It would be interesting to hear Mark Twain's reaction to the censorship of Huck Finn (a new edition has the word "nigger" replaced with "slave" so as not to "offend" African-Americans.) What the ****? To hear Jon Stewart and Larry Wilmore take on the ridiculousness - and seriousness -- of this attempt at censorship, go to this link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/12/jon-stewart-takes-on-huck_n_807921.html
Wilmore also brings up the Republican reading of the Constitution and talks about how they conveniently omitted the part about African-Americans being "3/5 of a person." As Wilmore - and many others - have said, "You can't whitewash our history."
Bill Maher also took this issue on last Friday with D.L. Hughley was his guest. Hughley said, "They took nigger out of Huckleberry Finn and replaced it with slave. White people, that's NOT an upgrade."
There have also been serious editorials and articles about the Huck Finn censorship; an excellent one appeared in the NY Times on January 6, 2011 by Michiko Kakutani. The title alone is priceless: "Light Out Huck, They Still Want to Sivilize You."
But back to Mark Twain -- what would he say? I'm sure he'd have some choice words for English Professor Alan Gribben, who has taken it upon himself to revise Twain's classic.
What is Gribben thinking? This censorship is of a piece with the 2010 Texas school textbook controversy, in which the Texas state Board of Education is changing the historical record to eliminate Thomas Jefferson from the list of our nation's founding fathers, erase Senator Edward Kennedy and Cesar Chavez completely while highlighting Ronald Reagan as a hero, rename slavery "the Atlantic triangular trade", among other things. I wonder what the Texas Board of Education would call Jim?
Another censorship issue I've come across recently is in the February issue of ARTNews, in a Commentary by Robin Cembalest called "Between a Cross and a Hard Place." The article details the Smithsonian Institution's decision to censor a video by David Wogjnarowicz. Catholic League president Bill Donohue, House Republican leader John Boehner and minority whip Eric Cantor, among others, used this video as an excuse to question the Smithsonian's federal funding. When museums cave in to the right, it can backfire years later, the museum in question having lost the respect of the arts community. This is an excellent article -- I highly recommend it for your reading, as Ms. Cembalest describes the controversy most articulately.
These illustrations illustrate to me how our country is moving farther and farther to the right, becoming more and more conservative. These examples show how fearful people are of reality, true history. How do they sleep at night, knowing they're feeding their children lies?
No comments:
Post a Comment