From the Tom Woods Letter:
There’s a singer known as Pink, who after the reversal of Roe v. Wade made a point of emphasizing that she didn’t want pro-lifers as fans, and who later became a vaccine salesman for Pfizer.
She’s now spreading even more disinformation with the bogus story of Florida “banning books.”
She’s planning to distribute these allegedly banned books at her concerts.
People tried to explain to her that the “banned books” are in fact legitimately pornographic (this is not an exaggeration, even though I realize it sounds like it has to be).
Undeterred, she came back on Twitter with a short list of obviously non-pornographic books she claims are banned in Florida.
But again, she’s been (obviously quite willingly) snookered.
The truth of the matter goes well beyond the obvious, that removing books from a school library is hardly the same as “banning” them. The real point is this: there are no state-level book bans in Florida, period.
When even USA Today has to correct you, you’ve really gone wrong. Here’s what they said in August:
Many prominent people on social media…have circulated an image of 25 book titles listed on a piece of paper.
The image of the banned book list has been shared by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and Star Wars actor Mark Hamill on Aug. 21 and 22. Hamill’s tweet has racked up more than 30,000 retweets and 150,000 likes.
An Aug. 21 Facebook post featuring the image of the book list has been shared 80 times. The post reads, “Florida’s Current Banned Book List. Tragic How Many Totalitarian Third World States Exist in the USA in 2022.”
But the list is a fiction.
The paper “found no credible source for the list,” and in fact noted that five of the allegedly banned books (To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, Of Mice and Men, The Call of the Wild, and Lord of the Flies) are in fact explicitly endorsed in Florida’s guide to its standards for English language arts.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and a vocal opponent of Ron DeSantis, actually deleted her Tweet on this, because even she couldn’t defend it.
The Associated Press, too, denies the claim:
CLAIM: The state of Florida banned To Kill a Mockingbird in schools, along with a number of other popular titles on a “Banned Book List.”
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False.
If you’re curious about who’s really opposed to To Kill a Mockingbird, it’s leftists who comprise a movement called #DisruptTexts. Atticus Finch, according to them, is “problematic,” and “doesn’t see the need to publicly disrupt the legal system.”
They even partnered with Penguin Random House, a massive and mainstream publisher, in releasing a guide for replacing texts. It recommends replacing The Great Gatsby with Juliet Takes a Breath, which tells the story of a “queer Latinx woman” who interns under her favorite author, a feminist writer in Portland. (Isn’t it funny how people who on the one hand seem obsessed with “inclusivity” nevertheless use the term “Latinx,” which according to every single poll on the subject essentially nobody wants to be called?)
So you can rest easy, my friends. There’s no Nazi plan in Florida to ban books.
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