The unforgiving minute: There are those who see education as a pie fight

– and believe the winner is the one who makes it all the way to graduation without getting any custard on their jacket.

The 2006 graphic novel, an autobiographical work about Bechdel coming to terms with her homosexuality as her funeral-director father remains closeted, was selected as a summer reading book for the Duke Class of 2019. But some students declined to read it because of its sexual themes and use of nudity.

"I feel as if I would have to compromise my personal Christian moral beliefs to read it," incoming freshman Brian Grasso wrote on Facebook, according to the Duke Chronicle.

Yup. No custard's going to get on that young fellow.

Minute's up.

Saturday afternoon tunes: Wrapping Banned Books Week with something brimming with redeeming social importance

We proudly wrap up Banned Books Week 2014 with the official anthem of celebration for the event here at p3.

Tom Lehrer, of the p3 pantheon of gods, recorded this song live and released it in 1965 as part of his "That Was The Year That Was" album.

There's something vaguely ironic about the idea that, two years later, he would perform it live in – of all places – Copenhagen, which enjoyed the dubious reputation in the American imagination of the time as the world capital of pornography. There's an oddish introduction to this performance, different from the near-canonical one on the 1965 album, in which he explains the concept of "prurient" to his amused but somewhat bemused Danish audience.

Strictly speaking, "redeeming social importance" and "prurient interest" are two of the three criteria codified by the Supreme Court in 1973 (the so-called "Miller Test") for determining whether a work is obscene, the third being whether the work is "patently offensive." A work must "fail" all three parts of the test before First Amendment protection is withdrawn from it (if it is not judged obscene, it may still be pornography, but it's protected, unless it's child pornography, in which case no, still not protected). The "prurient" test, by the way, is specifically a test of whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find the work appealing to prurient interest – which is why it's not surprising that it was in the Bible Belt city of Cincinnati, with all that entailed regarding its contemporary community standards, that Larry Flynt and Robert Mapplethorpe found themselves on trial back in the day.

(My own brush with obscenity – or, more precisely, with "obscenity" – as a lad is recounted here.)

And without further ado:

Of course most banned and challenged books in public libraries today don't come within a country mile of any part of the Miller Test. They just excited someone's impulse to control what someone else is allowed to see.

And remember: Banned Books Week – celebrating the right to read – isn't really over until we say it's over.

Banned Books Week continues: Time to start thinking about 2015, I guess

Well, I'm feeling a little let down by my local public library, although I'm usually pretty proud of them. 

The folks working downstairs didn't know if there was a Banned Books Week display but thought it might be upstairs. The people upstairs didn't know where it was but thought it might be downstairs. And none of them knew where the "I Read Banned Books" buttons were. Thinking back on the whole thing, I'm not one hundred percent certain that everyone I spoke to knew that it was Banned Books Week.

Which is odd. It's a little like asking around at the local Catholic church and discovering that not everyone realized it was Easter week. At a public library, the week celebrating the freedom to read should be the high holy days.

Given that this year's theme is graphic novels and comics, it occurred to me that I might find something in the Young Adults section. Sure enough, this sort of forlorn thing was tucked a corner. 

(Note that there don't appear to be any graphic novels on display, so I fear the choice of locations might have had less to do with targeting likely readers than with finding available space where it wouldn't block traffic by being, you know, noticeable.) You can see a little blue bowl on the third shelf down, next to the small book-sized sign announcing Banned Books Week; the bowl had four buttons in it. I took two because I know I'll find someone to wear them and otherwise they might still be in that bowl at the end of the week.

The library did have two large and prominently located displays: one for National Recovery Month and one featuring Scottish fiction and nonfiction, the latter presumably tied into the independence referendum there (which happened last week). Both are worthy topics, but you'd think a public library would be front and center on an event sponsored by the American Library Association, celebrating the freedom to read.

Disappointed, Beaverton City Library.

It's to late for anything to be changed this week, of course. I guess I'll need to start nudging them myself well in advance for next year. Maybe they can use an overeducated volunteer to help get things going.

Meanwhile, how is the library in your neighborhood celebrating Banned Books Week?

Banned Books Week in Oregon: Know your banned comics and graphic novels!

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund – which is every bit as cool an operation as you're no doubt imagining – has produced a great handbook to support this year's Banned Books Week focus on comics and graphic novels.

The 16-page PDF document lists how and why comics and graphic novels have faced attack – by challenge and in some cases outright banning – in public and school libraries, as well as a list of some of the most frequently-attacked comics and graphic novels. 

It also spells out the ways in which you can get involved to protect the freedom to read – which is what the whole thing is about. It's a great starting point.

Check it out.

And please join our Banned Books Week 2014 Read-Out to find out more about activities and resources for this week to enjoy audio or video readings from banned books, comic books, or graphic novels -- and, if you're so inclined (and we hope you are), to upload your own reading from your favorite banned book.

Sunday morning toons: We're back! And American conservatives temporarily like Mandela, now that he's dead.

And other ironies, including:

Andrew Snowden wasn't the Time person of the year. The Republicans have a way to make their candidates look like they don't hold women in utter contempt. And a presidential selfie infuriated the most narcissistic politicials and pundits in America.

