[excon]

Hello again, tom and smoothy:

Right wing, meet the Tea Party. It's going to be a fun couple years.

excon

[tomder55]

It should not be banned.

Wonderful sentiment . I'm talking the way it is ;not the way it should be.

[smoothy]

Hello again, tom and smoothy:

Right wing, meet the Tea Party. It's gonna be a fun couple years.

excon

Btttttttttttp.


Going to take a few years just to fix the stuff Obama screwed up the last two years with Princess Nancy and Prince Harrys help via rubber stamp.


Just because WE on the right don't blindly believe everything we are told to beilve by the Messiah and his minnions... doesn't mean we aren't entitled to have our differences in opinion.

We all know you get excumminicated from the DNC for blaspheming the Messiah, or not doing or believing as you are told.

I may not agree with Tom on this specific issue but I still respect him.

[tomder55]

Besides we aren't that far off . I'm just saying this issue should not be defined in the ideal .

Yeah it's great that books "shouldn't "get banned . But they are in our school districts ;and truth be told ,it isn't a consevative or liberal thing .

The real issue here is how do you get this classic ,which should be taught , into the classroom and satisfy the objections. To me changing the word n* to slave does not change the story one bit.

Look at the text books that go into the classroom now .They are heavily edited for content . Often the complete text of a piece of lit. is not even introduced to the student... only the excepts that the someone else decides is worthy.

Let's not exaggerate this into a book burning or some kind of insidious censorship .

[excon]

Hello again, tom:

If changing a word to make it more acceptable to some people is good, then that's what we should do... But, it AIN'T good, and I didn't think you thought it was.

excon

[tomder55]

You got to pick your battles . I'm not making a line in the sand on this if it means a generation of students don't get to read Huck Finn.

[earl237]

Political correctness just keeps getting more ridiculous. I was hoping it would run it's course and create a backlash but it seems to go on and on. I wonder if civil liberties will oppose this. These books were a product of their time and changing words is like erasing history and it is very wrong. Even in the very PC mid-90s, I had to read parts of "Mein Kampf" in university and there was no controversy about it.

[tomder55]

This isn't university we are talking about . This is public schools and it is very much an issue .
I also observe that not once in this entire discussion has anyone outraged by the proposal used the word in question .

[smoothy]

Why... didn't need to.

Don't use a lot of other words that are in the english language too. Don't feel they should be banned either.

Perhaps we should ban the work cracker... because Blacks use it a slander against Whites... and substitute the British word Biscuit.

Somehow Ritz Biscuits doesn't sound the same.

Or if you wanted a biscuit sandwich, how would you know what you were really getting before you saw it...

(an FYI, a Biscuit Sandwich typically is a fresh American style biscuit with a slice of baked Virginia ham on it with or without cheese) VS a cracker sandwich wich is usually cheese spread or peanut butter between crackers.

[Wondergirl]

I've taught Pre-K through 8th. Fourth graders and up could handle it.

[smoothy]

I've taught Pre-K through 8th. Fourth graders and up could handle it.

Heck... I bet you've heard far worse langue in those lower grades as well from those kids.

[Wondergirl]

Heck...I bet you've heard far worse langue in those lower grades as well from those kids.

Actually, no. I taught at Lutheran grade schools. Even in our suburb, there were/are no concerns about use of bad language. Of course, if I drove east to 16th and Harding (Lawndale) where I had done my student teaching.. .

[tomder55]

Here is original text.

I thought till I wore my head sore, but I couldn’t see no way out of the trouble. After all this long journey, and after all we’d done for them scoundrels, here it was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars.

Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he’d got to be a slave, and so I’d better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion for two things: she’d be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she’d sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn’t, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they’d make Jim feel it all the time, and so he’d feel ornery and disgraced. And then think of me! It would get all around that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see anybody from that town again I’d be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don’t want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide, it ain’t no disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven,whilst I was stealing a poor old woman’s nigger that hadn’t ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there’s One that’s always on the lookout, and ain’t a-going to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn’t so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, “There was the Sunday-school, you could a gone to it; and if you’d a done it they’d a learnt you there that people that acts as I’d been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire.”

It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger’s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie — I found that out.

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn’t know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I’ll go and write the letter — and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.

[tomder55]

And here is the text revised . It doesn't change anything except now it will be read and taught in schools:

I thought till I wore my head sore, but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble. After all this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here it was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars.

Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd got to be a slave, and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion for two things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful slave, and they'd make Jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced. And then think of me! It would get all around that Huck Finn helped a slave to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see anybody from that town again I'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide, it ain't no disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven,whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's slave that hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's One that's always on the lookout, and ain't a-going to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I
Could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn't so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, “There was the Sunday-school, you could a gone to it; and if you'd a done it they'd a learnt you there that people that acts as I'd been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire.”

It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that slave's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie — I found that out.

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter — and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

Miss Watson, your runaway slave Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.

[excon]

Hello again,

In the same way the wingers try to whitewash history by changing the words in Huck Finn, they did the same thing when they read the Constitution outloud...

It was SUPPOSEDLY a very patriotic event pushed forward by the wingers in congress... But, they LEFT OUT the part they didn't like, I suppose pretending that it didn't happen.. Kind of like they pretend black people weren't called niggers... But, it DID happen. Slaves were counted as 3/5th's of a person in our Constitution. And it's there for all to read (except outloud in the congress).

I thought PC (pretending) was something liberals did... No, huh?

excon

[tomder55]

They read the part that was the law of the land today. You don't think the 3/5th clause applies today do you ?

[smoothy]

Hello again,

In the same way the wingers try to whitewash history by changing the words in Huck Finn, they did the same thing when they read the Constitution outloud...

It was SUPPOSEDLY a very patriotic event pushed forward by the wingers in congress... But, they LEFT OUT the part they didn't like, I suppose pretending that it didn't happen.. Kinda like they pretend black people weren't called niggers... But, it DID happen. Slaves were counted as 3/5th's of a person in our Constitution. And it's there for all to read (except outloud in the congress).

I thought PC (pretending) was something liberals did... No, huh?

excon

If it was the Democrats that did it they would have left out the first and second amendments... because they don't believe in anyone else's freedom of speech... or having the ability to rise up against them when they try to declare the Constitution, unconstitutional. (yeah I know YOU are pro 2nd amendment unlike so many of your brothers)

[ebaines]

they read the part that was the law of the land today.

Not quite. They had no problem reading the part about US Senators being appointed by their state legislatures, although that was changed by the 17th amendment. Or the bits about Presidential succession, changed by the 25th amendment.

The reality is they didn't read the part about "non-free" persons counting as 3/5 of a person because it woud have been an embarrassing TV moment - imagine the poor person assigned to read that out loud, and how his opponent would exploit that clip in ads at the next election. They also didn't include the two amendments dealing with prohibition.

[smoothy]

We have slaves today? How can I get one... I'm tired of yard work.


I'm not serious... thats a sarcastic comment just to be clear.

[excon]

Hello again, tom:

Of course not... But what was the purpose of reading it in the first place? Certainly NOT to pay homage to the founders. Certainly, not to honor ORIGINAL INTENT. If anything, you wound up pointing out that the Constitution is a living breathing document that GROWS with time. You confirmed that ORIGINAL INTENT has NOTHING to do with the reality of today...

Perhaps it's an unintended consequence.

excon