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Offensive Words

IS “Little Red Riding Hood” next?

With the recent actions taken by Mark Twain scholar Alan Gribben concerning “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer,” it makes one wonder about other stories oft read or heard by youngsters.

Don’t pooh-pooh the idea that banning could affect the little girl wearing red. It already has happened at least twice regarding tales about the well-meaning child – once in two California school districts in 1989 and then in Empire, Calif., in 1990.

Unlike the Twain stories, Little Red Riding Hood wasn’t criticized because of language, it was because of an illustration showing a wine bottle included with the food for her grandmother.

THE ASSOCIATED Press reports that Gribben replaced the N-word in Twain’s two books with “slave” in an effort not to offend readers.

He’s ignoring the fact that Twain was portraying an era accurately, and the famed author was particular about this words. Twain once wrote that the right word and the almost right one was “the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

A classroom is a place to learn so what better place other than a parent to inform youngsters that some words once used currently aren’t acceptable.

CONSIDER also the word, “colored” now is considered offensive but many Eastern Ohioans can recall it was the polite term to refer to blacks during the 1940s and ’50s. In addition, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded in 1909 in response to a 1908 race riot. (That civil rights group now notes that it fights “for social justice for all Americans.”)

TWAIN isn’t the only writer whose works have been challenged or banned over the years. Geoffrey Chaucer, Aristophanes, Daniel Defoe, Nathanial Hawthorne, William Shakespeare, Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger, Herman Melville, John Steinbeck, Maya Angelou and John Grisham are among the many who have faced criticism.

WHEN it comes to offensive words, Harrison County’s Clark Gable might be in trouble. After all, when portraying Rhett Butler, he uttered one of the most famous lines in movie history: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

It appears definite that being politically correct is overdone.

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