Hide the 'niggers!'

[Críostóir]

And a good abridged job will leave you going, What did they leave out? and get you back to reading the real one.

OR, if you're a kid and have no idea how the book has been bonsaied, set you up for being mortally embarrassed years later when you find out that Herakles had to do his labors because he got grumpy one morning and murdered his wife and children, and that the "Gypsy Rover" wasn't a prince, he was a gypsy named Black Jack Davy who was just a better lay than the husband of the woman who ran off with him.

Oh yes, I've been burned by this. Give me the real thing or give me NOTHING, and say why you won't let me read it, and that should be the motto of every child and adolescent for whom a bowdlerized text might be intended.

 

[Kulindahr]

OR, if you're a kid and have no idea how the book has been bonsaied, set you up for being mortally embarrassed years later when you find out that Herakles had to do his labors because he got grumpy one morning and murdered his wife and children, and that the "Gypsy Rover" wasn't a prince, he was a gypsy named Black Jack Davy who was just a better lay than the husband of the woman who ran off with him.

Oh yes, I've been burned by this. Give me the real thing or give me NOTHING, and say why you won't let me read it, and that should be the motto of every child and adolescent for whom a bowdlerized text might be intended.

I've more than once considered that "truth in labeling" should apply to books.

Especially with some of the Reader's Digest ones (do not, I repeat DO NOT venture to read their butchery of James Fenimore Cooper), I've considered that the cover of such a thing should have ABRIDGED on the cover, in larger letters than anything else, with an asterisk leading to the back, where the warning would be found: This is not the whole book. This is a chopped-up version. If you're lucky, it will be like the book went on a diet, and is basically the same. If you're not, you'll find yourself lost and confused if you ever talk to someone who read the real thing -- that's if you're lucky; if you're not lucky, you won't even recognize the story if they make the book into a movie, because most of the characters, half the places, and a great deal of the action will be thrown away, and what's left will be stitched together so badly the original author would demand loudly and firmly that it be burned, not allowed to share the same county with him or her.
So if you really want to know the story, go get the real book. If you're a lazy ass who just wants some story, go ahead and read it, but be aware that you're such a loser the Army wouldn't even take you.


OTOH, children's abridgments can serve to get kids familiar with a sort of framework, something to hang the real story on one day.

 

[belamyi]

Perhaps the most sensible idea in this thread yet came from LilBit, who proposed abridging the thing for younger folks.

LilBit for publisher!

That's mistaking the plot, the story, the cultural significance and whatever else you want to abstract from the book, for Twain's ACTUAL work, "nigger" word included.
There is nothing new and "brilliant" about abridged versions, that's precisely how education works, by introducing kids little by little into the matters of the adult world, while being aware that they are not being taught the "full version" yet.

The point in this thread was about THE WORK ITSELF, about that full versions being manipulated and making it pass as something different, just like Middle Age authorities would change the parts of the works of ancient writers that they considered inappropriate or they simply didn't like, and then make pass THEIR own versions with THEIR own views under the respectability and authority of the names of the old masters, whose original work and MEANING remains therefore lost.

"Dumbing down" or merely translating is ok as long as you are aware that they represent something different from and original version, and inventing concepts like "fidelity" or "essence" is only a way to ignore and manipulate, no matter if roguishly or simply naively, the complex reality, yes, that complexity that bothers people so much when dealing with the real world.
It's perfectly ok to go for abridgments if you don't have the time or the leisure to go for the whole version and all its details, but you can't expect to reshape reality only to fit your comfort and laziness and sanction it by having recourse to fairytale, pseudorational, cheap philosophical subterfuges like "essence", "gist" or whatever else you may fancy to keep your peace of mind and keep taking yourself as a reasonable, honest and informed person.
You may succeed at cheating at university or at work and deceiving other people, but the world is far bigger than that, and what you ignore which has any abiding value in life will eventually get back on you.

