Rep. Michelle Udall, R-Mesa, is a truly pathetic individual. Definitely not cut from the same stock as Stewart and Morris Udall. She besmmirches the family name and reputation. She should be ashamed. And scorned.
This GQP “snowflake” doubles-down on her anti-anti-racism bill in an op-ed in the Arizona Republic fka the Arizona Republican, which one again demonstrates a lack of editorial discretion in publishing such crap. If you must read it, Teaching that race is a problem IS a problem. Just the caption alone was enough to cause my blood pressure to spike.
I spent over 25 years handling employment discrimination cases, and let me assure you that race most definitely is a problem (as is sexism and misogyny). There will never be a shortage of work.
Michelle Udall and other GQP snowflakes can stick their fingers in their ears and yell “LA LA LA LA CAN’T HEAR YOU” and pretend that racism doesn’t exist. This just proves that Michelle Udall is not just simply ignorant, but militantly ignorant, and suffers from a complete lack of self-awareness about her ignorance.
Dana Mibank writes, Current weather: A blizzard of snowflakes in the red states:
If we see any more snowflakes appear in red states, the National Weather Service is going to have to issue a blizzard warning.
Tennessee made news this week when it was reported that rural McMinn County took the initiative of banning from classrooms the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel “Maus,” by Art Spiegelman, which teaches children about the Holocaust by portraying Jews as mice and Nazis as cats.
So the state once celebrated for Davy Crockett’s bravery now fears a cartoon mouse exposing teens to indecorous language. Can’t get more snowflakey than that.
Hey geniuses, this is what happens when you ban books: ‘Maus’ is an Amazon bestseller after Tennessee school ban:
“Maus,” the decades-old graphic novel about the effects of the Holocaust on a family, has become an Amazon bestseller as part of a backlash to the news this week that it was banned by a Tennessee school board.
“The Complete Maus” on Friday held the No. 1 spot among Amazon’s bestsellers in the categories of fiction satire, and comics and graphic novels, and the No. 7 spot overall for all books.
“Maus I,” an earlier published book that is the first part of “The Complete Maus,” was the No. 5 bestselling book on Amazon. The second part of the story, “Maus II” was the No. 1 bestseller in the European history category.
This all reminds me of the Watch and Ward Society in Boston which engaged in censorship with “Banned in Boston” to describe a literary work, song, motion picture, or play which had been prohibited from distribution or exhibition in Boston, Massachusetts (usually for works with sexual content or foul language). The phrase “banned in Boston” became associated, in the popular mind, with something lurid, sexy, and naughty. Commercial distributors were often pleased when their works were banned in Boston—it gave them more appeal elsewhere. They even included it in their advertisements in other parts of the country.
The Tucson Festival of Books coming up in March should do a “banned books” exhibit. It will be the top attraction.
Spiegelman joins the good company of Nobel-laureate Toni Morrison (whose debut novel, “The Bluest Eye,” was banned in Wentzville, Mo., on Jan. 20), “The Daily Show” host Trevor Noah (whose memoir survived a ban attempt in Osseo, Minn., last month) and Margaret Atwood (whose “The Handmaid’s Tale” was targeted in Goddard, Kan., in November) — as well as scores of other books, the vast majority of which have protagonists who are Black, or LGBTQ, or perceived as being anti-police.
McMinn County’s banning of Spiegelman’s mice comes almost a century after Tennessee tried to ban Darwin’s monkeys in the Scopes trial. The Volunteer State, apparently, is not evolving. And the political right, it seems, has undergone reverse evolution. Its new theory: survival of the fussiest.
The American Library Association tells me that there were 330 “challenges” in the three months between Sept. 1 and Dec. 1, 2021, with December still to be tallied. That compares with just 156 in all of 2020, and 377 in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. This means book bannings are happening at roughly quadruple the previous pace.
And that’s just the beginning of the thought-police problem. PEN America, a free-speech organization, reports that in the first three weeks of January 2022, 71 “gag-order” bills banning the teaching of certain concepts were introduced or pre-filed in state legislatures across the country. Since January of last year, 12 such bills have become law in 10 GOP-run states, and 88 bills are still working their way through the legislative process. Virtually all of them have been sponsored by Republicans.
Eighty-four of the active bills target K-12 schools, 38 target colleges and universities, 48 include mandatory punishments, and 15 give students, parents or citizens the right to sue schools. So much for the professed Republican devotion to combatting frivolous lawsuits.
Not long ago, those on the right howled about ultrasensitive “snowflakes” and “cancel culture” when woke activists sought to replace racially insensitive texts. And it’s true progressives have gone overboard at times; the Mukilteo, Wash., school board is the latest to remove the classic “To Kill a Mockingbird” from its reading list because of racially offensive terms. [Are you effin’ kidding me? This one of my all-time favorite books.]
