triple negative?

[Anonymous]

Dear teachers:

I found this passage from the "American Heritage Book of Enlgish Usage"(http://www.bartleby.com/64/C002/019.html).

"Send that dish back from whence it came! A dyspeptic king might say that, but if uttered by a patron in most restaurants, it would be hard not to view it as anything but a joke. Whence, like thence, usually adds an archaic or highly formal tone to the passage in which it is used. It’s great for creating an air of mock formality too."

My question is about the sentence " ~ it would be hard not to view it as anything but a joke." Here I see three expressions with negative meaning, hard, not, anything but. Then what is true meaning of above sentence?
Do you view it as a joke or not?
To me it seemss logical to view it as nothing but a joke.

Thank you!

[Pete]

Dear teachers:

I found this passage from the "American Heritage Book of Enlgish Usage"(http://www.bartleby.com/64/C002/019.html).

"Send that dish back from whence it came! A dyspeptic king might say that, but if uttered by a patron in most restaurants, it would be hard not to view it as anything but a joke. Whence, like thence, usually adds an archaic or highly formal tone to the passage in which it is used. It?s great for creating an air of mock formality too."

My question is about the sentence " ~ it would be hard not to view it as anything but a joke." Here I see three expressions with negative meaning, hard, not, anything but. Then what is true meaning of above sentence?
Do you view it as a joke or not?
To me it seemss logical to view it as nothing but a joke.

Thank you!
I'd say that the writer made a mistake. Certainly the author wants to say that the statement in question sounds like a joke. Either of the following variants (using a double negative to make an affirmative) would give that sense:
- it would be <u>hard</u> to view it as <u>anything but</u> a joke.
- it would be <u>hard</u> <u>not</u> to view it as a joke.

The sentence with 3 negatives does not seem easily to parse into a sentence with a valid negative meaning, and there is certainly no reason to say it is a proper way to get the desired affirmative meaning. I guess that the writer simply confused the 2 sentences I gave and included parts of both.

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much, Pete. I really appreicate.