H*ckl*b*rry F*nn - Are you kidding me?

How far is going too far with even the best of intentions?

Apparently a revised edition of Mark Twain’s "Tom Sawyer" and “Huckleberry Finn” are going to be published soon, “updated” to be timely with the 21st century. These modernized versions are meant to bring the 21st century ideas of “politically correct” to the 19th century, and will be using the word “slave” throughout the book in place of the word “nigger” (yes, I know – I’ve just committed a cardinal sin by even using the word in any context – I’m supposed to say “the n- word”, but I confess, for all that I agree with and support “Politically Correct” there are some measures which strike me a silly and pointless).

These editions will also replace the term "injun" with "Indian Joe" (I don’t get why not "Native American Joe", but what do I know anyway?).

Now, don't get me wrong – I am all for Political Correctness, and I agree that there are words that are offensive words – but here's the rub - when in a particular context.

It seems to me, being the layman that I am, that a huge part of studying classic literature is to understand it within the context of when and where it was written. "Tom Sawyer" and “Huckleberry Finn” were written in 1876 and 1884 respectively, and both stories take place in the pre-Civil War period. The books reflect the language of the period – both when the books were written and when the stories took place.

What's more, it is very clear from the books that Mark Twain is speaking out (very forcefully) against racism, segregation and hatred. To whitewash the language used in the books and reflected the period of US history (no pun intended, well not too much, anyway) is taking away from realism of the novels.

As an avid reader, I can tell you that a huge part of my ability to "get into" a book is to feel that I am there – in the story, watching it all happen from the very front row. I cannot read a 19th century book and feel that I am witnessing the story first-hand if the language used is catered to 21st century sensitivities. It simply wouldn't work – it would feel fake.

But I think the issue goes deeper than the use of the words in the book.

It seems to me that people by and large get so caught up in the word itself that they have lost perspective in the use of language.

I mentioned in this blog a couple of months ago my earliest lesson in life about using racist words (the lesson taught me not to use slurs, not how to use them). Nevertheless, I think that there is a huge difference in using a word as a slur – and using the word in a conversation or discussion about the word itself.

A few months ago there was a huge uproar over Dr. Laura Schlesinger's radio show when she used the word repeatedly. Now, I have never liked Dr. Laura, and with all that I know of her, hear and see about her, I have never had any desire to hear her show, nor did her resignation particularly bother me.

But I was surprised at what I read about the whole incident. Every article and opinion piece that I saw talked about how horrible it was that she "used the n-word", and they even counted how many times she used it. Then I read the transcript of the broadcast – at no time did she use the word as a way of referring to blacks. That is to say, at no time did she refer to blacks as "niggers". She didn't.

Much of what she said was racist and completely unacceptable and an outrage was very much in line as was her resignation. But the outrage should have been over what she did wrong – and I don't believe that using the word "nigger" in the context that she used it was what she did that was so wrong.

But this seems typical of how society is trying to over-compensate for its racist past. We can't even talk about a word that is such a horrible racist slur without using a code for it. I'm sorry but that seems to me somewhat ridiculous.

If I talk about the anti-Semitism which I have faced in my life, I don't say that somebody called me "the k-word". No – I'll say they called me a kike. And if the newspapers report an incident where the word "kike" is written all over the walls of a synagogue, they'll report the word that was used – they don't pussyfoot around it giving it some kind of code name.

Lenny Bruce had an absolutely brilliant comic routine (I assume that this was an actual routine of his – I saw it in the 1974 bio-pic "Lenny" starring Dustin Hoffman). In it, he starts "counting" how many "niggers" he sees in the room, followed by the kikes, wops, greaseballs, spics and guineas – he even turns it into an "auction" keeping track of many of each he's tallied.

He goes on say that the point he was making is that "it's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness."

He finishes it up by saying that if President Kennedy were to go on national TV and say the word "nigger" over and over until it didn't mean anything anymore, "then you'd never be able to make a black kid cry because somebody called him a nigger in school".

Maybe this is completely non-PC of me and I mightmaybe I'll have to follow Dr. Laura on the road to resignation, but I think Lenny hit the nail on the head. We need to focus on truly eradicating the real racism and the hate that is still far too prevalent in the world today, and not waste our energies in pretending the words themselves never existed.

Doing that with "Tom Sawyer" and “Huckleberry Finn” isn't censorship, it's revisionism.