's burden'. Me. "I know what you mean, but I love him and I love you." Four years later. "Glad you suggested I read him. He's very good" Sweetness restored. No skin off Kipling's or Twain's elbows but that n-word is such an loose flying missile - it's worth defusing it now and then so we can talk.
thanks v much for this comment. you always make me think and re-think and see past my surface gripes.
after yr original comment - which i read twice, as i often do with yours - i thought (which i rarely do, even over yours) how lucky i am to be able to churn out my stuff and still get considered comments like the ones you bother to send.
i'm afraid it wont stop me blogging before engaging brain in gear but there's a momentary caress with the big toe of the brake.
chronia polla! i am editing my fotos of our epiphane open house this afternoon and will post the URL on corfucius. the captions have to be ... cautious this year but look for the dullest man in corfu, certainly thickest 'tache on the isle, thick in both senses.
but hush.
An abridgment of Lady Chat's Lover was published by Knopf in 1928, reissued in p/b in America by Signet and Penguin in 1946 and a colleague of Prof Cribben is about to publish Lady C for. schools with the f-word replaced by... (true/false?) .....My reaction to the bowdlerising of Twain was as angry as yours. You being angry made me look into it and see if there was any excuse for what seems perverse and counter-productive. I'd like to see what happens when this book comes out in February. Watch that space?
Scarred Centurion! (I meant to hail that earlier - wonderful)
Hear hear, feb diary marked for when i absolutely forbid my wife or parlour maid to read the neutered version.
i shall suggest to Cee-Lo that he joins forces with the publishers to include a copy of 'Forget me' with each chicken-livered edition of Mellors unplugged.
good one, sirrah!
Oh yes yes! Greg James playing with fire to Cee Lo on air. See that invisible hand hovering over the blab-off button. My stepfather used to love timing that with the announcement of the A's: "an every day story of count......"
Laughed out loud
...and thanks for the NY ref. especially for the comment
'Michiko Kakutani makes some excellent points on this topic in the Times this morning as well. Among other things, K points out that to call Jim a "slave" is to return him to the state which he flees.
Getting this range on the matter via weblinks is why people stop using newspapers for reading.
I'm glad you made me think on this and added that FT piece. That there's an argument to be made for Alan Gribben's action speaks to our times. Looking back in another generation or two, if we really have come to live in a world where color of skin means less than the content of character, we will be as puzzled by this censorship as we are now by those Victorians who draped the legs of their pianos with frilly lace.
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