Bowdlerizers

From:	STEVEN BEA
Sent:	Wed 1/05/11 8:47 PM
To:	Marissa Bea

HI Sweetheart,
Your Mom told me you got in safe. I have been sick until the present, had to call in again today. Your Mom can't understand why I get hit so hard, and she doesn't, and I can't understand it either.
There's something in the news here you might find professionally interesting. Some schoolbook publishing company, I think located in Alabama or thereabouts, is going to publish a cleaned up "Huckleberry Finn". What they're cleaning up of course is the word "nigger' in, apparently, 200 occurrences. They are replacing it with "slave", though, I think, there are many occurrences where that wouldn't make sense. Anyway, KING-5 news had an on-line poll about it, and so far 95% are saying "leave Huck alone", 3% are for the cleansing, and 2% undecided. (I find it surprising that anyone would take the trouble to call a poll to report indecision.). It gives me hope to think that many of those people do understand that Huck is a profoundly anti-racist book.
A couple months ago a mother of a high-school girl here in Seattle, a Native American I think, objected to the word "savage" in a book, and now "Brave New World" is getting a going-over.......
Love, your Dad