Banned Books

Jackie Mason | October 15, 2004
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Lori Lancaster | October 15, 2004
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Jackie Mason | October 15, 2004
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John E Gunter | October 15, 2004
Censorship has been around with mainline media for quite a while. The a few episodes of the original Star Trek were banned in a couple of towns when the episodes were first aired. I don't know if they were ever shown in those towns at a later time, but the episodes depicted witchcraft, so were evil!

But it's extreme right conservativism that generates censorship.

John

Anna Gregoline | October 15, 2004
Sex by Madonna was never even purchased by my library, but if it was, it would have been in the adult area. Some of those books listed too aren't kid books (I used to work in a library and I know almost all of those titles).

What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras is a sex education book and it's a great one. There's a similar version for boys. What a strange thing that people would want to ban something that helps to teach people about their own body.

Where's Waldo has a woman without her top in one picture, I believe. Talk about ridiculous.

I think it's people thinking they have to impose their own morality on others that generates censorship. We don't have to be partisan about it.

Jackie Mason | October 15, 2004
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Anna Gregoline | October 15, 2004
Actually, most of these books are phenomenal young adult books and are ones I would recommend to people!

Scott Horowitz | October 15, 2004
I am a firm believer in no censorship. I think the FCC is one of the worst organizations in this country.

But onto the topics of books, some of those books are important. Even the fictional "witchcraft" worlds are great books. It just shows you how the "Moral MajoritY" is trying to influence the rest of the country.

Kris Weberg | October 15, 2004
No, there's a fair amount of "left" censorship, too -- the battle over Huckleberry Finn springs to mind, for example. Likewise, I'd wager that Native Son, on the list above, is censored more for its inclusion of racial slurs, albeit for a critical purpose, in the text. I'd call it a case of naive liberalism, or PC gone amok.

Really, the PNRC -- the CD labeling group -- was a coalition of wives of left and righ-wing senators' wives, the only place in DC where Tipper Gore could hang out with Strom Thurmond's wife Nancy. There are serious feminist objections to pornography -- though other feminists disagree -- and the like.

The Color Purple could be a nice way to unite both sides: it offends the right by portraying a healthy lesbian relationship, and the left by including negative racial terminology.

Jackie Mason | October 15, 2004
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Scott Hardie | October 16, 2004
I spotted three King books on the list. But all the same, I'd say Gerald's Game is his most sexual and most ripe for a ban, at least as far as I've read.

Zilpha Keatley Snyder... Madeleine L'Engle... Shel Silverstein... Alvin Schwartz... S.E. Hinton... Judy Blume... R.L. Stein... Roald Dahl... So many favorites of my childhood on there. I half expected to see Bunnicula on the list.

I don't support banning books, though if I were a school librarian I wouldn't mind restricting certain books so that the kids had to have their parents' permission to read them. That seems like a reasonable compromise. Lori is right that parents should have the authority, but it's distributing the books, not banning them, that takes the authority away from the parents. Those parents who want their kids reading this stuff can give them the books at home, while the sheltering parents cannot prevent the school from giving them out. Bans are bad for kids and bad for schools and especially bad for society, but I can't help but think they're good for parents.

Jackie Mason | October 16, 2004
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Anna Gregoline | October 16, 2004
It's parents responsibility to know what their kids are reading. If you need your parent's permission for some things, kids whose parents might not care might not even ask them, because they are afraid to show they might want to read that book. Then who wins?

Many parents don't teach their kids about sex education. My boyfriend certainly didn't learn anything until he was a teenager. Once again - the information is supposed to be there - it's up to the parents to determine whether their kids should read it or not.

I doubt greatly that most school libraries have some of these books, including sex education. I'm sure the banned list that was posted is for public libraries, which is what I'm talking about primarily.

Kris Weberg | October 16, 2004
My only problem with censorship is that it protects the immature and unsanctioned by denying material to the mature and sanctioned.

Jackie Mason | October 16, 2004
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Scott Hardie | October 17, 2004
I think we're in agreement, Anna, that parents should be the ones deciding what their kids read or not. So if you want the books to be available in school without parental permission to access each one, how do the parents have control? At what point are the sheltering parents able to block their kids from reading certain books?

