From the desk of Lee’s still better looking and, apparently, filled-with-free-time younger brother Tod, keeping the site warm until Lee’s return from prison.
An Open Letter to Kurt & Karen Krueger, Proponents of Book Banning,
Dear Kurt and Karen,
Your kids are going to hate you. Seriously. They are going to hate you. Do you want to know why? Because you’ve done the one thing that children recognize as bullshit: you’ve made an issue out of your own parenting, or, perhaps, your own lack of confidence in how you raise your children. You recently asked the school board in your town of Merton, Wisconsin to ban "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky, "Like Water for Chocolate," by Laura Esquivel, "Chronicle of a Death Foretold," by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and "The Joy Luck Club," by Amy Tan from an elective course in contemporary literature. You said that these books should be removed from the reading list because they "are filled with suicide and things that don’t reflect the standards of the community," including, you noted, oral sex, masturbation and, that most dreaded scourge, homosexuality.
Fortunately, people with an advanced sense of humanity voted this week not to ban the books you think are ruining the moral fiber of your city from the course, but to require parental consent forms, which, in my opinion, is almost as bad. At any rate, Mr. & Mrs. Krueger, you decided that now that you’ve lost that appeal, the book should be banned all together, lest children learn how to give blow jobs, masturbate or, worse, turn to same sex love.
"Now I want it banned," said Karen Krueger, who had argued all along that she wasn’t asking for the book to be completely removed from the school. "Their parental notification is ineffective."
Mr. and Mrs. Krueger, you do understand that books are fiction, that life is real, and that words only do harm to those sheltered by reality. Teenagers have oral sex. Teenagers masturbate (a lot). Teenagers kill themselves and teenagers are gay. Members of the adult community in your city do likewise, and worse. Asking intellectual property to be banned invites your children to be close minded and unprepared for life. Asking for a book to be removed from a school because it goes against your moral code and then impressing it upon other children not your own is dangerous and borders on the malicious. If you don’t want your children giving or receiving blow jobs, masturbating or becoming gay, I suggest keeping them locked in the closet, because those are the types of things that happen in the real world, with or without books you don’t like.
Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Kruger, I suggest you read a book or two. I say, start with Fahrenheit 451 and work your way back to reality.
Sincerely,
Tod