This Week's Bitch Wins For Stupidity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                            I am glad "To Kill A Mockingbird" is still being read.  Along with Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," I think these are two of the best books of the last century, and it is no coincidence both were written by Southern writers.  All the authors of this region wrote the best fiction, far superior to the overrated Fitzgerald and Hemingway.  There!  I've said it!

                             The winner of this week's Raving Queen Bitch Of The Week Award is not an individual, but an organization.  It is the school administration, in Biloxi, Mississippi, for banning the quintessential work of one of its own Southern writers--"To Kill A Mockingbird," by Harper Lee.

                                Their objection is to its use of the "n" word, which,  of  course, is "nigger."  But that word is in other books--"Huckleberry Finn," "Gone With The Wind," and others, so why not ban all the books with this word?  Why Harper Lee?????????????????

                                  Stupid bitches!  It has nothing to do with Miss Lee, but with hypocrisy.  This act is like those believers who deny the Holocaust ever happened.  To ban this book, because of that word, is tantamount to denying the South ever had a race problem--hell, it still does, in some areas--and transform it into the picture perfect utopia many accused Margaret Mitchell of portraying.  Though, of course, she didn't.

                                  What fascinates me is that this book explores other issues that are never brought up, but are equally controversial--rape, false accusation thereof, the attempted murder of a child, and possible sexual abuse; I always wondered if Bob Ewell abused Mayella, leading him to attack Tom Robinson, over jealousy. For that matter, I wonder if he would have molested Scout!!!!!!!  But these matters are never brought up. And are just as valid for questionable banning of a book, even though it is too good to be banned.

                                  Only in one instance, did this issue of rape come up, and that was in my freshman high school English class.  I can never forget this.  We were required to read Harper Lee's book, and were studying it.  When we reached the part covering the trial, the teacher paused, at one point, and asked, "Is there anyone here who does not know what rape is?"

                                   Well, of course, no one raised their hand.  I wonder what would have happened if they did.  And teenagers don't tell all anyway.  Even I kept lots of things to myself.

                                    Even at the time, I thought this was so stupid.  This question should have been asked at the beginning, or not at all, or more thought given to the age appropriateness of our book.  I cannot imagine such a situation now, where a person this age, does not know the meaning of the word, but at my time, Fall, 1969, it was still, vaguely, possible.  So, if you weren't sure, why assign the book?

                                    The other word was never questioned, but was accepted, as it should be, as Lee intended, in being used in accordance with the time taking place.  Like Margaret Mitchell writing in Negro dialect, or Emily Bronte, writing in Yorkshire.

                                       "Words!  Words!  Words!  I'm so sick of words!," sang Julie Andrews, as Eliza Doolittle in "My Fair Lady."  She had a point.  Too much fuss is made over, sometimes, about what should be left alone.  And to demean one of the century's most enduring works is tantamount to sacrilege.  To think, by the home state of Donna Tartt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                          Get with the program, you Biloxi Bitches!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Go find some other author to pick on!

                                            Or maybe you want to genuinely traumatize your students by force feeding them the works of Joan Didion!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                              Harper Lee, banned!  Indeed!  Is Lewis Carroll next??????????????