![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Banned.jpg\")
A book store display shows off frequently banned works of literature. Credit: Shutterstock \/ MKPhoto12<\/p>\nA book store display shows off frequently banned works of literature. Credit: Shutterstock \/ MKPhoto12<\/p>\n
Bad Takes is a column of opinion and analysis. <\/p>\n
With October already\u00a0here and the baseball\u00a0postseason underway, I\u00a0encourage everyone so\u00a0inclined to revisit the 1989 classic\u00a0Field\u00a0of Dreams.<\/p>\n
In that film, Kevin Costner plays a\u00a030-something husband and father who\u00a0\u201cmajored in the \u201960s\u201d before pulling\u00a0up stakes for Iowa to try his hand at\u00a0farming. One day he hears an ASMR\u00a0call of conscience amidst the rustling\u00a0corn stalks.\u00a0\u201c<\/p>\n
If you build it, they will come,\u201d The\u00a0Voice whispers, compelling him to\u00a0plough under his own crop to clear way\u00a0for a baseball field.<\/p>\n
If only a similarly trustworthy deity\u00a0could guarantee the return on investment of San Antonio\u2019s new Missions\u00a0stadium as well as Project Marvel<\/a>. <\/p>\n But,\u00a0alas, life ain\u2019t like the movies.<\/p>\n Assuming it\u2019s been a minute since\u00a0you scoured Blockbuster for VHS tapes<\/a>,\u00a0you may have forgotten one of the\u00a0film\u2019s sadly still-relevant subplots.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re talking about banning\u00a0books again,\u201d Amy Madigan, who plays\u00a0Costner\u2019s wife, informs him prior to a\u00a0PTA meeting that evening.\u00a0\u201cReally subversive books like\u00a0The Wizard of Oz and The Diary of Anne Frank,\u201d\u00a0she adds facetiously.<\/p>\n Cut to an irate mother screaming:\u00a0\u201cSmut and filth like this has no place in\u00a0our schools!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMrs Perkins, the book you\u2019re waving\u00a0about is hardly smut,\u201d the principal\u00a0patiently explains. \u201cTerence Mann is\u00a0a Pulitzer Prize-winner and widely regarded as the finest satirist of his time.\u201d<\/p>\n Mann, played by James Earl Jones,\u00a0was a fictional author based on the\u00a0reclusive J.D. Salinger, also a baseball\u00a0lover. Turns out Salinger threatened to\u00a0sue the production to prevent the use\u00a0of his name.<\/p>\n \u201cThe so-called novels of Terence Mann\u00a0endorse promiscuity, godlessness, the\u00a0mongrelization of races and disrespect\u00a0to high-ranking officers of the U.S.\u00a0Army,\u201d the implacable parent expounds.\u00a0\u201cAnd that\u2019s why right-thinking school\u00a0boards all across the country have been\u00a0banning this man\u2019s S-H-I-T since 1969!\u201d<\/p>\n After Madigan\u2019s character, Annie,\u00a0confronts the would-be censor, she\u00a0turns her attention to those attending\u00a0the meeting.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s put it to a vote, alright?\u201d Annie\u00a0asks them. \u201cWho\u2019s for Eva Braun here?\u00a0Who wants to burn books? Who wants\u00a0to spit on the Constitution? Anybody?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n No hands go up. <\/p>\n \u201cNow, who\u2019s for the Bill of Rights?\u00a0Who thinks freedom is a pretty darn\u00a0good thing? C\u2019mon, c\u2019mon, let\u2019s see\u00a0those hands! Who thinks that we have\u00a0to stand up to the kind of censorship\u00a0that they had under Stalin?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n A cornfield of hands shoot up.Upon leaving the gymnasium, an\u00a0exhilarated Annie brags to her husband,\u00a0\u201cI just halted the spread of neo-fascism\u00a0in America!\u201d<\/p>\n Fast-forward three decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe Iowa state government passed\u00a0a book-ban law that was so vaguely\u00a0drafted, it left many schools confused\u00a0whether any books were allowed anymore,\u201d Cody Johnston of podcast\u00a0Some\u00a0More News reported this August<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThen, a lawsuit blocked the law\u00a0from taking effect, but then a follow-up\u00a0appellate case reinstated the law less\u00a0than a year later. And in those various\u00a0stages of limbo, Iowa\u2019s librarians had to\u00a0unshelve or reshelve and re-unshelve all\u00a0of their copies of more than 3,400 titles.\u201d<\/p>\n The deterrent of legal bedlam seems to have been the point.\u00a0There have been \u201cnearly 16,000 book\u00a0bans in public schools nationwide since\u00a02021, a number not seen since the Red\u00a0Scare McCarthy era of the 1950s,\u201d according to the most recent list compiled by\u00a0free-expression nonprofit PEN America<\/a>.<\/p>\n Texas plays second fiddle to nobody\u00a0on this tune.\u00a0<\/p>\n A \u201ccompassionate conservative\u201d-era\u00a0Republican turned diehard culture warrior, Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill\u00a013<\/a> this summer, which warned boards of\u00a0trustees to create an \u201cadvisory council\u00a0to assist in ensuring that local community values are reflected in each school\u00a0library catalog.\u201d The legislation also demands the removal of any material that\u00a0\u201cportrays sexual or excretory organs or\u00a0activities in a way that is patently offensive\u201d or that includes \u201cgrossly offensive\u00a0language considered a public nuisance.