Amanda nicely sums up the conservative backlash against intellectualism, academia, and the “elitism” of people who value education and reality. Read her post, then come back here and check out these fitting examples:
First, we have a UCLA alumni group tracking “radical” professors — that is, any professors whose personal beliefs don’t fit into a conservative mold, or who challenge their students in class in a way that makes some people uncomfortable. The group actually pays students to take notes and tape-record their lectures as a means to intimidate and target particular professors. Two board members of the alumni group and former professors have resigned over this.
On one of its websites, the Bruin Alumni Group names education professor Peter McLaren as No. 1 on its “The Dirty Thirty: Ranking the Worst of the Worst.” It says “this Canadian native teaches the next generation of teachers and professors how to properly indoctrinate students.”
McLaren, in a telephone interview, called the alumni group’s tactics “beneath contempt.”
“Any sober, concerned citizen would look at this and see right through it as a reactionary form of McCarthyism. Any decent American is going to see through this kind of right-wing propaganda. I just find it has no credibility,” he said.
The website also lists history professor Ellen DuBois, saying she “is in every way the modern female academic: militant, impatient, accusatory, and radical — very radical.”
Gotta love the sexism woven in there, right? Not to mention the academic McCarthyism.
Next up we’ve got a nice bit from our favorite Copyeditor for Christ, Dawn Eden: Censoring books is just dandy. From an article she links to:
There are few very libraries today in which I would leave my 13-year-old son unescorted, because, unfortunately, the protection and safety of our children is simply no longer a priority for libraries or for the ALA. That may sound harsh, but it’s true and the shrill cry of censorship one constantly hears emanating from the ALA is really disturbing considering the shocking books they defend.
Unbeknownst to most people, a new wave of literature called “authentic literature” hit our public school libraries over the last few years. The ALA claims such books portray American life and culture in a more realistic fashion. But they don’t. These books feature druggies, sex addicts, pedophiles, gang members and others on the fringes of society. Increasingly, this literature is replacing the traditional literature classics, which, in general, promoted mainstream American values or at least didn’t undermine them.
Books that don’t promote traditional American values? Please protect me!
Of course, Dawn just finished writing a book (“The Thrill of the Chaste” — and no, I did not make that up. I couldn’t possibly), but naturally hers upholds great American values like slut-shaming and passing off your daughter’s virginity from father to husband like the piece of property it (and she) is. Now, this is the kind of book that I would never let my kids get their hands on, since I would kind of like them to grow up valuing themselves for virtues other than an intact hymen. But I also wouldn’t flip out and demand that my local library ban it because its content doesn’t fit into my personal value system.
The books that used to inspire; which celebrated American values; that chronicled the exploits of trailblazers, astronauts, soldiers, and other heroes, are fast disappearing. And their replacements are books like: “A Woman in Heat Wiping Herself,” “Outside the Operating Room of a Sex-Change Doctor,” and the “Rainbow Boys,” a story of three homosexual boys and the various routes they took in “coming out.”
…but how would he feel about a book focusing on the experience of trailblazing gay heroic soldier astronauts and their various routes in coming out? Would that be ok?
Alas, no. It seems that the whole homo thing really gets under this guy’s skin:
Nowhere is the ALA’s bias more obvious than issues regarding homosexuality. The ALA’s huge Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table works closely with many of the nation’s gay activist groups to place into libraries books glorifying the homosexual lifestyle. As a result, one will often find the ratio of pro-homosexual books to books critical of the gay agenda massively in favor of the former. Books by ex-gays are nearly impossible to find. Among the numerous pro-gay workshops at ALA’s annual convention are Building and Promoting GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered) Children’s and Young Adult Collections. The homosexual books most heavily promoted by the ALA are those which receive its “Stonewall Award” like, “At Swim,” “Two Boys,” and “Lawnboy,” both replete with pedophilia themes. Nor is it uncommon to find in today’s libraries graphic homosexual newspapers rife with obscene personal ads.
You mean that the American Library Association tries to carry pieces of literature that are fine enough to earn an award from the American Library Association? It’s insanity!
The ALA’s bias is so obvious that when parent groups have offered to place books in libraries with conservative themes or are critical of the left, the ALA’s claims of being First Amendment guardians suddenly look fraudulent. When one parent tried to donate George Grant’s book, “Killer Angel,” a critical biography of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, the library sent a letter stating that “the author’s political and social agenda…is not appropriate.” Huh? A biographical book with zero profanity is banned but books that feature the “F” word a hundred times are sought after with zeal. Go figure.
