Liberal Schmiberal
"Imagine my amazement when I punched in my name only
to find it on your website....thanks for the publicity. Sorry to
say....you're not very original....you are quite the typical liberal...you have
to resort to insults rather than
facts.
Sincerely, kathy diggins"
Sincerely, kathy diggins"
The abstract is an Email I got from a person who
happens to live in my town, referring to a blog entry I posted on my old blog (I'm
currently in the process of moving it over here). What the abstract refers to is
the following post:
Letter to the Editor
I live in a delightful little town, Staunton , VA. We have low crime, affordable lifestyles, and a traffic jam consists of 5 cars at the same light. However, as someone who has lived in London, Melbourne, San Francisco, and DC...Staunton can feel a bit conservative at times. I'm one of those nut-ball liberal "Editorial" letter writers who are always defending life and liberty, because the conservatives (who cherish our Constitution) are constantly trying to curb my freedom. About once a month some idiot writes your typical knee-jerk reactionary letter to the editor of the local paper...and I feel that since I am the town liberal-deist-socialist, it is important that the shot across the bow does not go unanswered.
[I would like to note at this point, that in actuality, I don't consider myself a liberal. However, conservatives find it easier to label me as such, so I'm willing to accept it]
This past week we had one of the "pro-ban books" arguments that appears every six months or so. Inflammatory, but not very creative. Here was my answer as published yesterday.
-----
In the Sunday editorial “Libraries should ban questionable books,” Kathy Diggins makes one of those banal arguments that doesn’t have the strength to be persuasive.
She uses a clever tactic to appear as though she weren’t the closed minded person that she is by mentioning Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Diary of Anne Frank as examples of books that should be defended from being banned. This is transparent because she later goes on to present herself as a cheerleader for the right to ban books using something she cleverly calls “common sense-orship.”
Miss Diggins tells us that we should applaud the heroes who fight to ban books. Her justification? Better to err on the side of over-protection in order to keep vile ideas from infecting our children (K-12). She wants to protect our kids from books that contain “sex, masturbation, nudity, and racial slurs”. Using her “common sense-orship” guidelines, I’ve prepared a list of works that should be removed right away:
To Kill a Mockingbird, Canterbury Tales, Of Mice and Men, all Shakespeare, Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Catch-22, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Little House on the Prairie, Brave New World, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and The Diary of Anne Frank.
These prime examples of radical literature will poison your children, teaching them to think for themselves, escape ignorance, and get into a decent college.
One piece of literature she singles out as a specific example of sexually explicit literature that doesn’t belong in our schools is called Heather Has Two Mommies. I say that every generation has it’s own Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and I propose that Heather Has Two Mommies might just be one. Offensive to some, empowering to others.
Once you begin to ban books, you slide down that slope. What is offensive to one person, is enlightening to another. If you find material inappropriate for your kids, then you need to take that up at home, not in the library.
I’d like to leave all of you with a particularly steamy section of the sexually explicit Heather Has Two Mommies:
“The most important thing about a family is that all the people in it love each other.”
---------
So there you have my liberal, not very original answer to Kathy Diggins. I'm glad you enjoyed the publicity. As for resorting to insults, I'm thankful you took the high road.
Sincerely,
Your Typical Unoriginal Liberal
Letter to the Editor
I live in a delightful little town, Staunton , VA. We have low crime, affordable lifestyles, and a traffic jam consists of 5 cars at the same light. However, as someone who has lived in London, Melbourne, San Francisco, and DC...Staunton can feel a bit conservative at times. I'm one of those nut-ball liberal "Editorial" letter writers who are always defending life and liberty, because the conservatives (who cherish our Constitution) are constantly trying to curb my freedom. About once a month some idiot writes your typical knee-jerk reactionary letter to the editor of the local paper...and I feel that since I am the town liberal-deist-socialist, it is important that the shot across the bow does not go unanswered.
[I would like to note at this point, that in actuality, I don't consider myself a liberal. However, conservatives find it easier to label me as such, so I'm willing to accept it]
This past week we had one of the "pro-ban books" arguments that appears every six months or so. Inflammatory, but not very creative. Here was my answer as published yesterday.
-----
In the Sunday editorial “Libraries should ban questionable books,” Kathy Diggins makes one of those banal arguments that doesn’t have the strength to be persuasive.
She uses a clever tactic to appear as though she weren’t the closed minded person that she is by mentioning Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Diary of Anne Frank as examples of books that should be defended from being banned. This is transparent because she later goes on to present herself as a cheerleader for the right to ban books using something she cleverly calls “common sense-orship.”
Miss Diggins tells us that we should applaud the heroes who fight to ban books. Her justification? Better to err on the side of over-protection in order to keep vile ideas from infecting our children (K-12). She wants to protect our kids from books that contain “sex, masturbation, nudity, and racial slurs”. Using her “common sense-orship” guidelines, I’ve prepared a list of works that should be removed right away:
To Kill a Mockingbird, Canterbury Tales, Of Mice and Men, all Shakespeare, Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Catch-22, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Little House on the Prairie, Brave New World, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and The Diary of Anne Frank.
These prime examples of radical literature will poison your children, teaching them to think for themselves, escape ignorance, and get into a decent college.
One piece of literature she singles out as a specific example of sexually explicit literature that doesn’t belong in our schools is called Heather Has Two Mommies. I say that every generation has it’s own Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and I propose that Heather Has Two Mommies might just be one. Offensive to some, empowering to others.
Once you begin to ban books, you slide down that slope. What is offensive to one person, is enlightening to another. If you find material inappropriate for your kids, then you need to take that up at home, not in the library.
I’d like to leave all of you with a particularly steamy section of the sexually explicit Heather Has Two Mommies:
“The most important thing about a family is that all the people in it love each other.”
---------
So there you have my liberal, not very original answer to Kathy Diggins. I'm glad you enjoyed the publicity. As for resorting to insults, I'm thankful you took the high road.
Sincerely,
Your Typical Unoriginal Liberal
Posted: Sun - June 8, 2003 at 04:25 PM
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Published On: Jan 29, 2004 01:34 PM
Total entries in this category: 25
Published On: Jan 29, 2004 01:34 PM