Book Bans, Terrorism, and Assigning Blame
Three things I'm reading this week, and a personal story.
We’re starting out this week’s What I’m Reading Wednesdays with a quick homage to spell check. A friend pointed out that I was brave to publish a name-of-the-week column on the hardest day of the week to spell. Not brave. Just doing things the hard way, as usual. But really, thank god for spell check. And good friends.
Really?
What I’m reading this week follows the premise of what I wrote on Sunday (below) - we are dealing with terrorist threats from right-wing religious extremists. And journalists and commentators are ignoring those threats.
Alexandra Petri, who is possibly my favorite Washington Post columnist, assigned her satire this week to Target, for saying they’re part of the LGBTQ community, but pulling LGBTQ merch. Which proves that even people who “get it” sometimes miss the point.
Again: Target received threats. From the same group of people who are creating an environment full of assault rifle worship and white supremacist hate.
And the reports of Target’s stock price going down are more about Wall Street than Main Street. Are fewer shoppers going into their stores? Perhaps. I am afraid to walk into Target until this dies down (pun not intended). But I have bought a few Pride shirts online. Shirts I wouldn’t have otherwise purchased.
Target has been a steadfast LGBTQ ally since the 1990s, before it was hip to be queer friendly. They deserve our support, not our self-satisfying scorn.
How about we work to create an atmosphere where violent people aren’t targeting us, and it’s safe to go about our daily lives without fear of being murdered. For shopping.
Keep Libraries Safe, Too
Judd Legum this week is writing about Illinois - which has passed a bill banning book bans.
Finally.
The bill, which Governor Pritzker is expected to sign, comes with penalties for schools or municipalities who decide to ban books. The state’s $62 million library subsidy - which averages out to $39,000 per library (though bigger ones will get more, and smaller ones less) is a pretty big carrot. The new bill mandates that to receive a grant, the library must “adopt the American Library Association Library Bill of Rights… or develop a statement prohibiting the practice of banning books or other materials within the library or library system.”
I should also mention that, as the Washington Post reported last week, most of the book banning requests have come from just 11 people - according to a PEN America report.
Book bans are not organic and not grassroots. They are well-funded, coordinated efforts to marshal hate. Good for Illinois for standing up.
Did Biden Win?
I seem to be stuck on the Washington Post this week, but I would be remiss not to give a shout-out to Jennifer Rubin both for calling out how masterfully Biden dealt with the House Republicans who wanted to hold the world economy hostage, and the journalists who accepted the Republican narrative.
Rubin writes that as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy postured and threatened, Biden and his team negotiated a budget agreement months before they usually would have and put off the next debt ceiling vote till 2025 - after the election.
And now, the House Republicans seem to be in disarray as the Freedom Caucus balks at the fact that the IRS is getting $70 billion (rather than $80 billion) over the next 10 years, that spending levels will be flat for the next two years, that student loan relief (pending court decisions) is still on the table, as are most of the provisions in the CHIPS Act and Build Back Better.
Progressives are not happy with the work requirements for those getting government assistance. But one thing that isn’t talked about much is that many people who have SNAP and Medicaid are working - for slave wages.
“To sum up,” Rubin wrote, “Biden brushed back the litany of outrageous demands, kept his spending agenda and tax increases intact and got his two-year debt limit increase.”
Personal Story
Book bans and anti-gay rhetoric are based partly on the notion that by reading books about queer people, children might decide that they, themselves, are gay or trans.
First, my parents are straight, and the media I saw growing up didn’t have positive gay images. Second, my kids are straight. Which means, according to these bigots, I have utterly failed in my mission to indoctrinate them.
I’m sharing one of my favorite stories of my girls when they were about 7. They were playing in our basement in Flossmoor, Illinois with two of their friends. They all trooped up to go outside, and I asked where they were going. Dixon stopped, looked at me and, with an apologetic tone, said, “No offense, but we’re pretending we have boyfriends.”
Have a good rest of the week, folks. See you Sunday.