[Via Obsidian Wings] In the wake of a truly absurd list of The Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries from the ultra-rightwing mag, Human Events (who helpfully but rather ironically provide links to the Amazon pages for each tome should you wish to buy it), more news on anti-book sentiment. The American Library Association reports a massive spike in requests to ban books from libraries coinciding with George W. Bush’s re-election. And as Obsidian Wings also observes, a Republican legislator in Alabama proposes to ban books from school libraries with authors known to be gay. Yep, you read correctly, not books featuring homosex or even gay or lesbian characters, but by queer authors. So -
some of the literature public school libraries would no longer be able to buy, includ[es] works by Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and Gore Vidal. Others include Auden, Albee, Alger, Baldwin, Behan, Boswell, Burroughs, Butler, Cocteau, Crane, Crisp, Cunningham, Forster, Foucault, Fry, Genet, Gide, Ginsberg, Housman, Hughes, Isherwood, Keynes, Kushner, Leavitt, Mann, Marlowe, Maugham, Maupin, McNally, Monette, Orton, Proust, Rauch, Rimbaud, Savage, Sedaris, Andrew Sullivan, Whitman, Wilde, Wilder, Wittgenstein, etc. etc. etc.
Edward at Obsidian Wings poses the obvious question:
So from evangelical Christians objecting to children’s books that challenge their notions about wizardry (or whatever) to a general sense of empowerment among conservatives when the Federal government leans toward the right, we see that the desire to limit knowledge is strong among conservatives. But why? Can’t conservatives and their children read something, disagree with it, find it distasteful, even get angry and heave the book across the room, without demanding that everyone else be “protected” from it? Why this draconian overreaction to ideas? How do ideas threaten them?
If I’m missing something here, I’d be happy to learn what it is. Is there a book on this? ;-p
Elsewhere: The Human Events list was first discussed in the Ozblogosphere at Catallaxy.
Human Events doesn’t go far enough. They should be ripping books by Hans Christen Anderson and JM Barrie out of the hands of kids and tossing ‘em onto bonfires. Smashing up iPods, home entertainment systems and pianos that tinkle out Cole Porter. And like Sherman with Atlanta, putting that George Cukor directed flick, “Gone With The Wind” to the torch. Not to mention all those bits in the Good Book (Book of Samuel as memory serves) when David and Jonathan get it on. Yes, burn the Bible too.
“Sick Paranoid Sexually Fucked Up Fuckwits”. Now there’s a book title.
The conservative mother of a uni friend of mine used to borrow library books with smut in them and liquid paper out the dirty bits for the moral protection of future readers. I’m not sure whether she had any opinion on gay authors, though. Her offspring seemed to consume Oscar Wilde without any trouble at home.
They can’t even get the book titles right.
Origin of the Species
by Charles Darwin
Score: 17
The correct title is The Origin Of Species. Not THE SPECIES, but Species, generally. Morons. I bet they have not even read it.
The full title being
On The Origin of Species
by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
Yes, it because conservatives are inherently weak, insecure people … they find practically everything threatening. Hence, they desperately seek order by imposing their narrow conceptions on others. There’s been a few good psychological studies on the phenomena. I understand it will soon appear as a personality disorder in the DSM4.
Americans read very few books. If some are getting banned it would make no real difference as they would just be gathering dust in the hope some kiddie may pick it up but because it doesn’t have a colourful cover (the most popular way of choosing a book by an adult incidentally) would get put down again.
If they put Darwin on XBox maybe kids would be more interested.
Good to see that Feminism got a good look in too, with Betty Friedan coming in at No. 7 with ‘The Feminine Mystique’, and ‘Second Sex’ by Simone be Beauviour getting an honorable mention.
They criticised Friedan not for her work, which they’ve clearly never read, but because she was a “Stalinist Marxist” who had a love affair with another Stalinist Marxist. Hmmn.
I mean, giving women a choice as to whether or not they want to become housewives and mothers? Clearly undermining the whole of Western civilisation.
Scary stuff. When I have kids they’re going to be surrounded by this subversive stuff.
As I read on another website (cannot remember, sorry to be vague and plagiarising someone, who-ever they were), it’s a weird reversal of the standard conservative gun control ideas: guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Here it’s more like: people don’t kill people, books kill people!