Anna Gregoline | October 17, 2004
I don't want the books to be available in school - PTA meetings usually discuss what kinds of books are available in school libraries - that's how they have control there.

But as far as the real library goes? No way.

Kris Weberg | October 17, 2004
Perhaps a case-by-case "permission slip" mailer could be sent -- outlining the merits of the book, the possible objectionable content, and encouraging parents to talk to their kids or amongst themselves and sign/not sign. The kid would then have to present such a slip the first time they wanted a given book, and thereafter, presumably thy could get by checking that book out because there'd be a record.

Not that parents would like this, since it might require them to actively think about what their kids read; and if you look at the measures most parents actually want, they seem to be mostly about blanket policies that individual parents don't have to do much at all about.

But me? I'm in favor of anything that might get parents more involved in issues like this. It's good for the kids, and good for the parents.

Jackie Mason | October 23, 2004
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Anna Gregoline | October 24, 2004
Yeah, Walmart is evil. Just another faceless corporation dictating what we see and consume.

Kris Weberg | October 24, 2004
I love the argument that one hears -- that it's not censorship if the government doesn't do it.

Well, if enough companies do it, it has the same damn effect on free speech.

Scott Hardie | October 24, 2004
True, censorship is censorship. But doesn't Wal*Mart have a right to decide what it won't sell in its stores, just as I have a right to decide what won't be posted here? Wal*Mart isn't a public or school library with a responsibility to fulfill; their choice not to sell a book of humor by Jon Stewart doesn't exactly qualify as a violation of the public trust.

Kris Weberg | October 24, 2004
Wal-Mart has that right so long as the legal material they choose not to carry is still available through other outlets for those who want to purchase it. But there are certainly small towns where the Wal-Mart is the one place things like that are readily accessible, (A majority of Americans don't have Internet access either; and of those that do, the majority are in turn living in urban centers.)

So yes, Wal-Mart, on a local level, can and often does effect censorship in the stronger sense.

Scott Horowitz | October 25, 2004
I never understood Wal-Mart practices. They ban this book because of content, yet they sell guns???? It just doesn't make sense. Sure, we don't want our kids seeing boobies, but it is okay for people to kill each other.

Anna Gregoline | October 25, 2004
Absolutely correct, Scott.

Erik Bates | October 25, 2004
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Jackie Mason | October 25, 2004
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Scott Hardie | October 26, 2004
I agree with you, but to keep playing devil's advocate... It's not like Wal*Mart is selling or even marketing the guns to children. Same goes for the liquor; it's not anywhere close to where kids would stray from their parents. Wal*Mart is a humongous retailer worldwide and makes a lot of money on guns and liquor; they couldn't successfully promote themselves as a family-only business and make as much money as they do. But, they can skip a few books and avoid controversy. Those same rural communities that are being denied the right to buy Stewart's book are the same ones that would be up in arms over that book being sold on the shelves (as though any kid would pick that up and flip through it).

Kris Weberg | October 26, 2004
Is anyone else bothered by the existence of a store that could sell guns and liquor to the same person?

And trust me, Scott, spending time in central Illinois, where the farmland is never too far, I think we both met plenty of rural people who have problem with liberalism or with cussing.

Scott Hardie | October 26, 2004
I'm more bothered by drive-thru liquor stores.

Anna Gregoline | October 26, 2004
Me too - what the heck is that all about?

Scott Horowitz | October 26, 2004
Yet, I find drive-thru wedding chapels in Vegas hysterical

Erik Bates | October 26, 2004
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John E Gunter | October 26, 2004
The guns that WalMart sells are of the hunting variety. Sure they can be used to kill people, but so can the steak knives that WalMart and most other stores sell. Even grocery stores sell steak knives, so since they can be used to kill people, should they be banned?

I don't agree that if the store decides not to sell something that it's censorship. They just decide that in the corporations' business, they don't want to sell that item.

Now, if they are telling you that you can't read it, then that would be censorship. Or, if they were the only store anywhere that you could buy that item then it would be censorship. But since you can go to a different store to get that item, even if you have to get that store to special order it, it's still available to you.

John

Anna Gregoline | October 26, 2004
Lots of things can kill people, guns just do it more efficently. I'm glad at least they stopped selling ammunition, because of Michael Moore teaming up with those Columbine kids in Bowling for Columbine.

