The cartoon is a hilarious bulls-eye.

I've long argued that the thinking or philosophy characterized as "political correctness" is essentially tragic.

It emerged from the "left" as a long-overdue, necessary, virtuous force of liberation and equality, but contained the seeds of its own destruction-- like a benign or salutary medicine that gives short-term relief, but harbors toxic side-effects. Or a benevolent bacteria that over time spontaneously morphs into a malignant strain.

It's a compound and many-layered tragedy; at first, PC thinking was attacked, discredited and demonized by the reactionary Right; thus a generation of true believers became fiercely defensive of this kind of thinking.

Embattled PC leftists in turn denounced critics for abusing and distorting the term, denied that it is an ideological, doctrinaire approach with pathological or sinister ramifications, and so on. Even today, die-hards still reflexively mistake criticism as inherently reactionary, i.e. as proof of a right-wing sensibility.

This wonderful cartoon will do more to advance the discourse than long-winded comments from the likes of me, and I'm grateful for it.

What is the point of the book if Huck begins to recognize the humanity of someone who is not already dehumanized? The N word is very important to the meaning of the book.

Joe

Re-writing history to take out all the "offensive" stuff also removes the lessons that we should learn from it. As jclientelle points out above the monikers given to Jim and Joe are juxtaposed starkly with the humanity and respect that Twain gives them through Huck. I haven't read the bowdlerized version of this book, and hope I never need to.

This whole thing reminds me of "Elderly Man River," Stan Freberg's hilarious send-up of political correctness run amok.

To me, this is more offensive than porn.

If I see this book on the shelf I will hock a loogie within it.

This practice has been previously employed ... for example, when the title of Dubya's presidential memoirs was changed from "Pack of Lies" to "Decision Points".

Uhm, this particular spoof is not particularly well constructed - but that is the least of the matter.

Fact is, Mark Twain got a lot of static in his own time exactly because he used the colloquial word "nigger" - in fact, in the character of Huck Finn he brought into the open many of the hypocrisies of polite society.

The thing is, Jim is portrayed as a noble person through out the book and, Huck Finn, who is what could be called "white trash", despite his background realizes this.

The thing is, read the book and not the "cover", what is said and not what you think you hear.

Huckleberry Finn and Mark Twain is to American literature what Shakespear is to English - a highwater mark.

Yup! I reckon this gives a new meaning to "whitewashing" history.

Until we face life and social truths for what they are and what they teach, we learn nothing and are destined to cluelessly repeat the folly real history reveals and fine literature portrays.

Whitewashed literature and story may be easier to swallow and sell -- but have little to reveal and tell!

Little White Bimbo

Can American kids still read?!?!?!?!

Somebody is slipping. They should have been rendered 100% illiterate by our de-education violence centers and de-education camps by now.

Once that happens we won't have to expurgate all those pesky books, papers, and pamphlets.

I'm old emough to remember the long evolution of words used to describe dark-skinned people. First it was nigger, then when that was made an epithet, it became darky, then negro, then Black, then African-American. Every time, the racists turned it into a racial epithet, so it had to be changed again. The best solution to that I know came from H. Rap Brown, when he said "I don't care if you call me "nigger", as long as you make that "MISTER Nigger".

So this story broke just on the heels of Christmas, a holiday that not only suffers from the fact that it has been turned into the ultimate greed-fest, but also a a gross victim of the P.C. police, and so around that time a columnist at the Star Ledger decided to comment, which I stumbled upon as I was looking up some information on a case I was transcribing for spellings. It was perfect and totally addressed my consternation at Christmas when greeting someone and having no idea what to say -- but it's crazy. Here's the story. Maybe I'll follow this guy's advice next year:

http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2010/12/multicultural_christmas_greeti.html

And then the Huck Finn story broke and that was kind of like the last straw. I didn't even know until this nonsense that the book was banned. Banned instead of sparking discussion on a whole host of things, the most important being friendship. Scott Simon did a nice commentary on this on Weekend Edition on Saturday:

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/08/132759360/huck-finns-inner-conflicts-reflect-our-own

So I will once again recite tow my favorite words from "Lawrence of Arabia." We are a "silly people."

I have read Huck Finn every few years of my 70+ life. It is one of the finest stories written, in my mind, and a wonderful portrait of life at that time with none of the rough edges knocked off. Nigger Jim is, and is portrayed as, a human of the finest type. Huck treats everybody with respect, or homely wisdom, and he and Jim are the closest of friends. The passages where he struggles with his conscience about whether to due his duty and give Jim up as a runaway nigger, or to help him escape to the north sums up life as it was in those times. Huck, at the last moment, after an intense internal dialogue, decides he would help Jim be free and go to Hell for it. That is a very powerful statement both of the culture of the time and of Huck's better nature.

Having run across this article, I got out my copy last night and read it again to see if I had it wrong. I hadn't.

Then I tried, as someone above did, to substitute "slave Jim" for nigger Jim, and turn the other references to niggers to "slaves." It doesn't work! The story loses its humanity and becomes, essentially nothing, just pabulum for the uneducated.

Mark Twain was a very close observer of his time, of its customs, its language, its social structure, and he portrayed it faithfully, including the warts and scars. Read and studied in its real form, it is not going to corrupt or outrage anybody, if they have the ability to think and reflect. If they don't have that ability, they shouldn't be reading anything but the sports pages and Faux News.

As somebody commented above, the new versions of the Holy Bible are also pabulum. I fear that, perhaps, nobody is expected to eat meat and potatoes anymore, only carefully vetted mush.

Oh, I forgot to mention that nearly everybody from little kids to old codgers smoked, or chawed tobacco. Many drank alcohol, often to excess, and that's in the book, too.

Horrors!!!

This is where the damn so-called liberals are going to make their stand? Useless. The ship is sinking and they are worried about the silverware! Who can even take them seriously anymore?

Oh BTW "minitrue", if we ever find out your real name, we're going to notify the PC police to send someone out to get your n-word-loving butt.

The third time I read Huck Finn, I read it in one night. It's that good. We ought not to tamper with the words of literary geniuses. If the kids can't handle it, so be it. Genius of that sort always finds its audience.

To say nothing that our kids grow up in a culture dripping with 'n**ger' (in its most explosive interpretation). Between 'world of warcraft' and gangsta rap, our kids should be so lucky as to have Huck Finn read TO THEM by Fifty-Cent.

Just about every movement brings with it its own brand of 'political correctness,' and is adopted below the radar, i.e. feminist movement, gay rights, and even immigration, to name a few. Tolerance is preached and promoted, but no deviation is really tolerated. We are programmed and brainwashed in so many ways that 'independent thinking' becomes next to impossible. The evidence is the name-calling and projection and taking things personally when someone disagrees with a viewpoint considered politically correct, and that we subsequently adopt as our own--by way of imitation. This is akin to being in a thought-prison.

Do any of you know if Dick Gregory has re-issued a politically correct version of his autobiography first published in 1963? The book has one word title that would get me deleted from this thread if I was to put the name down in print, but I do recall reading it while in high school in the mid 60s.