I think they are far more likely to have “God’s Grand Planner! Intelligent Design – Directed Evolution! Refuse to believe it happened by natural cause (Personal incredulity edition).” on the XBox, than Darwin.
To be followed by ‘The Rapture’ on PS2.
What got me was J. S. Mill got a look in among the also rans. “On Liberty” – no, we don’t want any of that, do we?
Yes, JS Mill was a revisionist, and had to be purged.
Do these pissweak neo-cons have any idea how much these lists makes them look like Nazis?
Don’t make me laugh … bitterly.
I beleive Kate and I had a discussion about Flaming Swords of Righteousness.
Let the cleansing begin!
The funny think being that they think are the ultimate creation ie God made them as his crowning glory. But burning books is no different to sticking your fingers in your ears going “LALALALALLALALALA NOT LISTENING!” Infant. Juvenile. Pathetic. Embarrassing.
How can you reason with such a mind as one who burns books?
You can’t, so fuck em!
We must kill them so that when the aliens land they don’t think we’re all like that.
Seig Heil and all that crap.
Got my Flaming Sword ready, harry. Plus my knitting needles of respect for individual thought and my garroting yarn of feminist indignation.
Another good one: Ralph Nader, “Unsafe at any speed.” Seatbelts are bad! You have the individual liberty to not wear a seatbelt but sorry, we can’t let read books that disagree with our narrow world-view and could possibly taint you with the merest whiff of the Gay!
Where is my POV gun when I need it most! I really like the knitting needles of respect for individual thought and garrotting yarn of feminist indignation.
Frantz Fanon – “The Wretched of the Earth”. Decolonialisation? Big mistake. Uppity bloody third world types.
What was that sci-fi film where the booming-voiced, terrifying cult leader turned out to be a frightened little gimp with a bow tie and a microphone?
I think its a good metaphor for Neo-Conservatism.
The purple beanie of righteous retribution!
Red elbow pads of Humanity!
What?
I was just going with the theme.
Guys
You can critique neoconservatism all you like but it’s fundamentally a modernist ideology made up of ex-liberals. They may have alliances of convenience with the Christian right but are not the bookburning type. The Human Events crowd are more in the ‘paleo’ traditionalist right category. One of the judges on this panel, Paul Gottfried, is in fact associated with the antiwar Buchananite right crowd
Jason, I’m tempted to reverse Rafeanism and say I can’t see any differences on the Right. Just kidding!
They’re still idjits though.
this ban on books written by gays is astounding though. so no Plato and Aristotle too? no FBI manuals by J Edgar Hoover? and what about that closet commie-bashing poof Joe McCarthy?
And just possibly nothing by Lincoln.
So gay ideas can be transmitted via text, can they? Those homosexualists’ perfidious gayifiying technology is getting more advanced by the day. Now I have to avoid libraries as well as public toilet seats, lifestyle television and flouridated water.
Not to mention all things Swedish. Nothing’s more dangerous for a red-blooded heterosexual than an IKEA instruction manual.
I first discovered I wasn’t entirely str8 when I read Shakespeare. No, just kidding. But hey – ban the classics! Love sonnets = sodom and gomorrah and a queer pride parade coming to a small Alabama town near you! With topless lesbians! Led by Missy Higgins!
Western Canon = incitement to deviance!
My goodness, I hadn’t even thought about the possibilities of rampant homosexualism transmitted through music.
[throws out entire Queen CD collection]
I think it’s too late for you, Liam. You’ve been infected. I think we’ve all been gayified. I blame reading ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ in year 12 for my rampant non-hating of homosexuals.
I also noticed that your gravatar appears directly above and below Kim’s. And she’s just gone and admitted she’s all for naked Missy Higgins. Now admit it, you’ve already started buying ‘Blue’ magazine and fantasising about wild nights in the sauna with Guy Sebastian.
I knew a guy at uni who now writes for Blue. He used to play guitar in a spinach restaurant. See where vegetarianism and hippiedom leads?
I cancelled my subscription to that devil publication. Why, I thought I was buying a journal dedicated to footbal fighting and other masculine arts, but the things I ended up reading!
I had to scrub myself all over that day.
But they’re just applying Postmod; forget the work, look at the sociopolitical perspective of the writer…
It’s not surprising they’re on such an anti-intellectual binge, we know which side of politics overwhelmingly gets the educated vote.
