Author Topic: I think I accidentally started an urban legend. My bad.  (Read 839 times)

roo_ster

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I think I accidentally started an urban legend. My bad.
« on: October 08, 2014, 01:30:01 PM »
http://reason.com/blog/2014/10/08/i-think-i-accidentally-started-an-urban#comment

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During Banned Books Week last month, you may have heard that some busybodies banned Green Eggs and Ham because they thought the story was kinda gay. Metro reported that this happened "briefly in the 1990s because of supposed homosexual innuendos." A Minnesota radio station said the book was targeted for its "homosexual theme." Feministe announced that it had been challenged in California for, "No *expletive deleted*it, 'homosexual seduction' on the part of Sam."

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None of these reports say where or when this purported prohibition took place, other than those vague references to California and the '90s.

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I'm open to the possibility that there's a real event here that I haven't been able to track down, but that seems extremely doubtful.

Besides, I'm pretty sure I know where this began. It's my fault. Sorry. My bad.

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Way back in 2002, I wrote a satiric Banned Books Week column that mocked the nation's prigs by suggesting they try to pull something new off the nation's school shelves. The article then devolved into me decoding the supposed sexual subtexts in Treasure Island and, yes, Green Eggs and Ham.

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Many educated elites live in fear of Bible-thumping troglodytes haunting the hinterlands, some great redneck beast slouching towards Washington to make Sarah Palin president. Book-banning stories are tailor made to fit that terror...The Guardian once ran an Amanda Marcotte editorial under the headline "The Tea Party moves to ban books." The editorial contained exactly zero examples of Tea Partiers trying to ban anything.

There really are crusaders out there whose fear of demons leads them to try to suppress speech. Just ask the American Library Association. But there are also people whose fear of demons leads them to imagine book bonfires where none exist.

First commenter:
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Warty|10.8.14 @ 11:23AM|#

These Irish orphans are delicious.

I thought it pretty darned funny. 
Regards,

roo_ster

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
----G.K. Chesterton