Progressive Left Starts Acting Like Religious Right
Aug 27, 2016 01:15:07 #
Judy Blume: The left is carrying the religious right’s book ban torch
by Sam Rolley
Beloved children’s book author Judy Blume warned during a recent appearance at the San Francisco Bay Area Book Festival that the left’s unyielding effort to create a world where no one is ever offended by anything is a threat to literature.
“After the presidential election of 1980 … it was like the censors came out of the woodwork,” Blume said of censorship pushed at the time by the religious right. “And … the feeling was ‘it’s our turn now, and if we don’t want our children to read these books no children should read these books.’ And it’s going on to this day, not with my books necessarily, but with books in general.”
Even if her books aren’t being singled out by censors today, Blume — the author of such titles as “Blubber” and “Then Again, Maybe I Won’t” — is no stranger to having her works come under the scrutiny of the nation’s literary nannies.
In November 2013, Banned Books Awareness offered this history of efforts to ban “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret” — perhaps Blume’s most famous work of children’s literature:
The number of public libraries and schools where this book has been challenged is astounding, but it was outright removed from the elementary school libraries in Gilbert, Arizona in 1980 and ordered that parental consent be required for students to check it out from the junior high school.
It was challenged in the Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Fund du Lac, Wisconsin school systems in 1982 because the book is “sexually offensive and amoral.”
Also in 1982, it was restricted in Zimmerman, Minnesota to students who had written permission from their parents. After the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union sued the Elk River, Minnesota school board (1983), the Board reversed its decision.
It was then challenged at the Xenia, Ohio school libraries in 1983 because the book’s “two themes of sex and anti-Christian behavior” were deemed inappropriate.
A similar charge of being “profane, immoral, and offensive” led to it being challenged, but later retained, in the Bozeman, Montana school libraries in 1985.
Unsurprisingly, Blume has long been a critic of such censorship efforts.
And while the religious right has largely backed off of efforts to remove certain books it finds objectionable from schools and libraries, Blume says Americans should be just as worried about a new type of censorship coming full force from the left.
Blume cited as an example of a recent campaign against author and poet Sherman Alexie’s semi-autobiographical novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.”
“A fabulous book, I gave it to my grandson and he said ‘This is a really good book,'” Blume said. “But … if kids like it, there must be something wrong and therefore it must be challenged and removed.”
The American Library Association cites that book as being frequently banned for the following reasons: “anti-family, cultural insensitivity, drugs/alcohol/smoking, gambling, offensive language, sex education, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group, violence.”
No doubt, in the era of the Redskins’ controversy, the “cultural insensitivity” of a book bearing the phrase “part-time Indian” is too much for some to bear.
“We’ve come to a lot of book challenging from the left … and trigger warnings,” Blume said.
The author went on to note that if any book needs a trigger warning: “All books, then, need trigger warnings, because in any book there could be something to bother somebody.”
by Sam Rolley
Beloved children’s book author Judy Blume warned during a recent appearance at the San Francisco Bay Area Book Festival that the left’s unyielding effort to create a world where no one is ever offended by anything is a threat to literature.
“After the presidential election of 1980 … it was like the censors came out of the woodwork,” Blume said of censorship pushed at the time by the religious right. “And … the feeling was ‘it’s our turn now, and if we don’t want our children to read these books no children should read these books.’ And it’s going on to this day, not with my books necessarily, but with books in general.”
Even if her books aren’t being singled out by censors today, Blume — the author of such titles as “Blubber” and “Then Again, Maybe I Won’t” — is no stranger to having her works come under the scrutiny of the nation’s literary nannies.
In November 2013, Banned Books Awareness offered this history of efforts to ban “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret” — perhaps Blume’s most famous work of children’s literature:
The number of public libraries and schools where this book has been challenged is astounding, but it was outright removed from the elementary school libraries in Gilbert, Arizona in 1980 and ordered that parental consent be required for students to check it out from the junior high school.
It was challenged in the Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Fund du Lac, Wisconsin school systems in 1982 because the book is “sexually offensive and amoral.”
Also in 1982, it was restricted in Zimmerman, Minnesota to students who had written permission from their parents. After the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union sued the Elk River, Minnesota school board (1983), the Board reversed its decision.
It was then challenged at the Xenia, Ohio school libraries in 1983 because the book’s “two themes of sex and anti-Christian behavior” were deemed inappropriate.
A similar charge of being “profane, immoral, and offensive” led to it being challenged, but later retained, in the Bozeman, Montana school libraries in 1985.
Unsurprisingly, Blume has long been a critic of such censorship efforts.
And while the religious right has largely backed off of efforts to remove certain books it finds objectionable from schools and libraries, Blume says Americans should be just as worried about a new type of censorship coming full force from the left.
Blume cited as an example of a recent campaign against author and poet Sherman Alexie’s semi-autobiographical novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.”
“A fabulous book, I gave it to my grandson and he said ‘This is a really good book,'” Blume said. “But … if kids like it, there must be something wrong and therefore it must be challenged and removed.”
The American Library Association cites that book as being frequently banned for the following reasons: “anti-family, cultural insensitivity, drugs/alcohol/smoking, gambling, offensive language, sex education, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group, violence.”
No doubt, in the era of the Redskins’ controversy, the “cultural insensitivity” of a book bearing the phrase “part-time Indian” is too much for some to bear.
“We’ve come to a lot of book challenging from the left … and trigger warnings,” Blume said.
The author went on to note that if any book needs a trigger warning: “All books, then, need trigger warnings, because in any book there could be something to bother somebody.”
Aug 27, 2016 06:18:31 #
I guess you believe anything goes and everything is acceptable , we should just let anyone with any belief influence our children with anything they want . just asking ?
Nov 18, 2016 23:53:49 #
reconreb wrote:
I guess you believe anything goes and everything is acceptable , we should just let anyone with any belief influence our children with anything they want . just asking ?
No but, that's why parents exist. Banning a book is an entirely different story.
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