 

[Ram]

Actually you don't really have to worry about kids picking books like Huck with the words like nigger in it. Most of them, all 3 that still read, would be too busy reading the many adventures of Hannah Montana.

 

[belamyi]

I say just keep the motherfucker out of elementary school.

Keep all demeaning language out.

It's a fucking novel.

I would feel the same if it included cunt, spic, kike or faggot.

The word does not need to be used 200 fucking times. I know if I were black and a kid and the word was used over and over again, I would feel a little weird.

I can picture it too: Daddy, I learned about niggers today.

We're not talking about the words slavery or African American. This is different.

Common sense is relative.

I don't call it censorship so much as unnecessary.

Yes, it's a novel... Mark Twain's novel, he did not need to write 200 times that word or, much better, he didn't "need" to write that novel at all, and it would all be more silent and peaceful now... but he wrote it that way, and whenever you refer to that novel you are referring to all the words the way they are put together.

Maybe the only way you read and make sense out of a book is by counting how many times a word appears and not why it does so. Maybe you'd prefer that all written books and books yet to be written follow very specific rules about the occurrence or even the mere appearance or not of certain terms you consider taboo. Maybe you consider more meaningful repeating less meaningful phrases like "good morning" or "hello" to people who would not appreciate you any less, nor any more if they were not greeted by them. The world you liberal and activist mind adumbrates would be a Pleasantworld, in shades of 1950s American TV grey or in bright Soviet/China red.

But if your prudish ignorant brains or whatever you have in its place can deal with Twain's book, just put the goddam book away, get back to your happy comfortable life and let adults and the real world go their way.

Again, people should stop acting as if this sort of issues were about "THE words" and something "coming" from them... words are not like the real world, they are your take on the real world and words are what you make of them and only after that they can reshape or distort the world... but if you only take this latter part and ignore or simply are afraid to deal and master the use of words and concepts, you will always be scared and manipulated by those who impose their own values through the words.

 

[belamyi]

Oh, Lefty, elv's "opinions" and arguments are such a mess of hollows and incoherences that merely pointing at one may seem to suffice but in fact it will be useless... he's agaisnt... but then sometimes... and he is against "some sexual fetishes"... I guess sodomy qualifies as such, not of course, for his liberal mind, but again to those who use the same logic of "killing but just a little bit"... OR "SEPARATE BUT EQUAL".

for such people the "shades of grey" are just black and white in contrasting white and black contexts: it's the sort of people who believe that black-and-white ideas are shaded and made grey, less violent by saying them nicely... the rogues do it in full hypocritical awareness and the elvs just side with them without having any idea of what they are actually doing... only because they appear nicer and they "ideally" and "theoretically" (talk about cheap, candid intellectual snobism) are against censure but with some censure... they do have the sense that "they world is grey" but all they can elaborate is regurgitated incoherent contradictions, and going beyond them is "reading too much" and being an "intellectual snob".

In short, and somewhat "dumbing it down":View attachment 506949+View attachment 506950+View attachment 506948+View attachment 506947=

That's what happens when you keep editing "windy and wordy" posts... you always forget to add some of the points who may people react and understand, finally!, the point you are willing to transmit.

 

[belamyi]

Yes, it's a novel... Mark Twain's novel, he did not need to write 200 times that word or, much better, he didn't "need" to write that novel at all, and it would all be more silent and peaceful now... but he wrote it that way, and whenever you refer to that novel you are referring to all the words the way they are put together.

Maybe the only way you read and make sense out of a book is by counting how many times a word appears and not why it does so. Maybe you'd prefer that all written books and books yet to be written follow very specific rules about the occurrence or even the mere appearance or not of certain terms you consider taboo. Maybe you consider more meaningful repeating less meaningful phrases like "good morning" or "hello" to people who would not appreciate you any less, nor any more if they were not greeted by them. The world you liberal and activist mind adumbrates would be a Pleasantworld, in shades of 1950s American TV grey or in bright Soviet/China red.

