Leonard Pitts…Albuquerque Journal article, Jan. 10, 2011
Posted by Pete | Posted in News | Posted on 10-01-2011
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Censoring Twain = Revising History, Albuquerque Journal, Jan. 10, 2011….Mr. Pitts has a very good article in todays Journal discussing the censorship of Mark Twain and changing the term n—– to slave….He points out that to change Twain would be in effect be changing history….Twain used the langague of the day in his writings. . A lot of us would like to say this history did not happen, rewrite it and go on. We could, but that would be more wrong, a lot more wrong, than allowing history to stand as written. The only way to right a wrong is to understand that a wrong happened and keep it from happening again….We know now not to use certain words because they are inappropate and other words can be used that are less sensitive…..Mr. Pitts covers this subject matter very well and I hope you will read the article, but I want to share a couple of paragraphs of that article with you on this web site,….”Huck Finn is a funny, subversive story about a runaway white boy who comes to locate the humanity in a runaway black man and, in the process, vindicates his own. It has always, until now, been regarded as a timeless tale…..But that was before America became an intellectual backwater that would deem it necessary to censor its most celebrated author”….I agree. I hope Mr. Pitts or some respected writer will one day report on “God” being censored….stricken from reference in our schools and government, etc…..
Making the changes suggested in the writings of Mark Twain would not only be changing history, but it would also be plagiarism, that is, stealing the words of peoples of the past and changing them to suit somebody’s agenda in a later year. Plagiarism is more commonly thought of as stealing the words of someone else with a motive for profit, but it is also stealing to promote an agenda which the original writer had no idea. The biblical translators have faced this problem since the Scriptures first became a written document; but, instead of changing the original writer’s words, they always elected to make the changes in the form of footnotes or margin notes. The scan of any ancient biblical manuscript will instantly show what I mean. This is the origin of most of the footnotes and margin motes in the average family Bible. For goodness sake, instead of changing the words of the ancient or historical writer, just place the changes that modern man deems significant in a footnote and let the modern reader make up his or her own mind. Any attempt to change history amounts to only propaganda which is spread to support an agenda.