Wrapping up Banned Books Week...

Brave New World was removed from classroom in Miller, MO (1980), because it made promiscuous sex "look like fun."

Open thread below...

Happy Banned Books Week, everyone. Shown above is the children's book, "Daddy's Roommate," which allegedly raised the concerns of a mayor in Wasilla, Alaska a while back.

Open thread below...

Happy Banned Books Week. Perhaps it's not necessary to say to this particular crowd, that Catcher in the Rye has been banned a time or two. Oh, and I love the Nerdfighters.

Open thread below...

Happy Banned Books Week. This news item from last year's commemoration.

Fahrenheit 451 is the most recent selection in the NEA's "The Big Read" national reading celebration.

Open thread below...

(Guest blogged by NonnyMouse)

It probably comes as no surprise to regular C&L readers to learn that I grew up in a liberal-minded household; although at the time, being a kid, I didn't especially realize just how liberal such attitudes were. Our house was filled with books, magazines and newspapers, everything from a revered set of encyclopedias (the Google of the 1960's) to stacks of ratty romance paperbacks. We had at least forty years worth of National Geographic magazines, from which I gleaned juicy facts for hundreds of school reports. I learned to read from Humpty-Dumpty magazines at the age of three and had read Ivanhoe by the time I was seven, although I have to admit I didn't understand much of it at the time.

It didn't matter. What mattered was that nothing... nothing... was off-limits in our house when it came to the written word. I read Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde and the complete works of Jonathan Swift, the back of cereal boxes, A Little Princess and Mein Kampf and Uncle Tom's Cabin and Black Beauty, Dr. Seuss and Archie comics, a huge box of pulp science-fiction novels from a garage sale, Jehovah's Witness Biblical tracts that got shoved in the letterbox, the perpetual Cherry Ames, Army Nurse novels my grandmother inevitably sent us every Christmas, every book ever written by Philip Wylie, several year's worth of a wonderful science magazine for teens to which my Aunt Ruth gave me a subscription (‘Build a Working Computer from Empty Matchboxes!), until the magazine went bust and folded. The written word, from high-brow to no-brow, was sacrosanct.

That liberal attitude toward the freedom of the written word was severely tested when at twelve I found a rather dog-eared paperback tucked behind some cans of paint in the garage - my father did a rather comical (and horrified) double-take when he found me lying on the sofa, legs dangling over one side, and puzzling over the nuances of what was an out-and-out hardcore pornographic novel. He nervously asked if I had any questions about what I was reading. ‘Do people really do this?' Um, sometimes. ‘Yuuuck! But you and Mom, you don't...?' Um, sometimes. ‘Double yuuuuuck!' Which probably did more to ease my dad's mind about my prepubescent proclivities than any euphemistic harangue on sex could ever have achieved. (My vast childhood reading habits also endowed me with this nifty erudite and comprehensive vocabulary, which comes in pretty handy now that I've grown up to be a published novelist).

So the idea that books, any book, should be banned - for any reason - is a complete anathema. Fahrenheit 451 is fiction. Censorship, unfortunately, is not.

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Happy Banned Books Week, everyone. The most challenged book of 2007 is And Tango Makes Three, a children's book based on a true story of two male penguins in the Central Park Zoo who raised a female penguin chick. Among other challenges, a resident of Lodi, California, objected to the book's presence in the public library because of its "homosexual story line that has been sugarcoated with cute penguins."

Open Thread below...

The Paulson bailout proposal is a historic swindle. It provides the most help to the financial institutions that made the worst investment decisions, ignores relief to homeowners, and fails to limit CEO compensation. BUSHCO needs to explain why this is supposed to work - not try to steamroll Congress into giving it a blank check. Whatever happens, the crisis marks the death of Republican philosophy. I already contacted my representatives.

one good move: Sub-Prime Mortgages Explained

Happy Valley News Hour: Things that have NOT gone wrong during the Bush administration

TalkLeft: People of Alaska! When did the McCain campaign take over the governor's office?

The Opinion Mill's Weekend Bookchat: Dick Cheney goes fishing for power, the Financial Times goes fishing for great business books and a writer goes fishing for Doctor Who's secrets. And what's Neal Stephenson playing these days?

While we're on the subject of books, the Vagabond Scholar wants to remind all filthy book-lovers and subversive Biblio-Americans that September 27th starts Banned Books Week (and the National Book Festival). Any and all bloggers are invited to a *very* informal blogswarm on favorite books, favorite banned books, influential teachers, intellectual freedom and that good stuff.

Martini Republic: Exclusive--National Intelligence Estimate (as redacted) supports Bush on Iraq!

Senate Majority Project: GOP obstructionism on Iraq and terrorism

newsrack blog: Why don't we hear Muslims condemning terrorism more often ? Because we keep them out of the country.

The Reality-Based Community: Lies, secrets, and torture

Needlenose: The language of Democratic realignment

Grab Bag: Help defeat lying war flogger Nancy Johnson...and help Jack Murtha and his friends kick some lying SwiftBoat wannabe ass...another Rethug troll is caught astroturfing a liberal blog...this is Banned Books Week...The Lincoln Group has been awarded a new government contract for doing the "same exact thing Lincoln got caught doing last year."... Boxer and Dodd to introduce paper ballot legislation...our estimable colleague, Taylor Marsh, is broadcasting live Monday thru Thursday...and some more miscellany

How is this format for MBR working out? Are you clicking through?

Banned Books Week...Along with torturing POWs, imprisoning citizens indefinitely without a trial, and other outrages too numerous to mention, America also bans books. {hat tip to Blue Gal

The Sappho Manifesto: Quote of the Day

Of Cabbages and Kings: Homo neanderthalensis...Where's H. L. Mencken when you need him?

**Attytood: Cheney: Lies about the big stuff, lies about the small stuff

**Petty Larseny: ABC News: Even-Handed and Wrong

**Tristram Smacks Down Simon

Attytood: Cheney: Lies about the big stuff, lies about the small stuff

Petty Larseny: ABC News: Even-Handed and Wrong

Tristram Smacks Down Simon