\u201d<\/p>\n Will the newly appointed tribal elders\u00a0ban biographies of the current president,\u00a0given his penchant for grossly offensive\u00a0language and his status as reigning\u00a0public nuisance? Might they remove the\u00a0Holy Bible upon reading Ezekiel 23:20<\/a>,\u00a0which graphically depicts an adulteress\u00a0who \u201clusts after her lovers, whose genitals\u00a0were like those of donkeys and whose\u00a0emission was like that of horses?\u201d<\/p>\n Even the stodgy ol\u2019 Supreme Court\u00a0has repeatedly held that judging books\u00a0as obscene requires interpreting the\u00a0work \u201ctaken as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet self-deputized smut hunters continue to recite off-color excerpts<\/a> from\u00a0award-winning literature as if that\u00a0were proof positive.\u201c<\/p>\n Whether donated or purchased, all\u00a0library books must now be publicly\u00a0listed for at least 30 days before the\u00a0school board can approve them, and the\u00a0board must approve all library material\u00a0acquisitions,\u201d according to the Texas\u00a0Association of School Boards\u2019 website.<\/p>\n That means school boards terrified\u00a0of religiously motivated blowback, not\u00a0the professional librarians<\/a> traditionally\u00a0entrusted with the job.<\/p>\n Although Field of Dreams dramatized\u00a0a genuine groundswell of parental\u00a0concern, data compiled last year by the\u00a0American Library Association<\/a> (ALA)\u00a0found that 72% of book censorship attempts originate from pressure groups,\u00a0politicians or administrators. A mere\u00a016% came from parents themselves.\u00a0Indeed, 60% of the challenges in the\u00a02021-22 school year were submitted by\u00a0just 11 people<\/a>.<\/p>\n All of this sets this year\u2019s Banned\u00a0Books Week, Oct. 5-11, apart as uniquely\u00a0poignant. The ALA chose the theme\u00a0\u201cCensorship Is So 1984.\u201d<\/p>\n In the Before Times, March 2016, journalist Glenn Greenwald sat down with\u00a0public intellectual Noam Chomsky and\u00a0exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden\u00a0to confess he had \u201cmisremembered\u201d\u00a0George Orwell\u2019s dystopian masterpiece.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cI remembered the warning of Orwell\u00a0being, \u2018If you live in a society where\u00a0you\u2019re always being watched, that\u2019s\u00a0when you lose freedom\u2019,\u201d Greenwald\u00a0explained<\/a>. \u201cBut I actually went back\u00a0and read it [for the first time since high\u00a0school], and the world that Orwell was\u00a0warning of was not one in which we\u00a0were all being watched, it was a world\u00a0in which we\u00a0could be watched at any\u00a0moment. What you knew is you had to\u00a0act as though you were being watched,\u00a0which meant \u2026 obediently, compliantly,\u00a0submissively and without dissent.\u201d<\/p>\n And self-censorship risks atrophying\u00a0the literacy muscles altogether.<\/p>\n In 2023, only 16% of Americans age\u00a015 and up imbibed books for pleasure\u00a0daily, according to a study in the journal\u00a0iScience<\/a>. That compares to 28% in 2003.<\/p>\n Before the censorial Moms For Liberty,\u00a0there were the Minute Women of the\u00a0USA. In 1953, a San Antonian named\u00a0Myrtle Hance \u201ccombed through the\u00a0books available at the [city\u2019s public\u00a0library] and declared 500 books to contain communist materials,\u201d in the words\u00a0of historian Madison Ingram\u2019s recent Los\u00a0Angeles Times op-ed<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The wife of San Antonio\u2019s then-mayor\u00a0\u201cdemanded that each book be branded\u00a0with a large red sticker, so that readers\u00a0would know they were \u2018dangerous.\u2019 Another city official went further, calling for the\u00a0books Hance singled out to be burned.\u201d<\/p>\n Now for the Hollywood-worthy\u00a0all-American conclusion.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt was the chief librarian who stood\u00a0in the way,\u201d historian Ingram pointed\u00a0out in the op-ed. \u201cJulia Grothaus, who\u2019d\u00a0served in her position for two decades,\u00a0rallied the support of local writers,\u00a0journalists and civic organizations; the\u00a0Public Library Board of Trustees refused\u00a0to go along with the mayor\u2019s call for her\u00a0resignation. Only because of her defiance, the books in San Antonio were not\u00a0labeled or burned.\u201d<\/p>\n If that doesn\u2019t inspire you to go get\u00a0yourself a library card<\/a> and start reading<\/a>,\u00a0good luck waiting for a voice only you\u00a0and James Earl Jones can hear.<\/p>\n Subscribe to SA Current newsletters.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Follow us:\u00a0Apple News<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Google News<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0NewsBreak<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Reddit<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Instagram<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Facebook\u00a0<\/a>| Twitter<\/a>\u00a0| Or sign up for our\u00a0RSS Feed<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Related Stories<\/p>\n
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