Today's toons were selected, with exquisite care, from the week's offerings at McClatchy DC, Cartoon Movement, Go Comics, Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoons, About.com, and other fine sources.

p3 Picks of the week: Mike Luckovich, Jack Ohman, Clay Bennett. Steve Sack, Joel Pett, Gary Varvel, Ted Rall, Lisa Benson, Signe Wilkinson, Lee Judge, Steve Breen, Bill Day, Pat Bagley, Mario Piperni, Matt Wuerker, Jen Sorenson, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Stuart Carlson.

p3 Legion of Merit: Ben Sargent.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium (tie): Tony Auth and Jeff Danziger.

p3 World Toon Review: Kevin Kallaugher (UK), Ammer (Austria), Hagen (Norway), and Stavro (Lebanon).

Ann Telnaes pays tribute to an angry little man who can only stay relevant by making foolish historical analogies.

Mark Fiore celebrates the intermix of small government and the free market. Not.

Taiwan's Next Media Animation chronicles a man who gives a different spin to "cat burglar."

Here's a long-forgotten Edward Gorey work entitled The Pious Infant. Righteous adults are undoubtedly sprinting to their local school and public libraries to challenge it, even as we speak. We here at p3 couldn't be prouder.

One of the great injustices of 20th century cartooning was that Charles M. Shulz never owned the rights to his own characters: Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Snoopy, and the rest. The 91st anniversary of his birth was on November 26th, celebrated around the US by Met Life commercials – insurance companies being so popular and all, how could CMS have objected? – and now we have this (emphasis added):

Hold onto your footballs, people. Conservatives just bought Charlie Brown.

Of course, we already knew that despite his iconic status as the world's most famous loser, Charlie Brown -- aka "Chuck" aka That Round-Headed Kid -- has been selling everything from lunch boxes to life insurance for decades. But now the conservative publishing house Regnery, publishing home of profound thinkers like Newt Gingrich and Ann Coulter, has licensed him, along with the rest of the Peanuts troupe, for a planned "Little Patriot" series of books for children. Soon, Charlie Brown and his friends will be selling the right-wing agenda.

"Who better than Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Linus and the rest of the Peanuts gang to help teach children about what makes America strong?" reads a press release from Regnery's president, apparently too blinded by the cuteness of the cast to remember that Schulz's strip is mostly about unshakable anxiety and perpetual defeat. "We are delighted to be working with such a trusted and beloved brand."

Wow. "Trusted" and "beloved" are odd words to be used by the publishing house that brought you such "trusted" books as McCarthy and His Enemies and Unfit for Command, the mudslinging "exposé" of John Kerry from a Swift Boat veteran. And The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, sometimes referred to more simply as The Incorrect Guide to Science. Oh, and a book about the Clinton years that was described in The American Prospect as "paint[ing] images of Hillary Clinton hanging crack pipes on the White House Christmas tree."

No wonder the round-headed kid in the zig-zag sweater is so depressed.

And just to piss off conservatives, who loathed Nelson Mandela in the 1980s but want to cash in on his post-mortem popularity now by rediscovering their heretofore unmentioned admiration for him, here's a collection of memorial toons, via Comic Riffs.

Tom Tomorrow explores the true Republican meaning of . . . oh, you know.

Keith Knight salutes a man who was fundamentally an optimist.

Tom the Dancing Bug presents: Oh no, I said the phrase. Interesting factoid: On my Portland to Detroit flight last week, I sat next to someone with two things to say: (1) She and her husband would love to move to Portland to be with their children, but property values in Detroit were in the tank so even if they sold their house they would have to live in a camper van here, and (2) even though her employer made workers say "Happy Holidays" [Made you say it? Seriously? I asked. Yes, she insisted.], she said "Merry Christmas" to her customers/clients anyway, apparently just to stick it to The Man.

Red Meat's Karen and Milkman Dan have the smackdown you've been waiting for.

The Comic Curmudgeon studies the economic basis of feudalism.

Comic Strip of the Day takes the Stuart Carlson toon above and runs with it.

Oh, Santa – this is embarraskin'! With today's animated feature, I reassert the p3 theory that the relationship between Olive and Popeye would be so much simpler if Olive didn't keep her windows open (in December!) so Bluto couldn't hear what they were up to and hatch his evil plots. Still, "Mister and Mistletoe" (directed in 1955 for Famous Studios by longtime Popeye director Izzy Sparber, with musical direction by Winston Sharples, who understudied with the great Sammy Timberg during the golden age of Fleischer Studios, and uncredited voice work by Mae Questel as The Slender One, Jason Beck as the rhyming Bluto, and Jack Mercer as Popeye – who also gets story credit) has its moments, including the vaguely homoerotic moments between the Spinach-Eating Sailor and the Jolly Old Elf. Also notice that there are three nephews this time – not two, not four – who never ask what Bluto's doing in his long underwear sitting by the tree. Makes you wonder what they're used to seeing around the house.

The Big, But Could Be Bigger, Oregon Toon Block:

Matt Bors regrets: They came for the corporations, but he wasn't a corporation, so. . . .

Jesse Springer is proud to memorialize the suspension Pharoh Brown from Oregon's Alamo Bowl appearance for his participation in an incident where students involved an unwilling (retired) UO professor in a snowball fight.

Test your toon captioning kung fu at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)

Challenged books in Oregon: A belated round-up from 2011 - 2012

Here's an embarrassing bit of editorial screw-uppery:

Last September, for Banned Book Week 2012, I tracked down the 28 challenged books, videos, and newspaper articles (!) for the previous year. (Challenging a book is the first step to banning it.)

Somehow, I never managed to hit Send, so it's been sitting there in the hopper for slightly over twelve months , waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting. . . .

