As we fester into a New Year, carrying all the baggage of last year’s profound idiocies, with the promise of yet another year of fresh mindlessness to come, there comes a time to reflect upon what the past year taught us, what we gained and lost, personally and as a nation.
But I’m not going to do that here, as, honestly, I don’t have the patience or the long-term memory for it. Instead, let’s point the finger at book banning, one of the last truly stupid ideas of 2021 that will inevitably leak into the first semester of 2022.
Not that book-banning is new. It’s a time-honored tradition of attempting to stomp out ideas one doesn’t like by forbidding others from hearing about them. It’s just gained fresh adherents lately, the most vigorous of which is Bob Standridge, Republican of Oklahoma, who has introduced legislation that would allow any parent to object to any book on their child’s school library shelf and, after 30 days, collect $10,000 dollars a day from that school library if that book remained there.
To say that there are holes in this idea is like saying there are rats in a restaurant dumpster. They are that obvious. For starters, even Elon Musk would be annoyed at having to shell out 10 large a day for hundreds of forbidden books, and while he could afford it, most school districts aren’t in Musk’s financial class. For second, there’s nothing to keep concerned parents like myself from not objecting to books on slavery or diversity or LGBTQism, but objecting instead to the presence of the works of Joel Osteen, or the Kid’s Guide to Fighting Socialism, or My First Book About Jesus on my kid’s school library shelves, and collecting my ten grand a day while sitting on the porch smoking medical marijuana.
Nothing except the fact that my kid is thirty and lives in Australia, that is. But I’d consider adopting. Fairly easy to feed a kid on ten k a day.
Other parents have other agendas. Many good Christian parents consider the Harry Potter books to be Satanic and would wipe the shelves clean of all of them, from the first, Harry Potter the Magic Kid, to the last, Harry Potter and the Mind-Numbing Redundancy of Harry Potter.
There would be no books left at the school library at all, except maybe the dictionary. It would all be completely unnecessary because—news flash here--your dumbass kid is not reading any books at all.
It’s a post-literate age, and all your kid will ever know about The Color Purple is that that’s the color his ass turns when he falls off his skateboard. When he hears that Heather Has Two Mommies, he’ll search for it on PornHub. If he spots a title like Puberty is Gross, But Also Really Awesome,* maybe he’ll throw his cum sock in the hamper.
That’s all you can really expect out of your kids anyway, no matter how many books you toss righteously out of your school library. They have a low opinion of you like all kids have of their parents, and in your case, probably deservedly so. I wouldn’t mention the books you want banned at the dinner table, either.
They’ll just go look them up on their phones. Trust me on that.
*Real kid’s book title. Did not make that one up.
But I’m not going to do that here, as, honestly, I don’t have the patience or the long-term memory for it. Instead, let’s point the finger at book banning, one of the last truly stupid ideas of 2021 that will inevitably leak into the first semester of 2022.
Not that book-banning is new. It’s a time-honored tradition of attempting to stomp out ideas one doesn’t like by forbidding others from hearing about them. It’s just gained fresh adherents lately, the most vigorous of which is Bob Standridge, Republican of Oklahoma, who has introduced legislation that would allow any parent to object to any book on their child’s school library shelf and, after 30 days, collect $10,000 dollars a day from that school library if that book remained there.
To say that there are holes in this idea is like saying there are rats in a restaurant dumpster. They are that obvious. For starters, even Elon Musk would be annoyed at having to shell out 10 large a day for hundreds of forbidden books, and while he could afford it, most school districts aren’t in Musk’s financial class. For second, there’s nothing to keep concerned parents like myself from not objecting to books on slavery or diversity or LGBTQism, but objecting instead to the presence of the works of Joel Osteen, or the Kid’s Guide to Fighting Socialism, or My First Book About Jesus on my kid’s school library shelves, and collecting my ten grand a day while sitting on the porch smoking medical marijuana.
Nothing except the fact that my kid is thirty and lives in Australia, that is. But I’d consider adopting. Fairly easy to feed a kid on ten k a day.
Other parents have other agendas. Many good Christian parents consider the Harry Potter books to be Satanic and would wipe the shelves clean of all of them, from the first, Harry Potter the Magic Kid, to the last, Harry Potter and the Mind-Numbing Redundancy of Harry Potter.
There would be no books left at the school library at all, except maybe the dictionary. It would all be completely unnecessary because—news flash here--your dumbass kid is not reading any books at all.
It’s a post-literate age, and all your kid will ever know about The Color Purple is that that’s the color his ass turns when he falls off his skateboard. When he hears that Heather Has Two Mommies, he’ll search for it on PornHub. If he spots a title like Puberty is Gross, But Also Really Awesome,* maybe he’ll throw his cum sock in the hamper.
That’s all you can really expect out of your kids anyway, no matter how many books you toss righteously out of your school library. They have a low opinion of you like all kids have of their parents, and in your case, probably deservedly so. I wouldn’t mention the books you want banned at the dinner table, either.
They’ll just go look them up on their phones. Trust me on that.
*Real kid’s book title. Did not make that one up.
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