If It Looks Like Ignorance, Quacks Like Ignorance...It's Probably Political

First things first:  Sorry, Mike, no picnics or new-mown lawns again this week.  There's other stuff that has my attention, so you might want to stop reading now.  I still love you, though.

You may have heard of this issue, as it's been featured on "neutral" news, as well as lots of right wing media.  An old (duration, not age, and let's just go along with the idea that it can be the one but not the other, shan't we?)) friend of mine is at the center of a firestorm about a book.  It's sort of hard to believe that that's true in 2014 but, human nature being what it is, it'll be true in 3014, for the 18 people still living above the rising seas and below the near-constant tornadoes.

The book in question this time is Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes, which is concerned primarily with bullying in various forms, which ultimately culminates in a shooting at a school.  Seems like that's about as timely, topical and important as it gets these days, and would spark valuable and necessary conversations among the population that most needs to have them and is most directly affected by the book's subject matter: students.

The problem with this particular book, in some people's eyes, is that it contains a fairly graphic scene depicting a rape.  The main bully in the book forces himself on his girlfriend in this particular scene, and while they have had consensual sex in the past, this scene clearly is about something else; it's about force, domination of the powerful over the less-so, and goes to the heart of the book's theme.  Without it, the climax of the novel (no pun intended) would make little sense.  Additionally, the novel is 468 pages long; this particular scene is 5 brief  paragraphs, about 2/3 of one page.  One may be reminded of the quote, often attributed to Jack Nicholson, about movie ratings:  "If you suck a tit you get an 'X' rating, but cut one off with a sword and you're 'PG-13.'"  One assumes that, if the book had solely depicted non-sexual violence, no matter how extreme, the protesting parents wouldn't have made a peep.

And about those parents:  interestingly enough, many, if not most, of the most vocal are members of the "Free State"  movement, a conservative/libertarian group whose avowed intent is to choose a state it sees as susceptible to their propaganda and political aims, and become the dominant force in its government, in a sort of bloodless (hopefully) coup.  The main parental complainant, the one who was arrested at the special meeting to discuss the issue, in fact, just recently moved to New Hampshire from New Jersey, a move allegedly paid for by the Free Staters, who are known to recruit new members in that manner.  In fact, although school officials have been deluged with letters and emails from partisans on both sides of the issue,  very, very few are from the town the school's located in.  The vast majority come from all over the country, indeed from around the world, from people who know nothing of the matter except that their comrades in arms need their support.  Seems the issue here is not morality, but politics.  As Tip O'Neill said, "All politics is local;"  it's just that today, in the global village, it's pretty hard to say exactly what "local" is.

Chillingly, too, there has been a request made to the school district under the Freedom Of Information Act (a law enacted by that awful Federal Government that people of that ilk hate/don't recognize except when they can benefit from it) for all emails, lesson plans, any communication about Nineteen Minutes, dating back to 2007, the first year the book was taught in the school.  Never before was there any sort of problem raised about the use of the book.  Sure seems like they want to shut some people up while they impose their own beliefs on the majority. 

I'd be willing to bet that fewer than 5% of those parents so incensed have read the book except, of course, for that awful page 313.  One of the protestors at the meeting brought a Bible, from which he intended to read as a contrast to Nineteen Minutes; unfortunately (!?) he went on too long on other things like telling folks there which of them was going to Hell.  Wonder if he was gonna read Song Of Songs?  Must be that the Word of God cannot, by definition, be salacious or sexual....

This is not the only recent example of a vocal conservative minority trying to impose their pedagogical will on a school:  in Idaho (another state high on the FSers list of potential states to take over, before NH "won"), a group of parents recently succeeded in getting Sherman Alexie and Ellen Forney's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian removed from their school district's curriculum because they found it "anti-Christian" and "because it contains offensive words and a 'reference to masturbation'" (The Week, "Only In America," May 9, 2014).  Apparently masturbation would never occur to 15 year olds in Idaho if they weren't alerted to its existence by a book, natural biological urges be damned--as they so often are.

So we can't even discuss regulation or modification of guns (have you heard of the new "smart guns?"  The NRA has, and hates 'em.  Yep, the NRA is against some guns.  Careful, gang, that's a slippery slope; next you'll be wanting to ban all guns), but, as has so often been the case throughout history, people can advocate the banning and burning of books without a second--or first, really--thought.  They'll tell you that the first step in a Totalitarian Takeover is the confiscation of people's guns; I think that it's been shown, time after time, that the first thing they come for is our books, magazines, newspapers, thus proving Edward Bulwer-Lytton's(!) famous dictum that "The pen is mightier than the sword."

Let's get to the playlist for this week's show on WOOL FM, 91.5, wool.fm, on Tuesday from noon till two, though, okey-doke?  The playlist choices:

Book Ends                                                                          Joe Walsh
Book Faded Brown                                                            The Band
The Book I Read                                                                 Talking Heads
Book Of Liars                                                                     Walter Becker
The Book Of Love                                                              The Magnetic Fields
Book Of Love                                                                     The Monotones
Book Of Rules                                                                     The Heptones
Bookends Theme                                                                 Simon & Garfunkel
Bookworm                                                                           Margot & The Nuclear So And So's
Can't Judge A Book By Its Cover                                       The Harpoonist And Axe Murderer
Every Day I Write The Book                                               Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Good Book                                                                           Melanie
Green Book                                                                          Steely Dan
Heart Like An Open Book                                                   Michael Franks                                                             
In My New Book                                                                  Greg Brown
Jungle Book                                                                          Weather Report
Matchbook                                                                            Ralph Towner And Gary Burton
My Little Brown Book                                                         Duke Ellington & John Coltrane
My Little Red Book                                                              Love
Open Book                                                                            Cake
Picture Book                                                                         Simply Red
When I Write The Book                                                        Nick Lowe
You Should Have Wrote A Book                                          Dan Reeder
Political                                                                                  Mark Germino
Political World                                                                       Bob Dylan
Oliver's Army                                                                        Elvis Costello & The Attractions

For further reading, Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, and anything about the Free Staters.
Now those words will fuck with your head.