Sigh. Well, one of the principles we hold strongly to here at p3 is that Banned Book Week isn't over until we say it's over. So without further ado, here's the list. (This year's Oregon list is here, and I'm happy to report it's a lot shorter.)



Background about the project:

Oregon Intellectual Freedom Clearinghouse 2012 Annual Report July 1, 2011—June 30, 2012

Goal:
The goal of the Oregon Intellectual Freedom Clearinghouse is to report on challenges to library materials in Oregon, and to provide information and resources needed by librarians to uphold the principles of intellectual freedom in their libraries. [...]

Summary of Challenges Reported in 2010-2011: The Oregon Intellectual Freedom Clearinghouse received reports on 28 challenges to library material; challenge reports were received from eight public libraries and one school library. Of the 28 challenges, 20 of the items were books, 7 were movies, and 1 was a newspaper article. Twenty-six of the challenges were initiated by public library patrons, 7 of who self-identified as parents, one was challenged by a teacher, and one challenge was submitted by a school library staff person. All 28 of the challenged items were retained in the collection, one of which was reclassified from the teen to the adult section.

The challenged items below are organized alphabetically by title of the challenged item. Each challenged item went through a review process by their respective library’s board of trustees, library board, selection committee, or committee of staff members. Review processes typically are adopted procedures by which a reviewing body reads or views challenged material, collects information about the material, and makes a decision about the challenged material. Generally, the library director writes a letter to the party who has challenged the material informing them of the decision, and explaining the appeals process.

Pay particular attention to the Objections and Comments (links to the original challenged materials are in the pdf link above):

Charming Hotels & Resorts of Italy & Beyond by Julie Tither (book)
Objection: Other
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Patron concerned that item is marketing material for one company rather than an objective trip planning guide.

Daniel & Ana by Fortissimo Films (movie)
Objection: 1. Sexual (nudity, sexually explicit) 2. Values (violence)
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: None

Dogtooth (Kynodontas) by Boo Productions (movie)
Objection: Sexual (nudity, sexually explicit)
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: None

Dreams of Significant Girls by Cristina Garcia (book)
Objection: 1. Sexual (nudity, sexually explicit) 2. Social issues (drugs, suicide)
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Patron concerned that item promotes wrongdoing and provides teen girls with negative role models.

Dumb Bunnies Go to the Zoo, The by Dav Pilkey (book)
Objection: Other
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Patron concerned that reading this item may result in confusion and stupidity.

Evermore by Alyson Noel (book)
Objection: 1. Values (violence) 2. Other
Initiator of the challenge: Parent
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Parent concerned about dark and graphic content. Requested item be relocated from the teen section to the adult section.

Fantastic Mr. Fox by Twentieth Century Fox (movie)
Objection: Other
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Patron concerned that item may scare children and that the humor is not appropriate for every child and family. Requested item be relocated from the children’s section to the adult section and labeled ‘dark comedy’.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” -First Amendment to the United States Constitution

Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability, The by Laura Kipnis (book)
Objection: Sexual (sexually explicit)
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Patron objected to the image on the cover of the item. Requested that it and other items with similar cover images not be displayed.

Fox All Week by Edward Marshall (book) Objection: Other
Initiator of the challenge: Parent
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Parent concerned this beginning reader, which includes characters that smoke and lie, does not have a strong message against those behaviors.

Good Girl, The by Fox Searchlight Pictures (moive)
Objection: 1. Sexual (nudity, sexually explicit) 2. Values (anti-family) 3. Social issues (suicide)
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: None

Grave History and Telling Walks in North Portland, A (article in St. Johns Review; Vol. 108-No. 21) Jim Speirs (newspaper)
Objection: Cultural (racism, offensive language)
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Patron concerned that reading this article will lead people to believe the community is racist. Requested this particular issue be removed from the library and that all future issues be reviewed more carefully prior to making them available to patrons.

Growing Up Nigger Rich: A Novel by Gwendoline Y. Fortune (book)
Objection: 1. Culture (racism) 2. Values (offensive language)
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Patron concerned that the title is racist and offensive.
"One man's vulgarity is another's lyric." -John Marshall Harlan, Supreme Court Justice

Iktomi and the Berries : A Plains Indian Story by Paul Goble (book)
Objection: 1. Cultural (anti-ethnic) 2. Values (violence)
Initiator of the challenge: Parent
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Parent concerned item is not culturally appropriate for Native Americans and that suicide is not age appropriate for young children. Requested item be relocated from the young children’s picture book section to the juvenile section for older children.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill (graphic novel)
Objection: Sexual (unsuited to age)
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Relocated
Comments: Item was relocated from the teen section to the adult section.

Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse: Stories, The by Lonely Christopher (book)
Objection: Sexual (homosexuality, sexually explicit)
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Patron concerned because item came up while searching the catalog for ‘Pokemon’ materials and requested the library remove ‘Pokemon’ as one of the keywords for the item. One short story within the book is titled ‘The Pokemon Movie’ so library did not remove ‘Pokemon’ as a keyword. Library instructed patron how to limit searches to children’s material.

Mother Number Zero by Marjolijn Hof (book)
Objection: 1. Sexual (unsuited to age) 2. Values (offensive language)
Initiator of the challenge: Parent
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: None

Nurse Jackie by Showtime Networks Inc. (television show)
Objection: 1. Cultural (insensitivity) 2. Sexual (sexually explicit) 3. Values (offensive language) 4. Social issues (drugs)
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: None

Oscar and the Very Hungry Dragon by Ute Krause (book)
Objection: Other
Initiator of the challenge: Teacher
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Teacher concerned item promotes overeating and patterning behavior.