But if your prudish ignorant brains or whatever you have in its place can NOT deal with Twain's book, just put the goddam book away, get back to your happy comfortable life and let adults and the real world go their way.

Again, people should stop acting as if this sort of issues were about "THE words" and something "coming" from them... words are not like the real world, they are your take on the real world and words are what you make of them and only after that they can reshape or distort the world... but if you only take this latter part and ignore or simply are afraid to deal and master the use of words and concepts, you will always be scared and manipulated by those who impose their own values through the words.

Damn I should be more careful or simply make a default choice of always writing "can not" instead of getting stupidly distracted by apostrophes while I am thinking on the actual words and not the ortography and the elisions...

 

[belamyi]

OK, perhaps a compromise.

Would it be possible to just hide the nigger thread?

Here, elvin, another cheerful marshmallow man for your cause, and this one with the authority of an university degree.

 

[skips]

 

[ixthrock]

And the novel you'd choose is...?

"Sula," or "the Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison - oh shit; nevermind.

 

[belamyi]

Bitter much, Bel?

I won't apologize for being proud of my degree -- I worked hard to study and accomplish it.

It may be the fashion in some circles to disparage another's person, but I think it poor debate.

Good luck at expanding the squabble to those of us who know better.

Please DO continue with your harangue.

Call me a marshmellow if you like; I can absorb the blows.

For elvin it seems that being right, informed, reasonable derives from belonging to the right class: basically agreeing with him; not that he expects other to agree, simply that he is so satisfied and full of his own righteousness that he simply dismisses anything which doesn't fit with his "views".

Then of course, you can't be aware and have a right perception of what's going on in a country unless you are a citizen of a country, and that's why he "takes action" in politics, because every American has a perfect and sound understanding of what is going on in their own country, about what is right or not, so that elvs must "take action" against people who know very well what's happening in America and what is best, or "take action" simply to stand for rights that need support, because everyone in America has a perfect understanding of America's problems by being a national and not an "alien" there for, indeed, how could not an citizen know better than anyone else what's going on in their own country... not "ideally" or "theoretically" should know, but they DO, effectively, know.

So just like in the past you needed to be a nobleman, a gentleman by birth, now we have an improved version and can become a naturalized citizen and that supposes or gives you the right to know better than anyone what is right in front of your nose, without being blinded, of course, by beliefs or ideas that you are not willing to challenge because you "feel" that they are right.


Finally, if you have some sort of superior certification, like working hard, being good to your family, friends and coworkers, or some university degree (whose value is directly proportional to the pain it took you to get it), then you are allowed to be right, because good people can not be responsible for bad reasoning and the consequences of its application in the decision-making in real life.


It's not about having or not a degree, or more or less money or whatever, it's about how it is used as standing for something totally unrelated to it unless people decide to relate it to the good or the bad, so that if you are rich you can easily be considered arrogant and pushy, and if you have a degree related to whatever specific field, you are automatically considered capable of reasoning soundly about ANYTHING.
What makes be "bitter" is that, in doesn't matter in which era or country you are living, no matter what things are "ideally" and "theoretically", too often ACTUALLY, at the end of the day, it's still all about your credentials and the class or group you belong to, and not about what is actually right and good.

It may be the fashion in some circles to disparage another's person, but I think it poor debate.

And yet here you are engaging me. I guess I have something going.

Take care of that ETA crap you have going there and then come back and take on the USA's issues.

I find it amusing when people who have little experience on racial issues think that they are so simple. As simple as throwing around the word "mambo" to stereotype hispanics that don't adhere or fit into your Ibero-Euro sensibilities and snobbery.

You can see then that you are in the middle of "poor debate" in this thread.

And yeah, I'll go on "haranguing" to people who know better, and who are so thick as to be capable of "absorbing all the blows", and so very aware of everything important that they will never get caught regretting their past blindness.

