politicnewsbusterinsiderpostreview: The inside story of the banning of "Maus." It’s dumber than you think.

Tuesday, 1 February 2022

The inside story of the banning of "Maus." It’s dumber than you think.

February 1, 2022

The movement by conservative (white) parents to ban books they've deemed inappropriate for their kids is spreading across the country. David Corn has the latest on the alarming trend after a Tennessee school board banned Maus from its curriculum after taking issue with some "cuss" words included in the Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic novel that tells the story of author Art Spiegelman's parents, who were imprisoned in Auschwitz.

The business of book-banning in 2022 is a genuine tragedy. But Corn, who dug into the notes from the school board's decision so you don't have to, also has some hope:

This is a loss for the students and their teachers. They will miss out on a literary breakthrough and a crucial slice of history. What's worse for the kids is that their intellectual development is being held hostage by board members who are stuck in another era, who find vulgarity in an old pop song, and who cannot be bothered to do their own homework. The best hope is that this foolishness from the board will prompt students to read Maus on their own—the book sold out on Amazon as the result of this sad kerfuffle—and, more important, take a hard look at these censorious overseers and their closed-mindedness. That will provide a good education for the teenagers of McMinn County.

Meanwhile, I urge you to pay attention to the very real bomb threats—not the imagined threat that school boards claim to exist in the books they're furiously canceling—happening at more than a dozen historically black colleges.

—Inae Oh