Scott Horowitz | October 26, 2004
I also think a difference is in what the object is perceived as. Yes a steak knife can be used as an efficient weapon, but when I see a knife I think tool instead of weapon. A gun is used to kill things, plain and simple. There is no other use for a job instead of a weapon. (Well, Homer did use one as a remote control once, but that's a different situation.)

Jackie Mason | October 26, 2004
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Anna Gregoline | October 26, 2004
That's right, Scott. A hunting rifle might be used as a tool to kill an animal - but it's still a killing tool.

Kris Weberg | October 26, 2004
A man with a rifle can kill a President from a building hundreds of feet away. A man with a knife, I'm guessing he doesn't get past the Secret Service.

The Beltway Snipers would not have been able to perform easy-escape kifings.

Badly flawed analogy from the pro-gun side. Guns are infinitely more efficient, work over longer distances, and can be used fatally in the heat of anger with far less chance of resistance or realization than any other means of killing available to civilians.

I mean, seriously, gun murders are by far and away the most common sort of murders; they're less likely to leave evidence on the perpetrator, easier to use, and, despite modern ballistics, harder to trace than, say, an arrow or a rock.

And aside from threatening to kill or wound, killing or wounding, or pretending to kill or wound at a target range, they have NO USE WHATSOEVER.

They are, in essence, a profoundly unethical instrument, because it is nearly impossible to imagine an uncomplicatedly ethical use of guns.

Scott Hardie | October 27, 2004
While you and I may agree that guns have no useful purpose, game hunting is still socially acceptable in most of the country, and Wal*Mart does nothing wrong by selling guns for that socially acceptable purpose. They're not selling guns for the purposes of presidential assassination or sniping at innocent bystanders, and if they knew that a customer was buying a gun for a purpose such as that, they would be required by law not to sell a gun to that customer. Citing gun-murder statistics against a store that legitimately sells game-hunting rifles is like citing prostitution and rape statistics against a book with nekkid people in it.

Kris Weberg | October 27, 2004
Except, of course, that the book of pornography can't be used in itself for prostitution or rape. A gun can be used all by itself to kill a person.

Scott Hardie | October 27, 2004
But this discussion isn't about what the objects actually do, it's about how Wal*Mart portrays itself by the objects it chooses to sell. We pick on Wal*Mart for not wanting to portray itself as a seller of pornography while being willing to portray itself as a seller of tools of murder -- except that Wal*Mart isn't selling the guns as tools of murder, and would want nothing to do with that purpose.

Kris Weberg | October 28, 2004
A gun is always a tool for killing, or simulating killing. It doesn't do anything else. It has literally no other value.

One can make a case for satirical use of seemingly pornographic imageyr; or for aesthetic sexuality, for which we have an entirely different term than pornography, "erotica." But untl someone finds a use for a gun that doesn't involve shooting at something living or refining one's aim so as to better be able to shoot something living, I'm gonna have to consider them a whole 'nother order of morally objectionable item.

Scott Hardie | October 28, 2004
That's fine, and apparently we're all in agreement about it. But we need to remember that Wal*Mart doesn't see it that way, nor do most of their customers; gun ownership for sport-hunting is not morally objectionable to them, nor is gun ownership for the purpose of home defense. And so the sale of guns at Wal*Mart is, in and of itself, not morally objectionable; it only becomes so when considered here or in other arenas with alternative viewpoints. We can state our disagreement with Wal*Mart, but we can't accuse Wal*Mart of hypocrisy when the conflicting values exist entirely within our minds.

Anna Gregoline | October 28, 2004
*raises hand*

Am I allowed to hate WalMart on the multitude of far greater reasons, like their appalling labor practices?

Scott Hardie | October 28, 2004
Yes. That has nothing to do with this. Hate away. :-)

Lori Lancaster | October 28, 2004
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Anna Gregoline | October 28, 2004
They also pay a lot of their women managers less than their male managers. And I could go on. And on. And on.

I refuse to shop there.

Kris Weberg | October 28, 2004
Ditto.

I blame unregulated capitalism, of course.

Scott Horowitz | October 29, 2004
More reasons to not shop at Wal-Mart

Jackie Mason | October 29, 2004
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