“The sense that this has gone too far has triggered a backlash that is so much more censorious and silencing than what it purports to counter,” Suzanne Nossel, the head of PEN America, tells me. “You have legislative bans on ideas, historical perspectives, terminology, books. If you think about the hierarchy of infringements on free speech, there’s just no question that legislative prohibitions on ideology are the top of the list. … It’s an effort to frighten and intimidate teachers and administrators and dictate how they teach at penalty of fines and discipline and ostracism and firings.”
Front groups such as “Moms for Liberty” and “No Left Turn” have proposed lists of books to be banned. In Texas, the Republican chairman of the House General Investigating Committee sent schools a list of 850 books related to race, gender and sexuality that could “make students feel discomfort.”
In addition to PEN America and the ALA, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Coalition Against Censorship are tracking the book bans, gag laws and other attempts at stifling speech. But it’s difficult to keep up. Virginia’s new Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, created a tip line so informants can report on teachers teaching anything “divisive.” Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, launched a statewide hunt for “pornography” (that is, books about gender and sexuality) in schools.
Among the works that have been on the chopping block: August Wilson’s “Fences,” an Oscar-nominated PBS documentary “I Am Not Your Negro” about James Baldwin, the bestseller “The Hate U Give” — and a coloring book with African Adinkra symbols.
Canceling a coloring book? Who’s a snowflake now?
Ryan Grenoble writes at Huffington Post, Conservatives Are Banning Books From Schools While Whining About ‘Cancel Culture’:
When a publisher stops printing an old Dr. Seuss book nobody read because it containedharmful racial stereotypes, Fox News and the entire Republican party lose their minds over “cancel culture.”
But when conservatives across the country start banning and censoring dozens of books at a time from school libraries, they’re just trying to protect the kids.
Having already turned school boards into an angry political morass, conservatives are now targeting school libraries in what experts are calling a historic and concerted book banning effort.
That includes “Maus,” a graphic novel that conveys the horrors of the Holocaust in cartoon form, with Jews depicted as mice and Nazis as cats. A Tennessee school board voted unanimously this month to ban the Pulitzer-winning book from their eighth-grade curriculum, citing “objectionable language” and nudity.
Similar campaigns are underway in school districts in at least 30 other states, a Stateline investigation found, often condemning as “pornographic” books depicting the experiences of LGBTQ and Black characters.
“We haven’t seen or heard of challenges like these probably in the last 40 years,” Shirley Robinson, executive director of the 5,000-member Texas Library Association, told Stateline. “It’s definitely become politicized.”
In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has capitalized on a highly public effort to pull “pornographic or obscene” books from school libraries, following the efforts of state Rep. Matt Krause (R), who’s circulated a list of more than 800 books that purportedly cross the line.
Both politicians are up for reelection this year. [Both should be soundly defeated.]
It’s unclear how Krause compiled his list, the contents of which suggest he either didn’t have a clear set of criteria or is unsettled by a puzzling range of information. The vast majority of the books were written by women, people of color and LGBTQ writers, according to the Dallas Morning News.
Yet the list also includes “The Gale Encyclopedia Of Medicine,” a five-volume set containing medical information for the layperson, and “Eyes on Target: Inside Stories From the Brotherhood of the U.S. Navy SEALs,” which is available on ChristianBook.com.
One book that’s not on Krause’s list: “The Kite Runner,” a 2003 novel that was among 16 books recently put in “quarantine” by Polk County Public Schools in Florida, after a campaign by County Citizens Defending Freedom, a conservative group.
Asked why the group settled on the books they did, CCDF leader Jimmy Nelson told the Lakeland Ledger that “the books speak for themselves,” but struggled to articulate why The Bible, which also deals with adult themes, should not also be “quarantined.”
When discussing the fact that Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner” depicts the brutal rape of a boy by a teenaged boy, Nelson was asked if all books containing rape should be banned.
“I’m not going to go into that with you,” Nelson said. He became irritated when it was pointed out that the Bible and William Shakespeare plays contain rape, incest and adultery, and asked if he wanted the Bible or Shakespeare removed, too.
Amusing though the hypocrisy may be at times, censoring books causes real, lasting damage to children, says the National Coalition Against Censorship.
“Libraries offer students the opportunity to encounter books and other material that they might otherwise never see and the freedom to make their own choices about what to read,” the organization said in a December statement warning of the ongoing “organized political attack on books.”
“It is freedom of expression that ensures that we can meet the challenges of a changing world. That freedom is critical for the students who will lead America in the years ahead. We must fight to defend it.”
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This GQP censorship of any history that gives white snowflakes any “discomfort” from learning about the abuses of white supremacy is a national effort by the White Nationlist Party. “A GOP proposal targeting ‘negative’ U.S. history is cause for renewed alarm”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/31/gop-proposal-targets-negative-us-history/
In recent weeks, it has become inescapably obvious: The mania for muzzling how teachers address race and other topics is only accelerating.
