the 2022 law to require schools to remove all material that “contains nudity, or descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement, sexual conduct, excess violence, or sadomasochistic abuse…is not appropriate for the age or maturity level of a student in any of the grades kindergarten through twelve…or is patently offensive…or appeals to the prurient interest.”
So the bible had been banned too, right? Right?
It was, that’s why the “Trump Bible” became a thing. 55,000 bibles they sifted through, only 2 fit the requirements. One was $60 and the other was $90, both had kick backs to Trump One of the requirements was that it was leather bound, of leather like durability.
Note: thousands of copies of the Bible are available for free online, which being that they aren’t leather bound, not allowed. So they were going to buy a shit ton of copies of bibles made in China to give kick backs to Trump, intentionally. When it hit the headlines they went back and tried to modify the requirements to allow other Bibles to fit.
There are a ton of bibles aimed at children out there, it was a clear money grab grift.
It wasn’t just that, IIRC, the issue was that it had to be leather bound, with copies of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence (or something like that). The combination of all the requirements meant that only the Trump Bible met all the criteria.
While the decision to stop publishing the six books was made by Dr. Seuss Enterprises, right-wing outlets like Fox News mischaracterized it as a book ban.
Unsurprisingly, it has actually been Republican-backed laws like Tennessee’s that have resulted in the banning of Dr. Seuss books from schools.
And that’s the way it works pretty much without exception - private individuals and businesses and such make independent decisions and the Republicans scream that they’re being oppressed, then they pass laws in the name of freedom.
Even with as insane as the Republican agenda is, and as deluded as their supporters necessarily must be, that particular aspect of it really stands out to me. It’s just so perfectly Orwellian.
Y’all remember like 2 years ago when they claimed the left was banning Dr Seuss books right?
Wait, why would the response to the “woke left” cancelling Dr Seuss be to… Cancel his book?
Help me try to understand.
Ah, see you made a mistake in step one by expecting Republicans to use logic.
Basically the timeline near as I can tell is, first the publishing company decided to stop printing and distributing a number of books. This was their own internal decision not prompted by anyone outside the company. Second Fox News invented a story from whole cloth about “the woke left” banning those books. This of course got all the talibangicals in a lather and so they decided to “retaliate” by banning “woke” books. The fatal flaw of course being that they can’t actually define what “woke” is so that just flailed randomly against some minority groups. Because of the broad and ambiguous language they inevitably ended up banning a bunch of Dr. Seuss books.
Said another way:
MAGA used *ism against The Woke.
MAGA is confused.
MAGA hurt itself in its confusion.
Two separate issues with different Seuss books.
IIRC Dr. Seuss was “canceled” because one of his books (And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street) contained a racist caricature of Asian people. And apparently a few others, according to the article, for similar reasons. But these books weren’t banned per se, the publisher voluntarily opted to stop printing them.
The book in this article (Wacky Wednesday) is being banned from public schools in Tennessee because it contains an illustration of a kid’s naked butt, which does violate a Republican-drafted law for content inappropriate for children.
It wasn’t even canceled. His estate pulled the books themselves, 6 of them. If I find something I said earlier in life I don’t agree with (extremely easy because I used to be religious and in a cult, now neither) then have I been canceled by the radical left? (I mean, I am far more left, but not sure I qualify for radical).
I always did find it strange for a child’s bottom to be displayed on sun lotion bottles, but I wonder if that got banned as well? Can’t remember the brand, but if I remember correctly it was a child on the beach covered in a towel and a puppy or something was pulling it away from them. It was around for years.
The brand was Coppertone. They seem to have changed the girl’s suit to a onepiece that stretches without revealing anything.