Robopocalypse: A Novel by Daniel H. Wilson (book)
Objection: Values (offensive language)
Initiator of the challenge: Parent
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: None

Rosario+Vampire by Akihisa Ikeda (graphic novel)
Objection: Sexual (nudity, sexually explicit, unsuited to age)
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Patron requested item be relocated from the teen section to the adult section.

Samantha on a Roll by Linda Ashman (book)
Objection: Other
Initiator of the challenge: Parent
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Parent concerned that item encourages children to misbehave, engage in dangerous activities, and not mind their parents and that item portrays parents negatively.

Secrets of Boys, The (and all other titles by this author) by Hailey Abbott (book)
Objection: 1. Sexual (sexually explicit, unsuited to age) 2. Social issues (drugs)
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Patron concerned items promotes sexual activity, smoking, drinking, taking drugs, and other high-risk behaviors for teens. Requested items be removed and that the library take steps to ban them completely.
“For it has been rightly judged that… it is of paramount importance that the means of general information should be so diffused that the largest possible number of persons should be induced to read and understand questions going down to the very foundations of social order, which are constantly presenting themselves, and which we, as a people, are constantly required to decide, and do decide, either ignorantly or wisely.” -1852 Report of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library.

Secret of Water: For the Children of the World, The by Masaru Emoto (book)
Objection: Other
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Patron concerned book is unscientific. Requested item be reclassified as fiction.

Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People by Amy Sedaris (book)
Objection: Sexual (sex education, unsuited to age)
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Patron concerned that two crafts promote sexual activity. Requested item be restricted to patrons 19 years and older.

Starfields by Carolyn Marsden (book)
Objection: Other
Initiator of the challenge: Parent
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Parent concerned item may be too dark and disturbing for children. Requested item be relocated from the children’s section to the adult section.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno by The Weinstein Company (movie)
Objection: Sexual (sexually explicit, unsuited to age)
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: Patron requested item be restricted to patrons 18 years and older.

Zombie books by multiple authors (book)
Objection: Values (violence)
Initiator of the challenge: Library staff
Type of library: School
Decision: Retained
Comments: Library staff concerned that zombies are violent and inappropriate for elementary school age children. Request all books about zombies be removed from the library.

Zoo by Peggy Case (movie)
Objection: 1. Sexual (sexually explicit) 2. Other
Initiator of the challenge: Patron
Type of library: Public
Decision: Retained
Comments: None

Remember: If you are even remotely interested in looking at these materials, thank your local librarian.

Banned Book Week in Oregon continues: In which I actually do read banned books

Once a year I have my “Garbo speaks!” moment and make a video in which I read from a banned book.


I'm still at work finishing this year's video, but meanwhile, here's a a reading from a couple of years ago, and another one, featuring a much better haircut, from last year.

Watch this space for the 2013 edition.

And read banned books.  (Just like these people do.)

Banned Book week in Oregon continues: Oregon Library & School Challenges 2012 - 2013

Oregon libraries and schools saw 13 challenges in 2012 - 2013. Challenged materials included books, videos, audio materials, a calculus textbook, a student newspaper editorial, and in one case the library's internet policy. The material levels ranged from junior to young adult to adult.

Three challenged items were removed; nine were retained, sometimes with a change in access; and one case remains unresolved.


Girls' Life, edited by Karen Bokram.

Description: Intended for young teenage girls featuring beauty, fashion, dating, makeup, accessories, advice, star profiles, and quizzes.

Reason and Outcome: Challenged by a parent in a school district in 2012. Reason: sex education unsuited for age; drugs. School district removed it from elementary and middle school libraries.


Big Sixteen, by Mary Calhoun.

Description: Retelling of a black tall tale from slavery times based on versions anthologized by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps.

Reason and Outcome: Challenged by a parent in a public library in 2012. Reason: inappropriate for children's section. Relocated.


Practice Makes Perfect Precalculus, by Clark, William & Sandra Luna McCune.

Description: A guide and workbook covering the basics of precalculus.

Reason and Outcome: Challenged in a public library in 2012. Reason: incorrect answers and comments. Removed.


Dangerous, by Bill Hicks.

Description: First live CD album released by stand-up comedian and satirist Bill Hicks in 1990.

Reason and Outcome: Challenged in a public library in 2013. Reason: concern that item encourages and/or normalizes child pornography and sexual abuse. Retained.


Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James.

Description: The first installment in an erotic series that traces the deepening relationship between a college graduate, Anastasia Steele, and a young business magnate, Christian Grey.

Reason and Outcome: Challenged in an academic library in 2013. Reason: sexually explicit; against religious values; pornography. Retained & moved from browsing collection to the literature collection in the stacks.


The Tale of Three Storytellers, by James Krüss.

Description: Short story in a student anthology.

Reason and Outcome: Challenged by a parent in a school library in 2012. Reason: promotes Islam. Retained.


Sweet Movie, directed by Dušan Makavejev.

Description: The story of two women: a nearly mute beauty queen who descends into withdrawal and madness, and another who captains a ship laden with candy and sugar, luring men and boys aboard for sex, death, and revolutionary talk.

Reason and Outcome: Challenged in a public library in 2012. Reason: concern that it promotes child pornography. Retained.


Library Internet policy.

Description: Internet access.

Reason and Outcome: Challenged in a public library by clergy in 2013. Reason: lack of filtering on computers & wireless network. Library District Board voted to filter children's computers in children's room for "pornography."


