Col. Crackpot wrote:The Catcher in the Rye is being pulled from more and more reading lists because of it's conplete lack of "diversity". There was a segment on NBC news regarding that a while back. And it has come full circle.
Certain? I thought it was being pulled because it had the main character try to get a hooker and stuff like that. I don't see what "diversity" has to do with it.
If it featurs white people the left wants to yank it. They've done a good job with it really. My english classes in High School were filled with third rate literature simply because they were written by minority authors.
Of course the right tries to censor anything that suggests a morality other than theirs. Remember the Harry Potter controversy?
Col. Crackpot wrote:The Catcher in the Rye is being pulled from more and more reading lists because of it's conplete lack of "diversity". There was a segment on NBC news regarding that a while back. And it has come full circle.
Certain? I thought it was being pulled because it had the main character try to get a hooker and stuff like that. I don't see what "diversity" has to do with it.
If it featurs white people the left wants to yank it. They've done a good job with it really. My english classes in High School were filled with third rate literature simply because they were written by minority authors.
Of course the right tries to censor anything that suggests a morality other than theirs. Remember the Harry Potter controversy?
I find the Harry Potter thing to be quite funny. You really had the extreemists making asses of themselves, there. Even Dr. James Dobson, president of one of the more right-wing Christian groups, made a public statement that there was nothing wrong with Harry Potter and that they were vastly overreacting.
Come to think of it, if you tried to censor out stuff that talked of magic, then most classic literature would be down for the count...
Strike "Even Dr. James Dobson, president of one of the more right-wing Christian groups," and change it to "Even Dr. James Dobson, president of one of the largest and one of the more right wing Christian family groups, (I forget the name at the moment)."
I find that letter to be quite ironic - the writers of the letter apparently want to secure freedom by restricting what sort of books the libraries can stock... or, in plain English - they wish to reduce freedom while making it look like they are increasing it. Vladimir Lenin would be proud.
"Hi there, would you like to have a cookie?"
"No, actually I would HATE to have a cookie, you vapid waste of inedible flesh!"
The policy they came up with is remarkable. They were careful to make sure that they could basically control the library's content with no oversight from anyone, and that anyone who was offended by any book in it could get that book removed just by filling out a form. Then they load it down with a bunch of complicated rules and procedures on unrelated issues that will never be followed to make it look like it's all just part of a general policy overhaul.
Then they appeal to the Framers, of all people, to justify it all, using a ridiculously narrow interpretation of the Constitution to throw out the ALA's "Freedom to read" statement--as if the Framers were so concerned about freedom of the press they made sure specifically to mention it in the 1st Amendment, but they left right of free adults to read anything they want to "community standards".
Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves…We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.--Ada Louise Huxtable, "Farewell to Penn Station", New York Times editorial, 30 October 1963 X-Ray Blues
Col. Crackpot wrote:The charectors are all white and the protaganist is privledged enough to attend a boarding school. The segment contended that the powers that be in school districts with large minority populations pulled the book and other books ( A Seperate Peace, many works of Shakespere etc) because they feel that the minorities in the schools cannot relate to the non-minority charectors and would be better of reading novels containing or written by "people of color".
It's been a while since I've read it, but doesn't Holden drop out of that boarding school because he hated how phony it was in the first chapter? Who is this group anyway? I thought that they were after "Catcher in the Rye" because Holden's frequent use of "goddam" and the hooker and stuff, but I've never heard that they want it banned because there are only white people in it.
"Show me an angel and I will paint you one." - Gustav Courbet
"Quetzalcoatl, plumed serpent of the Aztecs... you are a pussy." - Stephen Colbert
"Really, I'm jealous of how much smarter than me he is. I'm not an expert on anything and he's an expert on things he knows nothing about." - Me, concerning a bullshitter
Col. Crackpot wrote:you have posted some perfect examples of how both the left and right in every nation on the earth engages in book banning for political and religious reasons. it's just easy to pick on texas because, well...it's texas.
Exactly... framing it as a matter of "those evil Intolerant Fundies/Loonie Libs" ignores the fact that both sides are guilty of it in equal measure. (and by "both sides" I mean the foaming fanatics on the fringes.)
Although sometimes, books deserve to be banned. For instance, from third list, we have:
Worlds In Collison
by Immanuel Velikovsky
In the 1950s, the scientific community tried to ban this controversial version of the origins of our solar system because it didn't comport with the "official" version of events. The publisher, MacMillan, was forced to give up publication of the book even though it was on the New York Bestsellers list at the time. If your are interested in this Velikovsky's Worlds In Collision and The Saturn Myth, see David Talbot's video documentary, Remembering the End of the World.
This description sounds downright sympathetic to Velikovsky, who was a nut of the first order.
Well, just because Velikovsky was a fruitcake and his books were insane psuedo-science doesn't mean that they deserve to be banned.
"Show me an angel and I will paint you one." - Gustav Courbet
"Quetzalcoatl, plumed serpent of the Aztecs... you are a pussy." - Stephen Colbert
"Really, I'm jealous of how much smarter than me he is. I'm not an expert on anything and he's an expert on things he knows nothing about." - Me, concerning a bullshitter
WiC only served to make an ignorant public even more so, especially due to its wide distribution. My comment was intended as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that banning it wouldn't have been any great loss. What I took issue with was the list's sympathy for Velikovsky, and how it paints him as the victim of scientific persecution.
Datana wrote:WiC only served to make an ignorant public even more so, especially due to its wide distribution. My comment was intended as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that banning it wouldn't have been any great loss. What I took issue with was the list's sympathy for Velikovsky, and how it paints him as the victim of scientific persecution.
He's still got some pretty vocal defenders after all this time, from what I gather on CSICOP's website. I've argued this in the RIAA threads, and I'll say it again: bans on books, CDs, movies, etc. do not serve the intended purpose. In the case of Velikovsky, the efforts by legitimate scientists to get his book pulled from publication served only to further intrigue the public. It's the allure of the forbidden: tell someone they can't read something, and they want to know why. I think that was the only thing that gave me the patience to sit down and read Ulysses, for example: I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
IMHO, they would have been better off if they'd laughed Velikovsky off as a fringe loonie and explained in layman's terms why.
