The Elderly Man and the Sea? Test Sanitizes Literary Texts

The New York Times ^ | 6/1/02 (for editions of 6/2/02) | N. R. Kleinfield

[livius]

omigod. This appeared in the New York Times, the paper that was probably one of the leaders in PC and one of the parties responsible for the Bowdlerization of the universe?

Actually, reading the NYT over the last few months, the only positive thing I can say about Sept. 11 is that it prompted the NYT to reexamine some of its knee-jerk liberal attitudes. The Times has done some incredible reporting on 9/11, more than deserving of a Pulitzer, and I have detected large gusts of common sense blowing through areas that had been, up to now, seriously air-conditioned against them.

[IronJack]

Didn't Joe Stalin used to practice this kind of cultural expurgation?

[freebilly]

To make Huck Finn pass PC muster, let's change Huck's name to Haj Ali. Jim will now be a Black Muslim whose "slave name" has been replaced by Karim Ibrahim who now seeks "reparations" rather than "freedom".

Pap of course represents the degenerate, repressive, evil, eurocentric racist system. And let's make Tom Sawyer a liberal lesbian named Tamantha Sawyer.

Of course we'll change The Duke and The Dauphin into practicing homosexual pedophiles....

School boards all across America will order this revised classic by the boatload....

[Reaganesque]

Shouldn't that be "The Elderly Person and the Sea?"

I thought it was "The Senior Citizen and the Aquatic Bio-Diversity Zone".

[Bubba_Leroy]

The funny thing about Huck Finn is that it is a very anti racist book, particularly for its time. Now the PC police are pulling it from libraries because it uses "the N word".

Of course, if Samuel Clemens had been black then the book could stay. Black authors are still permitted to use "the N word."

[concerned about politics]

Why don't we just lobotomize everyone from now on? Then everyone will be emotionally dead towards everyone else, peace will fill the earth, and we can all sing and hold hands.

That is the plan - creating the socialist Borg through the deadened minds of the children.

[muawiyah]

When the PC types remove the "N-word" from Huck, and substitute "African-Americans" it changes the speech of the viciously racist slave dealing Southerners and they begin to seem like nice, normal people.

That's certainly not what Mark Twain intended.

[PJ-Comix]

I wonder what I The Jury would look like if these PC clowns ever get their hands on it.

[VOA]

Actually, reading the NYT over the last few months, the only positive thing I can say
about Sept. 11 is that it prompted the NYT to reexamine some of its knee-jerk liberal attitudes.

I detect a bit of the same.
But, like the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the USSR...I remain skeptical.

Personally I maintain the same policy for East Coast Liberal Insanity that Reagan
had for The Evil Empire: Trust, But Verify.

And if there ever is a President Hillary Rodham Clinton, I will know New York
had a brief episode of lucidity, then fell back to it's normal stage of left-wing insanity.

[Charles Henrickson]

I think the play, Twelve Angry Men, has been redone as, Twelve Angry Persons. I'm serious. Of course, you would never have a jury made up of twelve men nowadays, anyhow (let alone twelve white men).

[VOA]

...it changes the speech of the viciously racist slave dealing Southerners and they
begin to seem like nice, normal people.

That's certainly not what Mark Twain intended.

You have nailed (with brevity) what I tried to get across to a UCLA undergrad.
But this poor deluded child had been convinced by his UCLA professor that the really evil thing
about Huckleberry Finn was the author!

As much as I tried to convince him that Twain was holding up slave-holders to ridicule
and harpooning slavery, he just couldn't abandon the PC-Party line.

And he still couldn't buy it when I said "HEY, I, my parents and a couple of generations
back were Southerners and know more about this stuff than you do!"
(the UCLA student was a good-hearted Asian immigrant...)

[TomGuy]

substitute "African-Americans"

No, we've moved on (or back). Now, it's "people of color."

Keep up!

LOL

[VOA]

I think the play, Twelve Angry Men, has been redone as, Twelve Angry Persons.

At least it was still Twelve Angry Men when I got to see it in Bristol, England in 1996.
And it was very well done; the cast included the fellow who was the young sidekick of
"Inspector Morris", in the role Henry Fonda had in the movie version.

But these PC-types are relentless like Islamic terrorists...this is going to be a long war!

[concerned about politics]

They don't dare teach History anymore. Now it's social studies . "Feelings" of our forefathers are so much more educational. (barf, puke, hack, gag on a spoon).

[screed]

Why don't we just lobotomize everyone from now on?

Because, it is easier to just legalize drugs.

[ladylib]

Yeah, that's next. Some jerk principal in the Midwest painted over a Minuteman's musket in a school mural. He said, "Guns don't belong in school." This woman is against high-stakes testing so you could say she has her own agenda, but then again why should the Regents corrupt authors' passages? On a bright note, a couple of private schools in NY state recently refused to let their students take the Regents. A Luthern school says it interferes with their students' community service. Apparently, the students go to Mexico to build houses. Taking the NY State Regents exam would put private schools on the level of NY public schools.

[dighton]

After making her discovery, Ms. Heifetz contacted most of the affected authors or their publishers, and found them angered that their words had been tampered with without their consent.

Good. I hope the guilty "educational" vandals get their asses sued off.

[The Great RJ]

I recently attended a high school drama production of Agatha Cristie's "Ten Little Indians". Of course this title was politically incorrect (particularly in South Dakota where Indian, excuse me Native American, nick names for sports teams are taboo)and the play was alternately billed as "Then There Were None"

Strangely the Indian motif that was central to the play was changed to "ten little Bengali boys" --apparently there aren't enough natives of India here to be offended.

[quitwhining]

I think the play, Twelve Angry Men, has been redone as, Twelve Angry Persons.

The Drama Club at my daughter's high school just finished a performance of "Twelve Angry People."

[concerned about politics]

Taking the NY State Regents exam would put private schools on the level of NY public schools.

No. Private schools could just fill in the dots without reading the questions and still excell over the public school kids. They're just plain dumber than a box of rocks.

Most private and homeschools do not use state tests. How could they answer a question that has been changed to PC lingo and paganism?
Or a question like this:
Mother Earth is:
1)Our world Goddess.
2) Living in a tree.
3) The source of all love.
4)All of the above.

Of course a normal child could not answer a question like this. The correct answer "None of the above" is not there!