Just disable it. It will make the text non-editable and provide appropriate visual feedback to the user. An important benefit of it is that such behavior is the most expected by the users.
With jQuery:
someElementWrapper = $("#someId");
someElementWrapper.prop('disabled', true);
someElementWrapper.prop('disabled', false);
For some more detail, please see:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1414365/disable-enable-an-input-with-jquery[
^].
—SA