Roger: WTF is going on in Tucson?

[Juana]

It's not anymore, but it was banned there for several years after it was published.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Banning a book by a prominent Ethnic Studies supporter is an obvious move.  II'm a little more freaked out that they banned Shakespeare.

They wrote the definitions a little broad, it seems.

They banned everything that deals with themes of race or oppression, is what I heard today in sociology.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

so glad I grew up in a town that celebrated banned books week.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Banning a book by a prominent Ethnic Studies supporter is an obvious move.  II'm a little more freaked out that they banned Shakespeare.

They wrote the definitions a little broad, it seems.

They banned everything that deals with themes of race or oppression, is what I heard today in sociology.

There goes Star Wars, Dune, and all that fun stuff.

[Don Coyote]

Banning a book by a prominent Ethnic Studies supporter is an obvious move.  II'm a little more freaked out that they banned Shakespeare.

They wrote the definitions a little broad, it seems.

They banned everything that deals with themes of race or oppression, is what I heard today in sociology.

There goes Star Wars, Dune, and all that fun stuff.

Didn't you know? Fremen are space Arabs. Of course Dune would be banned.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Banning a book by a prominent Ethnic Studies supporter is an obvious move.  II'm a little more freaked out that they banned Shakespeare.

They wrote the definitions a little broad, it seems.

They banned everything that deals with themes of race or oppression, is what I heard today in sociology.

What the fuck do you expect us to do?  Acknowledge our White guilt?  Why, then, did we go to all the trouble of building the Indian revervations WAY THE FUCK OUT IN THE DESERT?  I mean, if we were willing to deal with what we've done to oppress other people, we'd have put them closer so it wouldn't be such a long drive to get cheap smokes.

And we don't see Black people out here.  I mean, there's plenty of them, but we sort of look around them, unless they come in our neighborhoods.  If they MOVE in, then we REALLY don't see them.  Either that, or we invite them to our parties (one family per party, though), so we can kiss their arses to show how progressive we are.  If they're just those people walking, we call the police.  We really have no choice.  Those people are always up to no good, and we have our daughters to think of.

It does no good to concentrate on fictional crimes of the past, when there are crimes of the present things that need fixing in our schools.  And teaching our kids that we maybe got a little out of line in the past only lets the smudgy people win, and ruins our glorious White culture.

[Cain]

Salon misreported the story.

The books aren't being banned.  The entire class is being disbanded, so the books are being put into storage.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Salon misreported the story.

The books aren't being banned.  The entire class is being disbanded, so the books are being put into storage.

Yes, they're not banned! Only confiscated and placed on a list of materials that cannot be used in classrooms. Totally different. They didn't ban the books, they banned teaching ethnic studies, so it's not a book ban per se. Only a confiscation. Move along, nothing to see here folks.

[Cain]

My point is, Salon's writer seems to think that banning an entire class is not worthy of mention, but banning of books is.

It's a red herring, and distracts from the real issue at stake.  Namely, than Jan Brewer should be voted out of office, and the ban on teaching cultural studies be overturned.  Instead, it allows for the blame to be directed onto the school, who it could be argued should violate the law and teach the damn subject anyway...but still puts them on a lesser level of unethical behaviour than the Governor who passed the law in the first place.

Now the school is being bombarded with complaints by liberal idiots who don't do their research, for following a law they likely opposed in the first place.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Salon misreported the story.

The books aren't being banned.  The entire class is being disbanded, so the books are being put into storage.

Yes, they're not banned! Only confiscated and placed on a list of materials that cannot be used in classrooms. Totally different. They didn't ban the books, they banned teaching ethnic studies, so it's not a book ban per se. Only a confiscation. Move along, nothing to see here folks.

How's that song go?  "They ain't gotta burn the books, they just remove 'em."

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

My point is, Salon's writer seems to think that banning an entire class is not worthy of mention, but banning of books is.

It's a red herring, and distracts from the real issue at stake.  Namely, than Jan Brewer should be voted out of office, and the ban on teaching cultural studies be overturned.  Instead, it allows for the blame to be directed onto the school, who it could be argued should violate the law and teach the damn subject anyway...but still puts them on a lesser level of unethical behaviour than the Governor who passed the law in the first place.