Libraries do have limited space, and they can’t carry everything. They certainly aren’t going to fill their shelves with ridiculous screeds like this one. And no, I don’t think it’s ridiculous just because I disagree with the author. It’s ridiculous because it hardly even counts as a “biography” — it’s a raging screed chock full of personal opinion, lacking any attempt at balance, that isn’t taken seriously by anyone outside of the politicized pro-life movement.
Using the f-word repeatedly doesn’t make a piece of literature “bad.” Not doing your research and attempting to pass off an extremist opinion piece as a “biography” is bad. It’s not all that complicated.
The ALA response to parental complaints was the creation a few years ago of a national event they call “Banned Books Week” in which outrageous charges are made about parents supposedly attempting to ban classics like “Huckleberry Finn” and “Of Mice and Men.” It’s an ingenious tactic considering the ALA seems intent on phasing out the classics. However, parent researchers and bloggers have found many of these allegations to be false or grossly exaggerated; for example, the ALA counts as censorship incidents in which a parent simply requests that the school or library be more age selective when assigning books or amend a teacher’s mandatory reading list to include other books not so offensive.
Thankfully, the author of this piece gives us a direct link to “Parents Against Bad Books in Schools,” an organization that does attempt to ban pieces of literature that they deem “bad.” So their list must only include totally extreme left-wing homo-agenda books, right? Because like he said, lefties like the American Library Association have grossly exaggerated what these books are actually about. Let’s take a look at some of the dirty, despicable books on the list (I’ve picked out the books that I’m familiar with; there are many more listed):
Alice on the Outside – Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds
All Over But the Shoutin’ – Bragg, Rick
All the Pretty Horses – McCarthy, Cormac
Animal Dreams – Kingsolver, Barbara
Be True to Your School: A Diary of 1964 – Greene, Bob
Beloved – Morrison, Toni
Black Boy – Wright, Richard
Chronicle of a Death Foretold – Marquez, Gabriel Garcia
Go Ask Alice – Anonymous
Going After Cacciato – O’Brien, Tim
Growing Up Chicana/o – Lopez, Tiffany Ana
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents – Alvarez, Julia
In Cold Blood – Capote, Truman
Like Water for Chocolate – Esquivel, Laura
Living by the Word – Walker, Alice
Love in the Time of Cholera – Garcia Marquez, Gabriel
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Kesey, Ken
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Garcia Marquez, Gabriel
Paula – Allende, Isabel
Ragtime – Doctorow, E.L.
Slaughterhouse Five – Vonnegut, Kurt
Snow falling on cedars – Guterson, David
Song of Solomon – Morrison, Toni
Stones from the River – Hegi, Ursula
The Awakening – Chopin, Kate
The Bean Trees – Kingsolver, Barbara
The Bluest Eye – Morrison, Toni
The Catcher in the Rye – Salinger, J.D.
The Color Purple – Walker, Alice
The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind – Guterson, David
The Giver – Lowry, Lois
The Handmaid’s Tale – Atwood, Margaret
The Hot Zone – Preston, Richard
The House of Spirits – Allende, Isabel
The House on Mango Street – Cisneros, Sandra
The Joy Luck Club – Tan, Amy
The King Must Die – Renault, Mary
The Name of the Rose – Eco, Umberto
The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Chbosky, Stephen
The Power of One – Courtenay, Bryce
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole – Townsend, Sue
The things they carried – O’Brien, Tim
Then Again, Maybe I Won’t – Blume, Judy
Things Fall Apart – Achebe, Chinua
This Boy’s Life – Wolff, Tobias
Weetzie Bat – Block, Francesca Lia
Not big fans of Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Tim O’Brien, are we? That’s ok, they’re dirty pornographers. But my favorite part is where they list the despicable themes and quotes from selected books. Like:
The Awakening:
– Written in 1899, classic literature frequently taught in AP Literature
– Adultery, suicide, abandoment of children, self-indulgence, sex separate from love are issues/themes in the book
The Bluest Eye
– “.. mother comes.. she rubs the Vicks salve on my chest until I am faint… puts it in my mouth, telling me to swallow… later I throw up… What did you puke.. for? Don’t you have sense… think I got time for nothing but washing up your puke? The puke swaddles down the pillow onto the sheet-green-gray, with flecks of orange. It moves like the inside of an uncooked egg… clinging to its own mass… mother drones on.. talking to the puke, but she is calling it my name..”
