For years, Florida has been at the vanguard of removing books from school libraries. Florida Republicans, including Governor Ron DeSantis (R), insisted that school librarians were seeking to "groom" children with pornographic materials. Florida's Republican legislature passed — and Ron DeSantis signed — several pieces of legislation that made it easier to take books off the shelves of the state's public schools. This was all seen as smart politics, appealing to parents seeking to protect their children from inappropriate content.
We can be grateful that Judd Legum with Popular Information has brought detailed examination to this bizarre movement of book banning and Moms for Liberty. The lead characters are being challenged on national TV and in national news media--Ron DeSantis, who inspired this racist and homophobic assault on education is being shown to be hugely unpopular in the Republican primary world. The revealing of his personality and character has effectively removed him and his hopes for more power to be totally quashed. Hurrah!
Seems like there is a simpler fix. Everyone knows who the serial book banners are. Just lose their challenges when they come in. Throw them straight into the trash. At the same time school and library boards should refuse challenges by people with no kids in the school or who don't live in the library district.
Better yet. grow a fucking spine and tell these people to go to hell. They can stop their own kids from reading anything they want (or try, kids with a will always find a way), but they can't tell the rest of us. And when they show up to meetings armed or screaming or both, have them arrested...and press charges.
The tide turns: DiSantis fails AND the legislature grows a spine. Interesting turn of events for the Governor-deserved! Florida: where a political career can go to die!
I had a notion it would eventually collapse. You see in the end, someone is going to remove a book written by a right wing person or two, and that person will back out of the movement. It builds like a Ponzi scheme, but is eventually unsustainable: you end up crossing too many people.
The Bible itself could be excluded: it talks a lot about sins and crimes and how God "smote" this one or that one. It talks about wars and even, Oh Horror! how this one pleased himself rather than giving his seed to his brother's wife [as was the custom of the land after death] and "spilled his seed on the ground".
I'm sure Ron Death Sentence or MAGA Mike don't want their children learning about masturbation. If they deputize me to protect their children, the Bible would be my suggestion. Just to see if they would push the absurdity to do it.
Bruce Friedman and Vicky Baggett are getting exactly what they deserve. They’re a couple of crackpots controlling all the libraries in the state of FL and taking advantage of poorly written laws. It has been so fulfilling to see DeSantis go back to FL with his dirty tail between his legs and now seeing that their legislators are actually doing something about the book bans gives me hope. We will tackle authoritarianism
PI has helped expose the preposterous book banning in FL and the information was picked up by MSM that's too lazy or too much beholden to advertisers to dig up the facts. The people of FL should applaud Judd's journalism.
Sure; it's all good until Bill O'Reilly has a couple of books included in the ban. Didn't they realize that anything negatively impacting the wallet of a rich conservative is Bad and will be addressed?
Hmm...could this be a strategy we've not utilized enough?
Weak sauce, and weak legislation, really. The Evangelists would raise the fines ($18,800 is a pittance for the mega-churches) and keep right on going. The threat made by Friedman is par for the course--naturally he threatens (near) violence.
My only objection is to charging money to bring a challenge. I object in principle to using money as a bar as it discriminates against pepole with less money. Otherwise I am very glad.
I am still shocked that I live in a country where ANYONE complied with this Fascist-dictator-like authoritarianism. I do love when the idiots who support the Republicans suddenly notice the lunacy when their books are banned. O’Reilly’s complaint is a rich one!
The SCOTUS has just given Texas a loss too by ruling that fed officials can indeed remove razor wire from the river edge where migrants are crossing. Haha!
I've never understood why people who don't live in a district/county are allowed to protest. Why does someone whose kids are not in that school get to protest at a school board meeting, or object to books? It's like if I went to another county and starting protesting about how that local gov't spends its money. I think they'd shut me down pretty quickly.
Someone needs to point out the "porter scene" in Shakespeare's Macbeth -- obviously we need to ban Shakespeare -- though since they have already banned the dictionary the irony will no doubt be lost on these people.
Funny how it always come down to "out of pocket MONEY" as a major factor in peoples decision making process. Like all things in the US...money is the driver. If politicians were responsible for the costs of their destructive and wasteful pure political activities expenses.... imagine how that would crush their malformed partisan politically behavior. Ex. Direct and explicit out of pocket impeachment costs $10,000 to $20,000 per day. This does not include lost productivity whilst being involved in baseless impeachment related nonsense when they could have been dealing with the business of running the nation. Now they are going after the the Secretary of Homeland Security since they have given up on Biden.
My point....money is a major lever and the general population supplies all of it to government and business through our physical labor that... produces and purchases "goods and services". This is where the power lies to control how businesses and government are run. We are the deciders...if we choose to be.
There is a big difference between truth and lies and it would be really great if the majority of the voters could do the work to discriminate between the two and act in everyone's best long term interest by voting for qualified individuals.
After asking for directions to get to your destination from idiots you should eventually get tired of driving around in circles and break down and pay for a reliable gps... having done the research...perhaps we are turning a corner with the book ban situation being a small pivot point?
