Trump Ends "Book Ban Hoax"

Amidst all the other slashing and burning of the new regime, we find a press release from the U.S. Department of Education, "U.S. Department of Education Ends Biden’s Book Ban Hoax." Sure.

There are several things going on here, all worth noting.

On the surface, the action is mostly about dismissing 11 complaints filed with the Ed Department Office for Civil Rights, rejecting the notion that anyone can sue over the removal of certain books. If you're gay and your school district decides to eliminate every trace of other gay people from the district, it's an indefensible and hostile act, but is it a violation of your civil rights? That may be open to debate, but it barely scratches the surface of what's going on here.

The press release opens with reference to "so-called 'book bans'" underlining one of the banner points which is that it's not really a ban because you can probably buy the book somewhere if you really want to, and unless every copy of the book that exists has been thrown into the sun and anyone who tries to reproduce it is jailed, it's not really a ban. By the book banner definition of book ban, no book has been banned ever

But if instead of using a new definition of the word "ban," we stick with what native English speakers have generally understood the word to mean (a person in authority stands at the door and says "you can't bring that in here"), then book bans are what we have, from schools where the book has been barred from libraries and classrooms all the way up to Utah, where students are forbidden to bring even their own personal copy to school. 

So, yes, these are book bans.

The announcement also covers the elimination of the "book ban coordinator" who was to handle all these various cases.

The release also repeatedly describes book bans as a process of removing "age-inappropriate books" or even "age-inappropriate materials." 

That's a hell of a leap beyond the usual demand to remove a book because of "sexual content" or other Naughty Stuff. "Age-inappropriate" is a broad term that can be used to cover anything that authorities want to ban from schools. Anything you don't want children to hear about can be tagged "age-inappropriate."

All of this, of course, in the service of "the deeply rooted American principle that local control over public education best allows parents and teachers alike to assess the educational needs of their children and communities." Because the regime really believes in parental rights, unless those parents are LGBTQ or have LGBTQ kids or want their kids to learn about historic racism or support diversity, equality and inclusion or opposing banning books from the school or--well, they support just the parental right to agree with the administration. Otherwise, just hush. You don't need the right to disagree with the administration, just like your kid doesn't need the right to read anything that the People In Charge say they shouldn't read.