– “.old crazy nigger she married up with..”
– “Some men just dogs.”
– “..to scare the living shit out of you, you get up at 5:30 in the morning.. see that old hag..”
– “He ever been married to anybody? No. How come? Somebody cut it off?”
– “I destroyed white baby dolls… dismembering of dolls… transference of same impulses to little white girls.. indifference with which I could have axed them was shaken only by my desire to do so. … If I pinched them, their eyes… would fold in pain… their cry… a fascinating cry of pain…. best hiding place was love. Thus the conversion from pristine sadism to fabricated hatred, to fraudulent love.”
– “You want to go to Mr. H’s room and look at his girlie magazines?… Lets go to the Greek hotel and listen to them cuss.”
The Color Purple:
– Book is a series of letters written to God or her sister about the events of the main character’s (Celie) life. Language includes: Goddamn, bitch, shit, nigger, and fuck.
-Controversial material starts on page 1:”I am 14 years old… [after the baby was born her dad] was pulling on her [mom’s]arm. She say it too soon.. I ain’t well.. A week go by, he pulling on her arm again. She say Naw, I ain’t gonna.. she went to visit her sister.. [her dad] say You gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t. First he put his thing up against my hip and sort of wiggle it around. Then he grab hold my titties. then he push his thing inside my pussy. when that hurt, I cry. he start to choke me, saying You better shut up and git used to it. But i don’t ever git used to it. And now I feels sick every time I be the one to cook.”
-“My mamma dead. She died screaming and cussing. She scream at me. She cuss at me. I’m big…. She ast me about the first one Whose is it? I say God’s.. my stomach start moving and then that little baby come out my pussy chewing on it fist.. She ast Where is it? I say God took it. He [her dad] took it while I was sleeping. Kilt it out there in the woods. Kill this one too, if he can.”
-“He took my other little baby, a boy this time. But I don’t think he kilt it. I think he sold it to a man and his wife… I got breasts full of milk running down myself. He say Why don’t you look decent?.. I been hoping he find somebody to marry. I see him looking at my little sister. She scared.”
-“He come home with a girl.. She be my age but they married. He be on her all the time.”
Horrific. Even worse — some of these books talk about people smoking.
Thanks for the link to the list- did not read the entire list, but will say I let the local public library know I wasn’t thrilled with the content of some of the graphic novels for teens. I am not talking educational biology. The behavior that is written about so casually is not casual behavior- in many cases it is unhealthy, & introducing these kinds of behaviors to underage children to me is endangering their welfare.
Let’s just say it starts with characters who, among other things, smoke.
Cigarette companies have gotten into trouble for targeting children.
But it can seep into the K-12 section of the libraries, that our tax dollars support?
My tax dollars will not support Jesus-hating behavior like mentioning the fact that some people smoke cigarettes!
Perhaps I’m just bitter because some of my favorite books and stories (like the three listed above) are on a list suggesting that they’re “bad” and not representative of American values. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that so many of the books on the list focus on the experience of non-whites in America and elsewhere (all the Toni Morrison books, the Gabriel Garcia Marquez books, Alice Walker, Sandra Cisneros, Luis Rodriguez, Julia Alvarez, David Guterson, etc). Being offending at the word “nigger” in a book set 100 years ago (or 50 years ago, or 10 years ago) in the United States is ridiculous. Or, perhaps I should rephrase — we should be offended, but the answer isn’t to target the author as if they were racists who invented the word. Writers detail the human experience. Often, the human experience involves things like sex, hatred, death, ugliness, racism, cursing, homosexuality, variants on religion, selfishness, non-whiteness, and imperfection. The human experience often finds beauty in, out of, or in spite of these things. That is what authors try and capture, not a peachy-keen view of middle-class whiteness where everyone is happy, healthy, and heterosexual. Suggesting further that anything deviating from this picture threatens “American values” is a slap in the face for anyone who lives outside of the “mainstream culture” myth (and that’s most of us, though some are further out than others). The book-banning movement lives in fear of any authentic experience other than their own, which fears sexuality, non-whiteness, any deviation from compulsory heterosexuality, and female empowerment. It comes out of the anti-intellectual right, obsessed with destroying “elitism” by restoring traditional values of bigotry, racism, homophobia, and misogyny. And, sorry, but if “values” means that I have to hate beautiful pieces of literature because they portray the realistic experience of some Americans, you can have them. I’ll take elitism any day.