 

[belamyi]

Hence my joke about hiding it. The exchange has become a tedious clash, with the topic long hijacked by personal attacks.

But, it's your right to do so, and I don't have to come back to the toilet every time I log on, just to see if it's still coming back up into the bowl every time.

It's my problem obviously.

The attempt to intervene with humor was obviously a wasted effort.

Play on, by all means.

It's "tedious" because it is badly dealt with, and at least the discussion gives proof of it, but hiding the debate, as poor as it may be, won't make the problems disappear.
Maybe you could become a fan of Chinese politics forbidden certain debates so as "preserve social harmony".

If America STILL has some undeniable advantage over China, it's the capacity to deal with conflict and not just avoid and hide it, trying to divert attention from it with the lure of material comfort, privileges and power.

The attempts at humor depend on one's personal understanding of the gravity of the debate.

Play on, by all means.

By all means, for all that is at stake.

I may be the first one to be bored by so many people in a far away country being concerned about skin color and words related to discrimination out of skin shade, even if it's an issue inherited from the past, but I'm personally deeply because first, it is a REAL and wounding issue, and second because it is not only about black people or black people in America, it is about the capacity OF ALL HUMAN SOCIETIES to deal with problems and not dismiss them as "boring", "difficult" or "stirring", something with so far and STILL is better done in America than anywhere else, no matter how badly and naively, if you want, and also no matter how naive and wordy, boring and badly expressed you may consider my "take on" the problem.

 

[bankside]

That's what happens when you keep editing "windy and wordy" posts... you always forget to add some of the points who may people react and understand, finally!, the point you are willing to transmit.

I demand to read the original post, without all of this "editing" you feel entitled to do. We're perfectly capable of judging the original post for ourselves, thank you, without the nanny state telling us what to read or without these "self-appointed morality police" editing things down to what they think of as "our level."

 

[belamyi]

I demand to read the original post, without all of this "editing" you feel entitled to do. We're perfectly capable of judging the original post for ourselves, thank you, without the nanny state telling us what to read or without these "self-appointed morality police" editing things down to what they think of as "our level."

The "editing" is too often rather an "expansion", so that the original post is usually one of the proverbial belamian one-liners, or merely one or several pics: as proof of that, you can check out Lefty's unedited post (#243) commenting on my originally wordless post (#242)
And yes, I know you are "perfectly capable of judging", and COULD dismiss the arguments of an unedited post because of some grammar or spelling mistakes... and, of course, because of the "Location" tag to the left

In short, my "editing" is never cutting, but enlarging, and my "nuancing" never a "watering down", but a more incisive and hopefully clearer and more elaborate take... that's what my posts in discussion topics are considered my usual wordy, haranguing self.

If you want I can send you the editing sequence of all my posts... it may look longer and be even more boring and indigestable, but you only need to ask and I'll provide

 

[Lefty]

my god in heaven....

somebody notify the Fox Network

Sighted right here in the heart of JUB country

Mixing in with the Sodomites....true Trglodytes.

Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS, Turner, et al.......hurry

Can we make the News At Noon???????.

 

[belamyi]

my god in heaven....

somebody notify the Fox Network

Sighted right here in the heart of JUB country

Mixing in with the Sodomites....true Trglodytes.

Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS, Turner, et al.......hurry

Can we make the News At Noon???????.

 

[belamyi]

Belamy, calm down. It's just my opinion.

And Rush Limbaugh is just "a commentator", only he's not as nice and liberal as you are, is he?

 

[belamyi]

And you're starting to sound more and more like Franco or Mussolini or Bush. You can't dictate this convo or my opinion. Difference of opinions, belamy.

