Every so often some people get the idea that a masterpiece could use a bit of, well, changing, just tweaking, really, and just here and there, and so they go off and make the changes and then claim that what they've really done is made the masterpiece more ?accessible? and so have actually, in changing it, shown it the respect it of course deserves. These people should always and forever be mocked and then beaten back, told to keep their meddling, talent-less hands off of and out of works in whose mere presence these pests are hardly fit to stand. The nuisances are back at work this week, reports Publisher's Weekly. A new version of Huckleberry Finn will remove instances of the words ?nigger? and ?injun? and replace them with less-offensive ones. And here, right on cue, is this explanation on the defaced version's publisher's website: ?If the publication sparks good debate about how language impacts learning or about the nature of censorship or the way in which racial slurs exercise their baneful influence, then our mission in publishing this new edition of Twain's works will be more emphatically fulfilled.? Who the hell cares about the publisher's mission? Get these idiots away from the presses.
?Liam Julian, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow