Thursday, October 19, 2017

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??????????????

4 comments:

  1. Unfortunately not the first time, and probably not the last. Remember your blog entry from a year or two back regarding "Huckleberry Finn" being banned for the exact same reason? The idiotic tortured PC logic behind this really beggars belief: at this point, liberals are digging a hole for themselves over demented dogma nearly as fast as the GOP.

    The author Phillip K. Dick was ahead of his time satirizing many cultural developments we never thought would actually come to pass (yet did). His brilliant, overlooked 1957 novel "Eye In The Sky" presented a flaccid, insipid, hypocritically moralistic and "broad-minded" white woman who accidentally attains the power of God to alter the universe as she sees fit. Her one over-riding imperative is to rid it of everything she deems "offensive". Dick humorously (and terrifyingly) depicts the unexpected consequences, as the people around her realize what is happening. As she slowly, methodically reduces the world to tapioca rubble, they decide life is not worth living under her rule. One of her friends, a black chemist, leads them to trick her into believing the very molecules and elements that sustain life are "offensive". She unquestioningly bans those elements. As their bodies collapse and they wink out of existence, she finally grasps the error of her unexamined "progressive" beliefs.

    Regarding your (excellent) point that novels like "Mockingbird" might simply be age-inappropriate PERIOD, I agree wholeheartedly. "Offensive" debates aside, the story itself is wildly beyond the wheelhouse of most younger people forced to read it in English class. Students aged 12-15 don't have the maturity or perspective to comprehend a rigged rape trial and all the other attendant hideousness in "Mockingbird". Granted, kids today are more precocious, but we weren't exactly little saints in the 1970s either. I distinctly remember nearly everyone in my class having a "WTF???" response to Mockingbird. We absorbed the obvious attempt to teach us "racism is bad" but that was mostly due to teacher commentary: the story itself was completely lost on us. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was far more visceral: it was much easier to relate to fear of physical cruelty and loss of family. False rape charges and trial rigging? Not so much.

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  2. Alice has been banned on and off over the years. because of the hookah smoking and the mushrooms, I think.

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  3. Darling,
    Is "Eye In The Sky" still in print?
    I would like to read it. Everyone thinks
    Lee's novel is about race relations, when
    there is so much more. Mrs. Dubose, who
    appears briefly in the movie, is a morphine
    addict in withdrawal, when Atticus makes
    him read to her after ruining her roses.
    It is her way of beating the addiction.
    But that was never talked about. This is
    why Lee's book is so enduring. The more and older
    one reads it, the more one gets out of it.

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  4. Victoria


    It wouldn't surprise me about 'Alice,' but it's a
    damn shame, as it is a beautifully written book, and
    children who read it very young may not get the
    implications of the hookah and mushrooms. Grace
    Slick's classic song "White Rabbit" did lots for that.

    When I hear info like this it scares me that society
    is moving into "Fahrenheit 451" territory.

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