(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



Iowa's new book-banning law just blasted tons of great titles from the canon [1]

[]

Date: 2023-10-19  

The forced-birth, book-banning, pro-insurrectionist wing of the GOP—which has become so dominant that the party spins around in circles like a dyspeptic chicken whenever it tries to elect a speaker—has spread its noxious extremism across the country faster than Subway approves new franchises.

And—hoo boy!—the results are something to behold. Republicans cannonballed into the new book-banning craze with both butt cheeks, and as a result, their brains are now waterlogged. Hey, maybe book-banning really is the path to electoral glory, but this is still America, and Americans, for the most part, don’t like it when you snatch things away from them. (Which is why Republicans have spent decades trying to keep the federal government from providing universal health care and affordable child care. Once we get a taste for it, it’s over, man.)

Now we’re starting to see the results of the GOP’s new Puritanism, which they’re convinced should enjoin everyone in the country regardless of religion, political affiliation, or number of times they’ve been spanked with a magazine by Stormy Daniels. (Okay, so maybe they don’t think it should apply to everyone.)

RELATED STORY: Scholastic tries to defend caving to book banning after one of its authors blasts the policy

Well, the impotently gyrating chickens are coming home to roost, and that can’t be good news for the extremists in the GOP (d/b/a the Republican Party). As The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent notes in a recent look at the growing fallout from Iowa’s book-banning law, a lot of indispensable titles are getting caught up like dolphins in the tuna net—because the measure oafishly excludes any book that contains a “sex act.”

Really? “1984”? “Brave New World”? “The Handmaid’s Tale”? Are they trying to keep kids who’ve grown up in a world chock-full of premium cable channels and universally available free porn from finding out what sex is—or from recognizing authoritarian overreach when it rears its ugly orange head? Color me suspicious.

As Sargent is careful to point out, it’s hard to fault the school districts themselves for the book bans. As he notes, the rules are somewhat vague, and guidance from the state has “mostly not been forthcoming—leaving [educators] in the tough position of navigating the law on their own.”

And that’s a big problem because some of these supposedly problematic books are not just appropriate for high schoolers—they're important to their personal, moral, and intellectual development. Can you imagine “The Handmaid’s Tale” with the “sex acts” removed? It would tend to blunt the message.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/19/2200356/-Iowa-s-new-book-banning-law-just-blasted-tons-of-great-titles-from-the-canon?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/