You mean I'm starting to really piss you off. One would say we have a strong "difference of opinions, elvin, but apparently it is not so. Let's see.
So what I do, according to you, is trying to "dictate", but you, you can dictate the value of my opinions and decide that I am a fascist because I am shedding a different light on your "opinions" and in response you can only try to throw shit on me? Well, after the ad hominem card, sooner or later you had to have recourse to the reductio ad Hitlerum... and you made a nice compound with both, very creative of you, but Hard-up better not be reading any of that. If someone is said "to sound" (sound to YOU, that is) like a fascist, he must be a fascist, isn't it? Especially if he makes you feel uncomfortable in the opinions you always say (and not just to me) that you are not willing to discuss, much less to change. A very funny conception of being a liberal you have there.

Then you mean you can't consider anything I wrote an opinion, otherwise you would be accepting my "wordy harangues" as merely expressing "different opinion", so if, although I never say that my opponents "dictate" and "sound like Franco or Mussolini or Bush" but only discuss using arguments, facts and ideas, according to you I do not simply have a different opinion, but you say that I am close to being a fascist, and if you are right in what you believe, in your "opinions", then it is plain that I must be a...

Really, find something else to do. I gave my opinion on this issue.

I understand what you are saying. Really. But I haven't changed my mind.

Like I said, I would feel the same if the word faggot was being used.

Why of course you haven't changed your mind, you don't want to become a full-fledged fascist. And surely the fact that you consistently apply your opinion to another case must mean that your opinion itself is consistent too.

I haven't censored anything and we are just talking hypotheticals.

We had it clear that you are not for making decisions of whatever kind in real life. You said "take action" and that you would accept some form of censure but we are just talking with marshmallow up to our necks, aren't we.

I haven't censored anything and we are just talking hypotheticals.

I appreciate your passion tho.

I will not discuss this any further with you.

That's fine.

Who said I was nice? lol

Why now! ev-verybody loves elvin!!

 

[Kulindahr]

That's mistaking the plot, the story, the cultural significance and whatever else you want to abstract from the book, for Twain's ACTUAL work, "nigger" word included.
There is nothing new and "brilliant" about abridged versions, that's precisely how education works, by introducing kids little by little into the matters of the adult world, while being aware that they are not being taught the "full version" yet.

The point in this thread was about THE WORK ITSELF, about that full versions being manipulated and making it pass as something different.

I'll assume you weren't exactly awake when you read my post.

You're attacking something I didn't say, and arguing to support your attack by using what I did say.

A huge amount of what's in this thread revolved around kids not being ready for "THE WORK ITSELF", or people thinking they aren't ready, or sniveling whiners being all weepy about how some word in a book not aimed at anyone today is offensive, which kids shouldn't have to hear, etc. And all of this was put forth as a defense of some lying publisher with a shallow understanding of what literature is raping a book and pretending it was still what Twain wrote, thus lying to kids and robbing them of the chance at a real education.

Into the stark no-compromise situation came LilBit's suggestion of abridging it for kids. In the context, that was brilliant, because it was far more perceptive and useful than anything the rest of us had been saying: it confronted all the problems people had with the situation and took care of every one. An abridged edition says, merely by stating that it is abridged, that it isn't the work itself. It warns from the outset that things have been tossed out. It purports to do nothing but tell the story, with no claims to preserving side plots, historical reality, cultural themes, or anything else. It is thus perfect for the situation.

And had I a genie to command, I'd have all the copies of the raped and butchered bastardization of Twain's work rounded up and stuffed up the ass of the publisher and his fans who think he's done a wonderful thing, and if any of them survived the experience have them put to writing "I will not fuck with excellence and truth" ten thousand times in the sand on a nice wide beach in Australia. One wish done, the next would bring a world-class abridger, and put something out that will allow fifth graders to be introduced to Twain's work.

 

[Kulindahr]

Actually you don't really have to worry about kids picking books like Huck with the words like nigger in it. Most of them, all 3 that still read, would be too busy reading the many adventures of Hannah Montana.

Heh.

All that would be needed is a rumor that Hannah Montana simply adores Huckleberry Finn.