So not only do I need the alfoil tin hat to keep off the Gayification rays that come from the satellites, I now need alfoil undies, alfoil toilet seat covers and alfoil glasses?
Hey, at least then I would look like a superhero!
“Hetro Man!”
Yet, never get laid again, strangely.
Ack! Note the comma. I didn’t write “laid again strangely” cos that means gayness! Think straight thoughts. Think straight thoughts.
Geez, with all this reflective alfoil around it’s hard to think straight.
Ack! That doesn’t mean I’m thinking gay, it is a figure of….. oh bugger it. It would just be easier to simply be a poof.
[Funnily enough harry was a great hit at the night club he went to that night. Six gay man on drugs thought he looked very pretty in his alfoil costume and made jokes about hot sausages in tin and the like. The end.]
“I had to scrub myself all over that day. ”
I could give you a hand with that, Liam.
Shit!
Everyone stop reading this thread at once!
It _is_ true!
Liam’s email turned me gay!
Odd they include Foucault’s ‘Madness and Civilisation’. What’s their beef with it? And J S Mill’s ‘On Liberty’ would be my bible, if I had a bible. Mead’s ‘Coming of Age in Samoa’ was not harmful, it was just an embarrassing mistake. Can’t quite figure out their rationale for ‘harmful”
harry, you really worry me sometimes.
So from evangelical Christians objecting to children‚Äôs books that challenge their notions about wizardry …
When did this happen?
I must have missed the meeting.
Is it possible to ban bloggers who make generalised statements!
How ironic that “conservatives” in general should be accused of wanting to suppress ideas, when in practice it is the Leftists who are actually suppressing ideas. This is an example of projection, where the faults of the Left are assigned to the Right.
Left-wing censorship is particularly prominent at universities, where students who have differing views are suppressed and often academically penalised.
A senior at California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo sued campus officials in September, on a claim that he was unfairly punished after he tried to post a flier promoting a speech by a black author whose conservative ideas a group of black students found offensive.
—
Whittier College, Whittier, Calif. After students launched a conservative newspaper in April, they were told they needed permission from a campus board before publishing again. When they sought approval, they found that the board was inactive. The students say four other publications had not been asked to register.
—
… “the level of discourse in the outside world has become more confrontational,” says Roger Williams University Provost Edward Kavanagh, whose Bristol, R.I., campus temporarily froze funding for a College Republicans newspaper this month. Kavanagh objected to its Sept. 30 edition, which featured a series of articles opposed to homosexuality, including a description of a crime in which a seventh-grade boy was raped and sodomized. He vowed to strengthen oversight of future publications.
But junior Jason Mattera, 20, an editor of the paper, says, “You’re not automatically a bigot if you don’t agree with (homosexuality). What they’re essentially doing is silencing the only conservative voice here on campus.”
so two wrongs make a right, eh EP, you relativist you?
Ban the Bible too. I read it recently and was shocked. The Old Testament is mainly violent or pornographic, and the New is full of a pathetic leftiste politics of envy, with proselytysing anti-rich-man unemployed longhairs, their sex-worker mates, and allegedly celibate single mothers (read lesbian sperm theft).
Stop this Gay socialist conversion text!
The panel’s laziness is evident as well. They’ve pretty much just taken the list of Most Important books with ne or two exceptions and changed the list heading.
My nomination for actual most harmful book of the last 150 years is Atlas Shrugged.
I don’t know where you got that from, Jason.
I’m merely pointing out that while a few loony extremists in the conservative camp might want to ban some thought, it’s the mainstream in the Leftist camp that is actually putting the censorship of ideas into practice.
“But junior Jason Mattera, 20, an editor of the paper, says, “You‚Äôre not automatically a bigot if you don‚Äôt agree with (homosexuality). What they‚Äôre essentially doing is silencing the only conservative voice here on campus.”"
Hmmn. What are you then, if not a bigot?
“You‚Äôre not automatically a bigot if you don‚Äôt agree with (homosexuality).”
But you are automatically an idiot if you think homosexuality is something you can “disagree” with.
What are you then, if not a bigot?
I suppose that, technically, anyone who disagrees with anyone else’s lifestyle is a bigot.
It seemes a bit pissy to cry ‘censorship’ while commanding column inches in USA Today. Nonetheless, I’ve got nothing but good things to say about the accompanying photo. Twenty years old with tragically thinning hair, dressed like the guy at the Avis counter. And I’d be lying if I said his moustache didn’t make me feel a little gayer than usual.
