Dear Winston Smith and the Ministry of Truth are alive and well. The latest project has been the re-edition of Huck Finn editing out the words “Nigger” and “Injun”. According to NewSouth Books Mark Twain “expert” Alan Gribben, the idea is not to censor the book but to “update it.”
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?… Has it ever occurred to your, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?… The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
Syme talking to Winston, 1984 by George Orwell.
Anyone who supports this action is an idiot. Or an “idjit” as they’d say in Huck Finn’s world.
Well, since we allowed the POTUS (Klinton) to redefine the meaning of ‘is’, are you truly surprised?
How long before “slave” (which now replaces the word “nigger” in Huck Finn) is deemed too objectionable and changed to something else. How about “Owned-American” or something equally ludicrous?
Your quote from 1984 is so exactly right that I am stealing it for SS. (Well, stealing with credit, so it’s more like academics.)
That quote from the book stayed with me since the first time I read the book way back when rainbows were in black & white. The worst part is that I am seeing the results in our youth and not-so young when they are incapable of express their grievances or transmit basic needed and sometimes vital information.