One of the most memorable aspects of Joe Biden's presidential inauguration was to see and hear Amanda Gorman's recitation form her book, The Hill We Climb. Gorman's place in history, lets us note, is sealed as the first National Youth Poet Laureate and the youngest poet to read at a presidential inauguration. This is momentous, and the publication of her book equally so. A wonderful work that ought to be beyond the reach and ruin of Philistines in Florida, but evidently isn't. Imagine, a work heralded by the U.N. General Assembly — but access to it is now restricted at a Miami-Dade County school.
This is also the latest casualty in the national fight over library books, driven by a handful of malcontents and racist agitators. Hell, as I posted back in December, we even have these Florida-based pseudo liberty reprobates invading Colorado Springs' school districts, e.g.
'Moms for Liberty' Open Local Chapter In Springs - With Book Banning Binge
The Florida complaint filed against Gorman's book The Hill We Climb alleges that the work is "not educational," contains indirect hate speech and shouldn't be in schools. It emanated from a Miami Lakes resident named Daily Salinas, who has two children at Bob Graham Elementary. Oh, and before I continue, we've since learned this lowbrow genius has Proud Boy links, i.e.
Florida mother behind ban on Amanda Gorman poem has Proud Boys links | Florida | The Guardian
Part of the form she completed is shown below:
Note the limited inputs to the extent that this dope admits to not even having read a single review. That's really all you need to know, and disclosed she was merely carrying water for her Proud Boy associates or backers. And as The Guardian piece above notes, Salinas has also posted anti-Semitic content online and been present for several Proud Boys events." In other words she's a low class loser and bigot - never mind her color. We know blacks can be as perverted in their bigotry as whites, just look at Kanye West and his praise of Hitler.
Salinas specifically referred to two passages as inciting her ire:
"We’ve braved the belly of the beast.
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,
And the norms and notions of what ‘just is’
Isn’t always justice."
And
"And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.
Somehow, we do it.
Somehow, we’ve weathered and witnessed
A nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.”
Claiming they'd arouse hatred as well as cause confusion and indoctrinate children. How she comes by these deductions we can't say. But maybe she just has it in for Oprah, as the fool actually Winfrey was the author (or publisher). In any case, as my Psych Prof niece Shayl believes: "She manufactured it in her head out of whole cloth paranoid delusions."
I agree and would add a large dollop of bigotry to her misfiring brain cells- at least as much as the kooks seen in my blog post trying to ban books here in Colorado Springs. Meanwhile, Janice's theory is that Daily just spotted the words "beast" and "broken". She then figured in her maimed brain these passages were "hateful" and/or "confusing". Oh and might "indoctrinate" the kids who encountered them.
NPR for its part reviewed the complaint and other materials after they were obtained through a records request to the school district from the Florida Freedom to Read Project. Salinas, true to being the simpleton she is, did not fill out the forms entirely. And when asked if she had seen professional reviews she replied, "I don't need it." Yeah, but it might have increased your low IQ by a couple apparent standard errors.
Meanwhile, a subsequent review by an eight-person committee from Bob Graham Elementary pointedly noted Gorman's book DID have educational value. But it added that the "vocabulary used in the poem was determined to be of value for middle school students."
Lest anyone think Salinas a one- off bigot wonder she also filed complaints about four other books: The ABCs of Black History; Cuban Kids; Countries in the News Cuba; and Love to Langston.
Just one week after Salinas filed her complaints on March 29, the school committee decided most of the books on her list should not be seen by younger students. Salinas for her part had requested the materials be removed "from the total environment." In other words, banished to oblivion. Process that: one moron with the power to remove a book from the purview of all kids at Bob Graham who could most benefit from it.
Fortunately, the twit didn't get her way. After a review of Gorman's book the Bob Graham Education Center decided to retain the book — but only if it's shelved in an area reserved for middle school students. In their words:
"The form, based on what has been provided and shared with us, does not even appear to be completely filled out or express a complete thought," Pierre said. "It is our collective goal to work on amending school board policy and effectuating changes to ensure that it takes more than one form to remove our history and heritage."
Small win though it was, Amanda Gorman hit back in a lengthy social media post, writing:
“So they ban my book from young readers, confuse me with Oprah, fail to specify what parts of my poetry they object to, refuse to read any reviews, and offer no alternatives … Unnecessary book bans like these are on the rise, and we must fight back,”
The poet then invited supporters to donate to the writer’s group PEN America, which she said had joined her publisher, Penguin Random House, to issue a lawsuit challenging book restrictions in Florida. According to PEN America, 565 books were banned in Florida schools in the 2021-22 school year.
Book bans have surged in Florida in the wake of a series of laws signed by GOOP Gubernator Ron DeSantis, who is determined to make Florida the place where "woke goes to die". Translation: The place where brains and consciousness go to die. What Janice and I continue to wonder is how this buffoon managed to graduate from Harvard, where evidently now reason goes to die.
See Also:
by Bill Berkowitz | May 13, 2023 - 5:59am | permalink
And:
by Chris Wright | May 25, 2023 - 5:01am | permalink
Excerpt:
Political discourse in the United States consists largely of lies and confusions. One of the greatest of lies and confusions, which I hope to help dispel in this article, is the common delimitation of the very concepts “left” and “right:” It is claimed that to be on the right is to value freedom above all—this is what “small government” is supposed to mean, for example—while to be on the left is to value equality, if necessary an equality enforced tyrannically by an enormous, Soviet-style government.
Nothing could be farther from the truth than this conventional wisdom. The opposite is closer to reality: To be on the right means, in effect, to advocate an enforced equality of nearly universal servitude and anti-democracy, while to be on the left means to value the greatest freedom for the greatest number
And:
Archival Photos Remind Us That Book Burning Launched Third Reich's Savagery In 1930s
No comments:
Post a Comment