We’re seeing dozens of GOP proposals to bar whole concepts from classrooms outright. The Republican governor of Virginia has debuted a mechanism for parents to rat out teachers. Bills threatening punishment of them are proliferating. Book-banning efforts are outpacing anything in recent memory.
Amid this onslaught, a proposed bill now advancing in the New Hampshire legislature deserves renewed scrutiny. It would ban the advocacy of any “doctrine” or “theory” promoting a “negative” account of U.S. history, including the notion that the United States was “founded on racism.”
IT WAS FOUNDED ON RACISM! THE INSTITUION OF SLAVERY WAS ENSHRINED IN THE U.S. CONSTITUTION.
Additionally, the bill describes itself as designed to ensure teachers’ “loyalty,” while prohibiting advocacy of “subversive doctrines.”
This proposal is drawing heightened attention from teachers and their representatives. With the push for constraints on teachers intensifying, they worry that if it succeeds, it could become a model in other states.
“It’s the next step in their campaign to whitewash our history by rewriting it,” Megan Tuttle, the president of the New Hampshire chapter of the National Education Association, told me in a statement.
If this passes, it will “stifle real discussion” in classrooms, Tuttle said, adding: “Then it’s only a matter of time before similar legislation has the same impact on classrooms around the country.”
This proposal opens a window on much of what’s wrong with the current wave of censoring panic. Many new proposals and laws are sloppily drafted, vaguely defining entire concepts off limits, such as “anti-American ideologies” or anything that deviates from undefined conceptions of the nation’s “authentic founding.”
The vagueness of such prohibitions seems like a feature, not a bug. Taken alongside these proposals’ new punishments for teachers, they seem designed to make teachers feel perpetually at risk of running afoul of the law in ways they cannot anticipate.
This seems to go beyond the exercise of traditional state government authority to shape curriculums. Instead, it treats teachers as subversive elements to be rooted out at the slightest deviation from orthodoxy.
The New Hampshire bill offers a template for advancing this project. By explicitly stating its goal of prohibiting “advocacy of subversive doctrines” and ensuring teacher “loyalty,” it treats as its very premise the idea that a subversive element lurking within must be purged.
[W]hile old laws still on the books in some states require teacher loyalty oaths, Sachs said, this bill’s “loyalty” language is unique.
The bill does declare that teachers must not advocate doctrines or theories promoting a negative account of the U.S. founding or its history without “worldwide context.” It also outlaws advocacy for doctrines such as socialism or Marxism. [But not Fascism or Theocracy?]
That creates the impression that the bill would limit only express efforts to indoctrinate children, without limiting the teaching of hard historical truths. In fact, that’s the defense offered by the bill’s chief sponsor.
But the problem lies — again — in its vague language. Take the teaching of certain abolitionist or civil rights tracts. Some writings from abolitionists suggested slavery and white supremacy were irredeemably baked into the Constitution or dramatically minimized the historical importance of the founding.
Others, such as those of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., described Whites as the “oppressor” and arguably treated the question of whether the United States will ever achieve its founding promise as an open and unresolved one.
What if a teacher teaches such tracts and expresses approval of them in some form? Could a teacher ask if the abolitionist critique was prescient, or whether the civil rights movement’s understanding that we’d fallen woefully short of our founding promise as of the mid-20th century was an accurate one?
Would that count as “advocacy” for a prohibited “theory” of the U.S. founding and history?
Or could a teacher say anything positive about any writing that asks whether we’ve achieved our founding promise as of today? “If I were a teacher in New Hampshire, I would avoid any kind of negative account or representation of the United States and its founding,” Sachs continued.
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that chilling the range of expression is a big driving motive here. As Sachs notes, some of these proposals explicitly command teachers to convey a “positive” understanding of U.S. history, which might have that effect.
In an important essay, political theorist Laura K. Field documents that proponents of such laws often cherry-pick from such historical writings to whitewash away how radical their critique of the U.S. founding and history truly were.
As Field explains, there is a “long lineage” throughout U.S. history of such radical criticism. At their various historical moments, these writings emphasized “how inequalities and injustice persist” rather than the “progress that has been made,” and didn’t refrain from highlighting the “moral failings” driving our “long-enduring gap between American ideals and practices.”
Don’t we want students to learn why great figures throughout our history thought to lodge such criticisms? Why, exactly, should this be treated as too much for students to bear?
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I’m confused. These biils come from the same MAGA/QAnon seditious insurrectionists who want to destroy American democracy for a GQP autocracy. They openly admit that they don’t believe in American democacry any longer. How is their anti-democracy personality cult of Donald Trump not a subversive doctrine?