Now the school is being bombarded with complaints by liberal idiots who don't do their research, for following a law they likely opposed in the first place.

I got something entirely different out of the article, which was that the author used book banning as the hook to try to get people to care about the law banning ethnic studies; an object lesson.

The first three paragraphs mention the ethnic studies program three times, with links:

As part of the state-mandated termination of its ethnic studies  program, the Tucson Unified School District released an initial list of books to be banned from its schools today.  According to district spokeperson Cara Rene, the books "will be cleared from all classrooms, boxed up and sent to the Textbook Depository for storage."

Facing a multimillion-dollar penalty in state funds, the governing board of Tucson's largest school district officially ended the 13-year-old program on Tuesday in an attempt to come into compliance with the controversial state ban on the teaching of ethnic studies.

The list of removed books includes the 20-year-old textbook "Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years," which features an essay by Tucson author Leslie Silko.  Recipient of a Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award and a MacArthur Foundation genius grant, Silko has been an outspoken supporter of the ethnic studies program.

He then goes on in more detail about the banning of the program.

I'm sorry, but I have to completely disagree with you on your analysis of the article, to the extent that I feel almost as if we did not read the same piece of writing.

[Cain]

I'm basing my opinion on popular liberal comment all over the internet, which has been to concentrate on the headline and the first paragraph, and so to generate vast amounts of posts blaming the school almost entirely.

Very few people read beyond the headline and first paragraph before forming an opinion, especially on the internet.  Later information may contradict that and lead to a softening of the first impression, but it rarely entirely changes from the original impression.  I know my standards are ridiculously high by the standards of any time period, but a journalist should be able to understand that, and frame the argument accordingly.

Now, it could be the journalist in question is not to blame.  Editors are often responsible for such things.  I know the Guardian in particular is notorious for choosing titles and opening chapters that are not only misleading, but directly contradict the point the writer is trying to make.  But either way, the real-world effect has been not what the piece was apparently intended to do, and so while some of that failing should fall on the heads of idiot liberal bloggers with the attention span of gnats, it also falls on the journalist, editors and Salon.com for not recognizing this basic and obvious fact about humanity.

It also should have been obvious that any argument that deals with a particular and a general position, the particular position is always going to be deployed against the general position, either to obscure or undermine it, by those who disagree with it.  If I was to make an argument about the US military being an imperial death machine ravaging the planet, and then mentioned Iraq as an example, a thousand blogs would rise up to point out how many schools were built in Iraq, and thus declare my argument null and void.  It's bad logic and worse argumentation, but it's the way things are done.  If you want to launch an attack on the policy of banning cultural studies, you have to attack the policy itself.  Specific examples will be twisted, seized upon or magnified to obscure the original, broader point.

Of course, most journalists now have degrees in political science or economics (or "Journalism") so expecting them to grapple with rhetoric may be a bit beyond them.  But see my earlier point about high standards.

[Iron Sulfide]

So, wait... If they're banning literature that deals with themes of Race and/or Oppression, vis a vis, Enthic Studies, does that mean they're going to kick the bible study off campus?

[Cain]

Of course not.  Don't be silly.  The Bible is an expression of universal values.

Also, I realize I may being a bit harsh above, and so I retract my earlier statements.  However, watching idiots on the internet manage spectacular fails after reading this article has really started to do my head in.  I'm starting to feel like the guy with the glasses in They Live.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I am now even more baffled. Are you talking about the article in the OP? The headline:

Who's afraid of "The Tempest"?

Directly references the byline:

Arizona's ban on ethnic studies proscribes Mexican-American history, local authors, even Shakespeare

It is directly implying that Arizona banned ethnic studies because they are afraid of the dialogue of oppressor/oppressed. The opening sentence of the article:

As part of the state-mandated termination of its ethnic studies  program, the Tucson Unified School District released an initial list of books to be banned from its schools today.

spells it out. Short of omitting the book ban entirely, which makes no sense, I am not sure how the author could have emphasized more that the issue is the ethnic-studies ban. The book banning is a direct consequence of the ban, and that is very clear in the first sentence, as well as pretty much all subsequent sentences. The entire gist of the article is "This bad law caused this bad thing". I know the public is stupid, but I am not sure how anyone could interpret it differently and still have the brain cells to operate a computer and read words.