The Furry Trap, by Josh Simmons.

Description: A graphic novel consisting of 11 short stories described as “skincrawling” terror.

Reason and Outcome: Challenged in 2012 in a public library; Reason: exposed children to graphic sexual violence. Outcome: Library agreed not to display this item in the future.


Zack and Miri Make a Porno, directed by Mike Smith.

Description: Lifelong platonic friends Zack and Miri look to solve their respective cash-flow problems by making an adult film together. As the cameras roll, however, the duo begin to realize that they may have more feelings for each other than they previously believed.

Reason and Outcome: Challenged in 2013 by an individual in a public library. Reason: sexually explicit. Retained.


Little Black Book for Girlz: a Book on Healthy Sexuality, by St. Stevens Community House

Description: Created by a group of young women who hung out at the St. Stephen's Community Youth Arcase Drop-In in Toronto Canada. Intended to encourage young women to learn more about their bodies, their relationships and their lives.

Reason and Outcome: Challenged by a parent in Taft 7 - 12 high school library in 2013. Reason: Too graphic for a 7th grader; Unresolved. Remains in 3 other district high school libraries.


Op-ed in "The Arrow,” Sherwood HS student newspaper.

Description: The article criticized the school board for not renewing the lacrosse coach's contract. The coach's wife had been put on leave for allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct with a student. She was under investigation but not yet charged. The coach's contract was not renewed after refusing to resign.

Reason and Outcome: Administrators removed an op-ed piece in April 2013. Reason: it would cause a disruption & contained inaccuracies. Outcome: issue republished without this article.


Shredderman: Secret Identity, audio book by Weldelin Van Draanen

Description: Alan Dixon (Bubba) has bullied Nolan (Nerd) for five years. So when Mr. Green asks their class to become reporters, Nolan decides he’ll write an exposé—on Bubba. He creates a secret identify for himself and creates Shredderman.com as a place where truth and justice prevail—and bullies get what’s coming to them. The first of a series.

Reason and Outcome: Challenged in a public library in 2013. Reason: offensive language. Retained.


(Original list available from the Oregon ACLU in pdf form here.)

Banned Book Week in Oregon continues: Now playing at the p3 Banned Book Cineplex

One of the real nuisances of being a book-banning enthusiast (apart from the fact that writers keep writing books of which you disapprove) must certainly be the number of books like that going on to inspire popular, or or critically-acclamed, or – worst of all – high-grossing movies.

Welcome to this year's edition of the p3 Banned Book Cineplex, where the popcorn is free and you can use your mobile device:


Book: The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. (Well, all of the Hunger Games novels, actually.)

Reasons offered for challenging or banning the original books: Anti-ethnic; anti-family; insensitivity; offensive language; occult/satanic; violence. (I'm not even sure what “anti-ethnic” would mean in this context.)

If your browser won't display the embedded version, click here.

Book: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, by J. K. Rowling. (Okay, all of the Harry Potter novels, too.)

Reasons offered for challenging or banning the original books: Occult/Satanism

If your browser won't display the embedded version, click here. 

Book: The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood. (Just the one book was challenged this time, but only because Atwood didn't write a sequel. Had she done so, I imagine it'd have been challenged too.)

Reasons offered for challenging or banning the original book: Too explicit for students, profanity, lurid passages about sex, and statements defamatory to minorities, God, women, and the disabled, and “poor quality literature [that] stress[es] suicide, illicit sex, violence, and hopelessness."

If your browser won't display the embedded version, click here.

Book: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl.

Reason offered for challenging or banning the original book: The story embraced a "poor philosophy of life." ^*

If your browser won't display the embedded version, click here.

^*In some ways, this one irritates me most of all. A librarian should know better.


Remember: Read banned books and make a censor sad.

Banned Book Week in Oregon continues: In which Harper Lee has a suggestion for the Hanover County School Board

It began badly for the HCSB:

The Hanover County School Board got more than it bargained for after deciding to censor Harper Lee's classic novel of Southern race relations, To Kill a Mockingbird. The novel, decried as "immoral" and "improper," was removed from the shelves of county school libraries by unanimous vote in 1966. In response, the Richmond News Leader offered to send free copies of the book to the first 50 school children who requested a copy. These books were paid for out of the Beadle Bumble Fund, a newspaper fund taking its name from the memorable character in Dickens' Oliver Twist and formed for the purpose of "redressing the stupidities of public officials." All 50 copies were given away.

And let me note parenthetically that if The Oregonian, Oregon's four-day-a-week newspaper of record, had a Beadle Bumble Fund (which also paid the fines of those the News Leader's editor considered victims of “despots on the bench”), I might consider resubscribing. Moving on:

Sadly for the decency-lovin' guardians of Virginian morality, the unexpected publicity of this case brought to light the awkward fact that over the years the state board of education had arbitrarily, and without public notice, prevented thousands of books from being placed on the approved reading list for public schools – the word “censorship,” in its most blameworthy sense, is entirely appropriate.

And back in Hanover County, Virginia, things weren't getting any better for the school board. The following letter soon appeared in The News Leader:

Monroeville, Alabama
January, 1966

Editor, The News Leader:

Recently I have received echoes down this way of the Hanover County School Board's activities, and what I've heard makes me wonder if any of its members can read.

Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that "To Kill a Mockingbird" spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners. To hear that the novel is "immoral" has made me count the years between now and 1984, for I have yet to come across a better example of doublethink.