We can be grateful that Judd Legum with Popular Information has brought detailed examination to this bizarre movement of book banning and Moms for Liberty. The lead characters are being challenged on national TV and in national news media--Ron DeSantis, who inspired this racist and homophobic assault on education is being shown to be hugely unpopular in the Republican primary world. The revealing of his personality and character has effectively removed him and his hopes for more power to be totally quashed. Hurrah!
Seems like there is a simpler fix. Everyone knows who the serial book banners are. Just lose their challenges when they come in. Throw them straight into the trash. At the same time school and library boards should refuse challenges by people with no kids in the school or who don't live in the library district.
Better yet. grow a fucking spine and tell these people to go to hell. They can stop their own kids from reading anything they want (or try, kids with a will always find a way), but they can't tell the rest of us. And when they show up to meetings armed or screaming or both, have them arrested...and press charges.
Excellent!
The tide turns: DiSantis fails AND the legislature grows a spine. Interesting turn of events for the Governor-deserved! Florida: where a political career can go to die!
I had a notion it would eventually collapse. You see in the end, someone is going to remove a book written by a right wing person or two, and that person will back out of the movement. It builds like a Ponzi scheme, but is eventually unsustainable: you end up crossing too many people.
The Bible itself could be excluded: it talks a lot about sins and crimes and how God "smote" this one or that one. It talks about wars and even, Oh Horror! how this one pleased himself rather than giving his seed to his brother's wife [as was the custom of the land after death] and "spilled his seed on the ground".
I'm sure Ron Death Sentence or MAGA Mike don't want their children learning about masturbation. If they deputize me to protect their children, the Bible would be my suggestion. Just to see if they would push the absurdity to do it.
Bruce Friedman and Vicky Baggett are getting exactly what they deserve. They’re a couple of crackpots controlling all the libraries in the state of FL and taking advantage of poorly written laws. It has been so fulfilling to see DeSantis go back to FL with his dirty tail between his legs and now seeing that their legislators are actually doing something about the book bans gives me hope. We will tackle authoritarianism
I'm actually in favour of banning Bill O'Reilly's books in schools. Why would children want to read anything by a serial sexual predator?
PI has helped expose the preposterous book banning in FL and the information was picked up by MSM that's too lazy or too much beholden to advertisers to dig up the facts. The people of FL should applaud Judd's journalism.
Sure; it's all good until Bill O'Reilly has a couple of books included in the ban. Didn't they realize that anything negatively impacting the wallet of a rich conservative is Bad and will be addressed?
Hmm...could this be a strategy we've not utilized enough?
Weak sauce, and weak legislation, really. The Evangelists would raise the fines ($18,800 is a pittance for the mega-churches) and keep right on going. The threat made by Friedman is par for the course--naturally he threatens (near) violence.
Hmmmmm....
Dog barks at car. Dog chases car. Dog catches car. Dog realizes car is owned by much bigger dog. Oops.
My only objection is to charging money to bring a challenge. I object in principle to using money as a bar as it discriminates against pepole with less money. Otherwise I am very glad.
I am still shocked that I live in a country where ANYONE complied with this Fascist-dictator-like authoritarianism. I do love when the idiots who support the Republicans suddenly notice the lunacy when their books are banned. O’Reilly’s complaint is a rich one!
The SCOTUS has just given Texas a loss too by ruling that fed officials can indeed remove razor wire from the river edge where migrants are crossing. Haha!
It all seems like a military campaign turned finally on published literature.
Both our national military establishment and book bans seem to me to be rooted in the nation’s founding originally by Puritans.
Puritanism is always looking to ban those who are not pure enough. The standards come and go, rise and fall.
I've never understood why people who don't live in a district/county are allowed to protest. Why does someone whose kids are not in that school get to protest at a school board meeting, or object to books? It's like if I went to another county and starting protesting about how that local gov't spends its money. I think they'd shut me down pretty quickly.
Someone needs to point out the "porter scene" in Shakespeare's Macbeth -- obviously we need to ban Shakespeare -- though since they have already banned the dictionary the irony will no doubt be lost on these people.
Funny how it always come down to "out of pocket MONEY" as a major factor in peoples decision making process. Like all things in the US...money is the driver. If politicians were responsible for the costs of their destructive and wasteful pure political activities expenses.... imagine how that would crush their malformed partisan politically behavior. Ex. Direct and explicit out of pocket impeachment costs $10,000 to $20,000 per day. This does not include lost productivity whilst being involved in baseless impeachment related nonsense when they could have been dealing with the business of running the nation. Now they are going after the the Secretary of Homeland Security since they have given up on Biden.
My point....money is a major lever and the general population supplies all of it to government and business through our physical labor that... produces and purchases "goods and services". This is where the power lies to control how businesses and government are run. We are the deciders...if we choose to be.
There is a big difference between truth and lies and it would be really great if the majority of the voters could do the work to discriminate between the two and act in everyone's best long term interest by voting for qualified individuals.
After asking for directions to get to your destination from idiots you should eventually get tired of driving around in circles and break down and pay for a reliable gps... having done the research...perhaps we are turning a corner with the book ban situation being a small pivot point?