No. Anyone who wants to stop other consenting adults from doing whatever they want with their own sex lives is a bigot. It’s got nothing to do with lifestyle, and everything to do with homophobia. You cannot be anti-gay without being a bigot. Sorry. If you don’t like homosexuality, then, don’t be one. What other people do in bed is nothing to do with you.
Let’s be clear here. Homosexuality is not a bad thing. There’s absolutely no rational reason to be anti-gay.
There are many rational reasons to disapprove of many other aspects of peoples lives: drug abuse, domestic violence, sexual abuse, animal abuse. These all involve harm to self and primarily, harm to others.
Homosexuality IS NOT harmful. Homosexuality is about two (or more) consenting adults doing whatever they want.
Homer, the fuss was over the Harry Potter books.
EP – far from unsubstantiated blogger opinion, the NYT story quotes the American Library Association – and they recognise that a small portion – note small – were results of left wing PC.
As to your campus tales, the monitorial (and extremely well funded) right wing PC student groups on US campusses are a bunch of loons. Follow up any number of the allegations they make, and they normally fall apart at the slightest scrutiny.
Come on EP, join the party. The gayness is the hotness! Which blogger would you like to get up close and pussily dirty with?
Uh-huh. Censorship by withdrawal of funding, eh. Reminds me a little of a piece of legislation coming up in Austalia to enact Voluntary Student Unionism, precipitating the end of just about every student newspaper in the country, Left, Right, or whatever.
You’re being irrational, Kate.
Nobody said anything about stopping consenting adults doing what they like in the privacy of their own homes. You brought that up.
Disapproval of someone’s actions is entirely different from the use of force to stop those actions.
Thus, for example, when a right-wing group publishes a list of books it doesn’t like, it is merely expressing an opinion and not suppressing free speech.
However, when a left wing university takes disciplinary action against a student for expressing non-left-wing views, that is a suppression of free speech.
Thus we can see that the Left is actually doing the oppressive things which it falsely accuses the Right of doing. This is not only bigotry, but hypocrisy as well.
Hayek should have been on the list.
I don’t feel irrational, EP, I feel kind of in need of a cup of tea. I don’t know the specifics of these cases so it’s foolish for me to argue with you, in fact, I regret my inital comment not because I think I was wrong but because I really don’t know enough about the situation to comment.
I was drawn in because I saw some “gay disapproval” literature at my uni, and let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty. Telling people that they should burn in hell is pretty strong stuff, as is people saying things like “kill all faggots”.
I do agree that these kids can publish whatever the hell they want. Just like I can call ‘em bigots. And if they publish things like “kill all faggots” (not that they did, but I have seen things like this distributed at campuses) then they should be punished for inciting violence.
Frightening though that hate crimes, against gays and other minorities, could be on the increase in the US again:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-06-02-hate-crime-csm_x.htm
Hayek should’ve topped the damn list. And for those wondering precisely how far the listmakers are situated beyond our conventional notions of sanity, Google yourself a video of Phyllis Schlafly saying anything, ever. I would not be surprised to learn that she eats children.
I would not be surprised to learn that she eats children.
There’s a fine example of insanity, right there.
[yawn] yep, we’re all of us lefties simultaneously insane and out of control, and dangerously sane and motivated to take power.
Wake me up when you’ve got a new line, EP, or when you make a Swedish joke so I can join in the hyuk-hyuks. Hah, Sweden.
The Right bores me shitless. Wake me up when they’re gorn. Incidentally, you all-singing, all-dancing, mortgage-frightened, Howard-voting, commodity-fetishising, 4WD owning pack of unimaginative piss-ants: Pajero is Latin American Spanish for ‘wanker’. No kidding, it really is. Yes, you ARE a total f’n laughing stock. The Latinos have had you going on that one for years, HAHAHAHA!
I read Foucalt and was gayenated! And then my pajero stained my trousers.
Shit, rampant gayitude has got Rex now. Its spreading…. Where’s the Right when you need it? SAVE US! Stop us reading this engayifying material! Who can we turn to…. Ayn Rand? FA Hayek?
That would be one occasion where the light grey jeans would not be the fabulousness.
Hermes
Have you ever seen the movie adaptation of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead? Let me assure you, it is CAMP and homo-erotic at the core.