I feel, however, that the problem is one of illiteracy, not Marxism. Therefore I enclose a small contribution to the Beadle Bumble Fund that I hope will be used to enroll the Hanover County School Board in any first grade of its choice.

Harper Lee

Thereby reaffirming this blog's long-held belief that the best weapon against attacks on free expression is more free expression.

The Hanover County School Board eventually rescinded its ban on To Kill a Mockingbird.

Banned Book Week in Oregon begins: "Since people seem to be marching for their causes these days, I have here a march for mine"

Some people gear up for Halloween; others for Christmas, or the Fourth of July, or Saint Patrick's Day.

Around here at p3 international media headquarters, our favorite holiday is Banned Book Week in Oregon, and it runs until next weekend.

Banned Books Week is an annual event started by the American Library Association (ALA) in 1982. This week-long event, held during the last week of September, raises awareness of freedom of speech through celebrating challenged books and the value of free expression. Since its launch 30 years ago, more than 11,000 books have been challenged.

A book is “challenged” when a person or group objects to the materials and attempts to remove or restrict their accessibility. A book is “banned” when this removal is successful. Thanks to the work of libraries and the ACLU, most book challenges are now unsuccessful.

And we begin with the Official p3 Anthem for Banned Book Week, written and performed by one of our heroes, satirist Tom Lehrer:

If your browser won't display the embedded version, click here.

(There's also a 1967 live performance of “Smut” by Lehrer, recorded in Copenhagen. It's nice to be able to watch him perform, and his explanation of “purient” to a politely puzzled Danish audience is probably worth the price of admission by itself. But I prefer both the lead-in and the performance quality from the original 1965 “That Was The Year That Was” album.)

Sunday morning toons: Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of the 2016 campaign!

And why not? There are only 1186 days until Election Day, 2016.

And by a remarkable coincidence, the NSA's domestic surveillance uncovered a herd of wild elephants about to trample through the cities of Oregon. Haven't seen any wild elephants lately? Thank your NSA.

And you could find out more about all this in your local daily newspaper, if there are any left by the time you see this.

This week's toons were hoovered by the NSA straight off the pads, notebooks, and graphic tablets of the nation's top political cartoonists – why waste time with publication and syndication? – even before they appeared on the pages at McClatchyDC, Cartoon Movement, Go Comics, Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoons, About.com, Politico's Cartoon Carousel, Comic Strip of the Day, and other fine sources.

p3 Picks of the Week:

John Luckovich, Jack Ohman, Joel Pett, Jim Morin, Pat Oliphant, Signe Wilkinson, Bill Day, Pat Bagley, , Adam Zyglis, Jen Sorenson, Matt Wuerker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: R. J. Matson.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Kevin Siers.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Bruce Plant and Kevin Siers.

p3 World Toon Review Vladimir Kazanevsky (Georgia), Bernard Bouton (France), Alex Falco (Cuba), and Shahrohk Heidari (Iran).


Ann Telnaes reminds us why we shouldn't get our “news” from Leno. Stewart and Colbert, okay – but not Leno.


Like many Americans, Mark Fiore finds the timing just a little too . . . too.


This story of a gun-waving idiot was making the rounds on social media earlier this week, but it's not the news until Taiwan's Next Media Animation says it is.


Mad Magazine's loveable Cold-War characters have a special new friend – and notice that there's not a red-haired, gap-toothed magazine mascot anywhere to be seen.


At Comic Riffs, his Washington Post blog, Michael Cavna tracks down cartoonists' takes from around the country on the Post's buy-out by Amazon.com gazillionaire Jeff Bezos. (Although he sounds understandably eager for the storm of media attention to blow over.)


Tom Tomorrow presents the happy side of NSA surveillance.


Keith Knight draws the line at letting them move into his neighborhood. Fig Newtons – heh.


Tom the Dancing Bug breaks the fourth wall, big time.


Red Meat's Ted Johnson and his wife make a difficult decision.


A reckless, amorous, swashbuckling trio, riding a magic carpet to romance and adventure! That's the unlikely description of today's animation subject. Last week we looked at one of the more obvious bits of cultural imperialism waged by the Disney studios toward our brown friends around the world. Here's another sample – or at least the trailer for it: The Three Caballeros premiered in Mexico City in 1944, starring Donald Duck (representing the benevolent US), Jose Carioca (representing Brazil, he first appeared in a similar Disney-ganda film with Donald in 1942 – we'll get to that next week), and new character Panchito Pistoles (representing Mexico with the level of gross cultural stereotyping that wouldn't be seen again until Frito-Lay introduced the Frito Bandito). Directed by Norman Ferguson, with uncredited voice work by Clarence Nash (Donald), José Oliveira (Joe), and Joaquin Garay (Panchito). It's perhaps telling that in the whole project there wasn't one person who could brief the announcer for the trailer on the fact that the double-L in Spanish are rolled. (The full 70-minute feature is available here.)

If your browser won't display the embedded version, click here.

(If you're interested in the really down-and-dirty truth about Disney empire and cultural imperialism, try your hand at How to Read Donald Duck, a 1972 book on the Disney's promotion – often with direct US government support – of industrial capitalism on the silver screen. The authors, Chilean activists Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, were quickly driven into political exile. And as for Chile, well, you may remember how that turned out.)


The Not Huge, But Certainly Bigger than Last Week's Big Oregon Toon Block: Matt Bors considers the tricky problems of marriage – at least some marriages.

Jesse Springer returns with the news: In Oregon did Kublai Kahn a stately pleasure dome decree.

