![\"19380FC1-F6BC-4633-94B0-F434E402B60C\"](\"https:\/\/farm2.staticflickr.com\/1871\/43625285905_90efd44d6a_z.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nBanned Books Week<\/a>\u00a0is September 23-29. In honor of those who fight to protect our right to read and write, I offer my annual rant.<\/p>\n YCRT! Banned Books Week\u00a0Annual Rant<\/strong><\/p>\n Every year conservative pundits line up to tell us\u00a0Banned Books Week is a hoax, claiming books aren’t banned in the USA. In the years I’ve been writing these YCRT! posts, more than one reader has\u00a0called me\u00a0a liar for saying books are banned. Here’s my response:<\/p>\n I find I have to explain my use of the word “banned” every now and again. My position is this:\u00a0any time people try to keep people\u00a0from reading a book, they’re attempting to ban it.<\/p>\n In the USA, not a week goes by without parents in one state or another showing up at school board meetings to demand certain\u00a0books be removed from reading lists and libraries.\u00a0Not a week goes by without some school board caving to parental pressure and pulling controversial books from the shelves.<\/p>\n Regardless of whether\u00a0the same books are\u00a0available on-line or in local bookstores, the intent of parents and school administrators who take\u00a0these actions is to keep others\u00a0from reading the books in question. This is the very definition of banning.<\/p>\n The government\u00a0no longer bans books at the national level, but\u00a0it used to. Henry Miller’s novel\u00a0Tropic of Cancer<\/em>, for example, was banned in the USA from its publication in 1934 until the Supreme Court overruled the ban in 1964. Even during the days when\u00a0books were literally banned in the USA, though, conservatives\u00a0advanced the argument that such books weren’t really<\/em> banned, because you could always board an ocean liner, sail to Paris, and buy copies there.\u00a0Conservatives today\u00a0recycle the same argument: you can buy “Captain Underpants” and “Heather Has Two Mommies”\u00a0from Amazon, so what’s the problem with removing them from the children’s section of the library?<\/p>\n Book banners\u00a0want to control what other people read. They may no\u00a0longer\u00a0be able to\u00a0ban books nationwide, but they’ll do whatever they can to get books they disapprove of\u00a0banned from libraries, bookstores, and school reading lists. Sometimes they succeed, and banned books are the result. These are the correct words, and that is why I use them here.<\/p>\n But fine, if you don’t value my opinion, here’s what Merriam-Webster<\/a> says about the word “ban”:<\/p>\n … to prohibit especially by legal means\u00a0(ban<\/em>\u00a0discrimination);\u00a0also<\/em>:<\/strong>\u00a0to prohibit the use, performance, or distribution of (ban<\/em>\u00a0a book)\u00a0(ban<\/em>\u00a0a pesticide)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Under examples, they include this:<\/p>\n The school\u00a0banned<\/em>\u00a0that book for many years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yes, Virginia, books are<\/em> banned in the USA, and they’re banned\u00a0all the time. When people quit trying to prevent me or my children from reading books they don’t like, I’ll quit using the word, but not until then.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n YCRT! News<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201c… surveys indicate that 82-97 percent of book challenges\u2014documented requests to remove materials from schools or libraries\u2014remain unreported and receive no media [attention].\u201d An interesting overview<\/a> of Banned Books Week (celebrating its 36th anniversary this year), with particular attention to California and the burning of Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.”<\/p>\n Challenges to and\u00a0attempts to ban classic and prize-winning books in Texas schools and libraries, reported in several previous YCRT! columns, continue apace. This article<\/a> includes a synopsis of the top ten most challenged books of 2017, compiled by the American Library Association.<\/p>\n Waiter, there seems to be a threat in my word salad: “Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing\/reporting of Fake New Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican\/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of results on ‘Trump News’ are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation\u2014will be addressed!” \u2014Donald J. Trump on 28 August 2018, in a now-deleted but widely documented tweet<\/a>.<\/p>\n Facebook, as I expected based on past performance, is once again caving to the right-wing noise machine. Wonkette has the best headline so far: Facebook Is Letting Rightwing Shitrags “Fact-Check” Liberal Sites. You Won’t Believe What Happened Next!<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Screen](\"https:\/\/farm2.staticflickr.com\/1847\/44553602041_7c89d2e0dd_q.jpg\")
<\/a>Illustration from “Why Our Future Depends on Libraries, Reading and Daydreaming<\/a>,” a graphic essay by Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell.<\/p>\n