{"id":19090,"date":"2016-09-14T17:45:43","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T00:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=19090"},"modified":"2016-09-14T17:52:01","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T00:52:01","slug":"you-cant-read-that-72","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=19090","title":{"rendered":"You Can’t Read That!"},"content":{"rendered":"

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a>
Banned Books Week: September 25- October 1, 2016<\/center><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

YCRT! Campus Thoughtcrime Report<\/strong><\/p>\n

Have the\u00a0University of Wisconsin campus thought police never read “1984”?\u00a0\u2018Bias Incident Team\u2019: Students\u2019 Three Blind Mice Halloween Costume \u2018Makes Fun of a Disability.’<\/a><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, at another\u00a0University of Wisconsin campus, the\u00a0chancellor reversed his\u00a0Bias Incident Team’s\u00a0recent order\u00a0to take down two paintings depicting native Americans<\/a>, and instead had the paintings moved\u00a0to a location where they can be displayed in “controlled circumstances.”<\/p>\n

At the University of Northern Colorado, thoughtcrime\u00a0is monitored by a\u00a0“Bias Response Team.” The\u00a0team\u00a0recently\u00a0told a professor he could no longer discuss subjects<\/a> like gay marriage or global warming in class because students were uncomfortable with the topics. This article<\/a> says UNC’s president is bowing to public and political outrage by “reshuffling” the BRT … but it’s not going away.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, a backlash against campus censorship of free speech is growing, notably at the University of Chicago<\/a>, Columbia University<\/a>, and now, apparently coming from students rather than administrators, at the University of Pennsylvania<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Other YCRT! News<\/strong><\/p>\n

This “banned book”\u00a0story from\u00a0Ashland, Oregon<\/a> is disturbing. The owner of\u00a0Shakespeare Books & Antiques has long maintained a display of banned books in her shop window. This year, for the first time, organizers of the town’s annual Oregon Shakespeare Festival objected to some of the books on display and demanded they be removed. The owner refused and the festival director instructed staff not to patronize the store for festival-related goods or services. Sales declined and now the bookstore’s going out of business<\/a>. Central to the dispute:\u00a0was displaying a copy of\u00a0“Little Black Sambo” next to a copy of “The Wizard of Oz” an intentional provocation to black actors appearing in an Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of “The Wiz”?\u00a0If some of the reader comments below the linked articles are to be believed, Ashland\u00a0waters run deep.<\/p>\n

Another story from\u00a0Oregon: challenges to books in the state’s\u00a0public libraries<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We see Facebook censorship every day … or rather, we don’t, unless it makes the news and creates a stir<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The New York Times gives the old “he said\/she said” treatment to a story about the review and selection of history textbooks<\/a> by the notoriously-conservative Texas State Board of Education<\/a>. When it comes to school textbook selection, decisions made in Texas<\/a>\u00a0can affect school districts across the nation.<\/p>\n

Here’s a nice story about the student editor of her high school newspaper fighting back against the school’s prior restraint policy<\/a>, frequently invoked\u00a0to spike stories.<\/p>\n

Parents in Virginia objected to books on a school summer reading list<\/a>, labeling\u00a0them “vile,” “nasty,” and “pornographic.” The books included “Eleanor and Park,<\/span>\u201d \u201cTyrell,” and “Dope Sick,” young adult novels about misfit teens in love, an African-American teen living in a homeless shelter, and a young man shot during a drug deal and on the run from the police. Objections to the books appear to come from the Christian conservative organization\u00a0Focus on the Family and its book & movie review website\u00a0Plugged In.\u00a0<\/span>Even though the school district caved on\u00a0some books, parents continued to object, complaining\u00a0its revised\u00a0list linked to other lists that included other<\/em> objectionable\u00a0books. Sounds to me like Christian conservatives are better organized then ever and spoiling for a fight, and I do not envy the lot of teachers today.<\/p>\n

\u201c’We typically get a rash of (complaints) when school starts,’ says James LaRue, director of the library association’s\u00a0Office for Intellectual Freedom, noting that trans teen novels published this year<\/a> have not been challenged so far.” Uh huh.\u00a0If previous challenges to young adult books with LGBT themes are an\u00a0indication, these new books will soon be under the gun.<\/p>\n

GI newspapers like the\u00a0Air Force Times, Army Times, Navy Times, and Marine Corps Times, while technically\u00a0not answerable to the\u00a0military,\u00a0are highly\u00a0dependent on base exchange newsstand sales. In my Air Force\u00a0days, I saw things like this happen again and again, and here’s the latest iteration: Marine Corps Commandant Got So Mad at Newspaper, He Tried to Ban It<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a previous YCRT!<\/a>\u00a0column I linked to the story of\u00a0a creationist homeschooling mom’s campaign against the Orland Park, Illinois public library. Looks like she’s still at it<\/a>. The article at the link\u00a0is so hilariously partisan I can’t resist quoting from it (bold\/italic text and errors theirs):<\/p>\n

The book in question is SHUT UP!: The Bizarre War that One Public Library Waged Against the First Amendment<\/em><\/strong> by investigative reporters Megan Fox and Kevin DuJan; SHUT UP!<\/strong><\/em> meticulously documents their investigation into years\u2019 of wrongdoing and law-breaking at the OPPL, including library staff looking the other way and deliberately not calling the police when an Orland Park resident admitted that he was viewing child pornography on the OPPL\u2019s computers in a public building full of children. Fox & DuJan used FOIA requests to uncover the Library\u2019s own internal documents that proved not only did OPPL staffers regularly decide not to alert authorities when sex crimes occurred in the Library, but that in at least one case the OPPL board of trustees took themselves out for a $500 steak dinner to apparently celebrate getting away with no one at the time finding out about the child pornography being accessed at the Orland Park Public Library.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! Campus Thoughtcrime Report Have the\u00a0University of Wisconsin campus thought police never read “1984”?\u00a0\u2018Bias Incident Team\u2019: Students\u2019 Three Blind Mice Halloween Costume \u2018Makes Fun of a Disability.’ Meanwhile, at another\u00a0University of Wisconsin campus, the\u00a0chancellor reversed his\u00a0Bias Incident Team’s\u00a0recent order\u00a0to take […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[1964,48,1083],"class_list":["post-19090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banned-books","tag-banned-books","tag-censorship","tag-challenged-books"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19090"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19324,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19090\/revisions\/19324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}