Test your toon captioning mojoat The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here).

One of the holy sites of First Amendment history

For those who celebrate the freedom to publish (and read) – not to mention poetry, small businesses, and publishers who still actually read manuscripts – here's good news: City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco turns sixty today.

City Lights was founded in North Beach at 261 Columbus Avenue in 1953 by Ferlinghetti and his partner Peter D. Martin as the country’s first all-paperback bookstore. The concept behind the bookstore was to make ideas and literature cheaply available to all people. This idea was carried over two years later to City Lights Publishers, with their small, affordable Pocket Poets series.

City Lights became interwoven in the legacy of the Beat Generation, with Ferlinghetti publishing books by Allen Ginberg (Howl and Other Poems, Kaddish), Gregory Corso (Gasoline), Frank O’Hara (Lunch Poems), Jack Kerouac (Pomes All Sizes and Scattered Poems), Diane di Prima (Revolutionary Letters), Philip Lamantia (Selected Poems 1943-1966) and Anne Waldman (Fast Speaking Woman). Ferlinghetti also published English translations of writers such as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Jacques Prévert. Its basement level has long featured an impressive stock of radical left-wing, progressive and revolutionary political literature.

It was the obscenity trial stemming from City Lights’ publication of Howl and Other Poems that earned the bookstore international attention in 1957. City Lights manager Shigeyoshi Murao was arrested for “disseminating obscene literature,” e.g., selling a copy of Howl and Other Poems to an undercover police officer and Ferlinghetti was arrested for publishing the book. After a well publicized trial and support from the American Civil Liberties Union, Ferlinghetti won the case. The book is still in print.

The trial drew national attention to both “Howl” and City Lights, and gave America the “redeeming social importance” test for allegedly obscene literature. And City Lights Bookstore is now officially a historic landmark in the city.

H/t to Ryan.

Banned Book Week: Still not over until we say it is!

Here's Batocchio's round-up of blogs celebrating Banned Book Week.

Yes, yes, Banned Book Week 2012 technically ended on October 6th, but I've already decided that it doesn't really end until we say it does. Should we be respectful to secretaries only on Secretaries' Day? No!

Should we plant trees only on Arbor Day? No!

Should we show our respect and gratitude for veterans only on Veterans Day? No!

Should we bite the ears off of chocolate rabbits only on Easter Sunday? No!

And should we only take one itty-bitty week out of the year to protect and celebrate freedom of speech and thought?

Absolutely not! I knew you were with me!

So follow through Batocchio's great list of links at the Vagabond Scholar. And we'll see you back here for the next installment of p3 Banned Book Week, which will almost certainly arrive before the last week in September 2013.

Oregon Banned Book Week continues: The virtues of a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying on

Technically, Oregon Banned Book Week is over until next September, but I've decided it's not really over until we say it's over. Got a problem with that?

There are plenty of books that have been challenged or banned in Oregon public and school libraries over the years. Every year the list compiled by the Oregon ACLU and the Oregon Library Association includes some hardy perennials but also an encouraging number of new entries, including the allegedly “anti-family” The Hunger Games.

So why come back to an old warhorse like Huck Finn?

Because no challenged work is so famous and admired that it can't use an extra friend when the improvers and uplifters and scolds come after it. And, for one reason or another, Huck has been in their sights almost since he first saw the light of published day.

Another reason is that, over the years, Huck's had to take his hidings from both sides: cultural conservatives and well-meaning progressives. Save us all from the people who want to censor and bowdlerize books because they imagine doing so will somehow protect progressive causes. They couldn't be more wrong.

Nothstine's Law of Free Speech: If defending freedom of speech and thought doesn't hurt at least a little, you're probably not doing it right.

A generation or two after it was published in 1884, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was praised by such dignitaries as T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and H. L. Mencken as the headwaters from which all later American novels flowed -- the first novel about American themes with American characters, doing American things, all rendered in American English.

In fact, though, that was where the trouble began:

In 1885, the Concord Public Library in Massachusetts banned the year-old book for its “coarse language” — critics deemed Mark Twain’s use of common vernacular (slang) as demeaning and damaging. A reviewer dubbed it “the veriest trash … more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people.” Little Women author Louisa May Alcott lashed out publicly at Twain, saying, “If Mr. Clemens [Twain's original name] cannot think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses he had best stop writing for them.” (That the N word appears more than 200 times throughout the book did not initially cause much controversy.) In 1905, the Brooklyn Public Library in New York followed Concord’s lead, banishing the book from the building’s juvenile section with this explanation: “Huck not only itched but scratched, and that he said sweat when he should have said perspiration.” Twain enthusiastically fired back, and once said of his detractors: “Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.”

It's true. Twain's characters were often known to drink and swear, and occasionally even to cheat and lie and skip Sunday school and depart from the King's English, and they frequently seemed not the least repentant about it all. In a world that had not begun to watch “Mad Men,” the guardians of the old literary/moral order were not best pleased by this.

Today, of course, Huck faces a more insidious cadre of censors, ones who can't so easily be ridiculed out of court, although they are no less pernicious -- perhaps more so -- than those once so eager to defend America's tender youth from irreverent images of folks a-whooping and carrying on: I refer to those who want to pick up the scalpel based on the fact that Twain's characters used the word “nigger” over 200 times in a story set entirely in antebellum slave states. I've dealt with this problem elsewhere.

But that came later; it was the whooping and carrying on that originally got Huck Finn crossways with the censors. Like this:

If your browser won't display the embedded version, click here. 

