I work in the Gifts & Acquisitions department at my university’s library, and thus come across a fair number of outdated books. Terms that used to be acceptable are glaringly offensive and absurdly hilarious now.
The last two weeks, I’ve filed through an unusually high number of special education textbooks, and their titles are easily the best. I think my favorite would most definately have to be The Trainable Retard.
So come on, share some offensive titles you’ve seen on various media.
It’s not a title, per se, but how about offensive cover art on a children’s book? Years and years ago (the early to mid-80’s, to be exact) when I was still a young Diceboy, I was looking through the books in my local library and found The Body Book. It was kinda like an anatomy book for children, teaching kids about various body parts. The highlight of the book was undoubtably the cover, which featured a cartoon drawing of two young children, a boy and a girl – both completely naked and anatomically correct – holding hands while walking towards the viewer. The back of the book showed the two kids’ butts as they walked away.
If that thing came out today, the publishers would get arrested by the feds.
You mean, twoje cialo?
I’ve got two that wouldn’t normally be considered un-PC, yet bad cover design made them so.
One is a scrapbook that suffered from bad font sizing. For some reason, they decided that the “S” should be in a different font than the rest of the title, giving us:
BABY’S
SCRAPBOOK
The second is the M&M Counting Book. It was designed to teach the little ones how to count, conveniently enough by using M&M’s. The cover design problem here was that the “O”'s on the cover were M&M’s, and for the first “O”, they used a brown M&M…on a book with a brown cover.
The effect was basically like this:
M&M
COUNTING BOO****K
:smack:
A rather famous one is Joseph Conrad’s The Nigger of the Narcissus.
Not a book cover, but a company logo that goes in the “Wht the hell were they thinking?” catagory.
Let’s not forget the Nazi film classic The Eternal Jew.
Is this outfit funded by Michael Jackson?
There was Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Niggers, which was later changed to Ten Little Indians (which these days would have to be Ten Little Indigenous Persons), and finally to And Then There Were None.
Good book. I rooted for the murderer.
I loved the murders, and I hated the ending. The murder listed the clues he left behind, and they were nothing that would make any sense to a sane person. Was I supost to smoke fine opium before reading it?
I think the original British title was Ten Little Niggers, which was changed to And Then There Were None for U.S. publication (transatlantic title changes were nothing new for Dame Agatha), and later changed to Ten Little Indians in England. The 1945 Rene Clair movie (excellent character acting!) was called ATTWN, but the stage play and all subsequent film versions were TLI.
…then there’s Carl Van Vechten’s 1926 novel Nigger Heaven. Despite the sensationalistic title, the highly complimentary book was about contemporary Af-Am culture, the Harlem Renaissance, and white Negrophilia.
If I were braver, I’d consider this a great username.
:runs:
My favorite book title: Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality.
I stand corrected. Thank you.
I always thought of this one as more of a thriller than a whodunnit. The killer set out to commit a series of unsolvable murders, and darned if he didn’t succeed. (Not really a spoiler, but a major plot point:) If he hadn’t left that confession, not even the police would have solved it, unless Dame Agatha brought in Hercule Poirot, and I’ve read that she couldn’t stand him anyway.
Follow-up to my earlier post – looks like I was slightly off on the coloring, but the effect is the same: The M&M Counting Book cover.
So. Very. Wrong.
LOL! Is the cat’s butt anatomically correct on the reverse, too?
I don’t remember. You’re free to buy the book and give us the straight dope, however 
Um, sorry to be a downer, but according to the Library of Congress catalog, it’s: The Trainable Retarded.
Although this isn’t really a book, per se, some universities have online collections of public domain sheet music. Music poking fun at various ethnicities was popular in the old day, though obviously now un-PC. One of the funniest song titles of that regard I found was Nigger vs. Chinese. I don’t know which one to put my money on.