Some people just have a problem with images of people behaving the way they don't think people should behave, however sympathetic or unsympathetic the portrayal.

Sorry, Ms. Alcott.

Read banned books.

Banned Book Week isn't over until we say it is: Freedom of pleasure and shameless rhymes

Tom Lehrer marches for his favorite cause:

If your browser won't display the embedded version, click here.

Saturday morning tunes: The p3 Banned Book Week anthem

The inimitable voice you're hearing is Jimmy Durante, aka “The Schnoz.”

The ancient device you're watching is a 78 RPM record player, examples of which can now be seen in the Home Entertainment wing of the Smithsonian.

The song, co-written by the Great Schnozzola himself, is about a book, which was something people read before Kindle.

If your browser won't display the embedded version, click here.

RIP Ray Bradbury: "There are worse crimes than burning books."

[Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury died this week at age 91. The Guardian's obituary called him “peerless,” which is as good a place to begin reckoning our loss as any.

I wrote about Bradbury and Fahrenheit 451 during Banned Book Week in October 2008. A good lead-in to that post (reprinted below) is a Bradbury quote that's making the rounds today: “There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” After all, in Bradbury's dystopic portrait of an anti-intellectual world, it was reading that was banned, not books per se. Book-burning wasn't so much an act of government censorship as simply the benign act of eliminating an attractive nuisance.]



I sometimes think Banned Book Week, which comes to an official end today, is like National Secretary's Day: It's a short interval into which we compress our quiet, sheepish appreciation for something indispensable that we should feel grateful for every day of the year.

We're finishing up with a classic from 1953: Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. For many, this is the iconic banned book--a banned book about book-banning, or at least book-burning. But Bradbury himself insists--heatedly, at times--that his classic work isn't about government censorship/book-banning at all; it's about how the culture of television destroys the culture of reading and literature. (And that was in 1953!)

One disagrees with the likes of Ray Bradbury at one's peril, but while the author may be the last word on what he intended, he doesn't get the final say on what his book meant.

Of course, most people would certainly agree with Bradbury's point: It doesn't take jack-booted agents of the state to curb our access to ideas; sometimes it can happen simply because we're too busy being entertained to take an interest. In his late-80's book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman argued that we spent much of the 20th Century worrying that the oppression of Big Brother in 1984 might be our future, when all along we should have been worrying about sleepwalking into the narcotized emptiness of Huxley's Brave New World. After all, the governor of Alaska can't name a book or magazine she reads, but she would never think of herself as uninformed. Sometimes the agents of control wear Tina Fey glasses and wink at the camera.

In fact, here's a painful little bit of irony: Out of curiosity, I plugged the phrase "Why is Fahrenheit 451 banned?" into Ask.com. The top-ranked answer, from a site called WikiAnswers, was this:

Fahrenheit 451 was banned due to its controversial manner and questionable themes.

And that's it. That's the entire answer. Truly, those who want to keep unfettered access to ideas have at least as much to fear from faceless bureaucrats as from book-burning "firemen."

It was a pleasure to burn.

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fist, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.
Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame.

He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt-corked, in the mirror. Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the dark. It never went away, that smile, it never ever went away, as long as he remembered.

Don't stop here.

As I mentioned a few days ago in the comments, I mostly picked war horses from a generation or two (or more) ago for this celebration, in part to make the point that what once was forbidden often winds up on standard reading lists. But there are books out there that need a friend today--long before Steven Spielberg gets around to optioning the movie rights. p3 friend Batocchio lists many more that have found their way onto the roster of "challenged" books.

Read a banned book.

And thank a librarian.

Doonesbury: Too much for The Oregonian, Day 5

While we wait for The Oregonian to decide the coast is clear to start publishing current Doonesbury strips again, here's today's strip. If it's harsh, it's only because the butt of the joke has had it coming for some time now.

Another Doonesbury story arc that didn't make him popular with the Spiro Agnew crowd back in the day concerned Nixon and Kissinger's ”secret” bombing of Cambodia in 1970. (As Charles Pierce points out, that was a massively, massively impeachable offense, for which Congress waited to score-settle until the context was politically safer.)

But heaven forbid that a political satirist/cartoonist should say something true.

Doonesbury: Too much for The Oregonian, Day 4

Well-intentioned online petitions notwithstanding, The Oregonian is unlikely to reverse its decision to pull this week's Doonesbury strips, satirizing the hostility of the state of Texas (and several other states) to the notion that women should have control of their own reproductive health care, as well as access to the same insurance coverage that men receive.

Of course, online petitions weren't likely to succeed in this case, anyway; the O has historically had a somewhat shaky relationship to All Things Internet.

Since Portland's only daily is now referring readers to that Internet thingy for their daily dose of Doonesbury anyway, p3 is proud to help them offload readership by providing the link to today's strip.

Yesterday we mentioned the trouble that strip author Garry Trudeau got into with a fanciful 1980 arc called “Reagan's Brain.” But more often he's gotten heat from newspapers editors and critics (when those aren't the same) for telling things that are, in fact, true. Case in point: Back in 1973, Walden University campus activist and WBBY radio host “Megaphone” Mark Slackmeyer drew the wrath of many Nixon fans with this now-legendary entry in his “Watergate Profile” series. (And, for the record, young Mark was right; the pipe-smoking felon in question went on to spend 19 months in prison for his Watergate-related crimes.)

And, in an interview, strip creator Garry Trudeau says frankly that dodging the topic would be ”comedy malpractice.”