earlier this month a tennessee school
board voted unanimously ten to zero to
remove a book titled mouse it's a
graphic novel about the holocaust from
their eighth grade curriculum so eighth
graders were
using this book to learn about the
holocaust and apparently uh parents were
very upset about this and the school
board went along with their nonsense
here is what the author art
spiegelman had to say about this
ban well i've moved past
uh total bafflement
to try to be tolerant of
people who
may possibly not be nazis
maybe uh
because having read the transcript of
the uh school board meeting the problem
is sort of
bigger and stupider than that they
really genuinely focused listening to
this or reading this 20-minute uh
[Music]
document
they're totally focused on some bad
words that are in the book
like like damn i can't believe that
the word damn would get the book
jettisoned out of school on its own but
that's really where
the genuine focus seemed to be
yeah you know it's not like 8th graders
have ever used naughty naughty words the
idea of banning a book betting any book
is crazy to me but banning a book
because it has foul language is even
crazier especially since we live in
america there's foul language in mass
media everywhere but anyway um i think
it's really about the fact that the book
is about the holocaust
mouse is based on uh spiegelman's
interviews with his father a polish jew
who survived the holocaust in the
graphic novel jews are depicted as mice
hence the title and nazis are depicted
as cats
it is the first and only graphic novel
to win a pulitzer prize by the way and
the school board meeting just focused on
graphic imagery and crude language
they said this this is one of the school
board members
we are talking about teaching ethics to
our kids and it starts out with the dad
and son talking about when the dad lost
his virginity
it wasn't explicit but it was there
you see the naked pictures you see the
razor the blade where the mom is cutting
herself you see her laying in a pool of
her own blood
a lot of the cussing had to do with the
sun cussing out the father so i don't
really know how that teaches our kids
any kind of ethical stuff
so if you're
learning about slavery if you're
learning about the you know
the jim crow era
i mean
if you're learning about the insane
brutality that was carried out
you're learning about lynchings for
instance
how do you
sanitize that
how do you sanitize the brutality that
was carried out in various historical
events how do you just look whitewash is
that really teaching people history i
don't i don't really
i don't get that argument i don't care
about the foul language and i also just
don't agree with banning books it's
crazy especially coming from people who
claim that they're against cancel
culture was
yeah
we always hear this landed a free home
with a brave
jargon from that crowd
and the the fact that they don't realize
the irony in
banning a book
that's about the holocaust when the
nazis are so associated with
book burnings and bannings it's just
like the fact that this irony isn't lost
on these people it's just mind-blowing
or maybe it isn't right
like that could be the other part of it
um a lot of times like sometimes when
we're talking about the devs we're like
man can they be this bad can they be
this stupid or
no maybe it's just that this is what
they want and they're doing it on
purpose that's how i feel about these
parents maybe they do want to behave and
comport themselves in the same manner as
the freaking nazis i don't know how else
to take this this is insane it really is
insane i mean i remember reading anne
frank's diary when i was in elementary
school i can't remember which grade
exactly it was either fourth or fifth
grade but anne fra it's her diary right
there are pages in that diary dedicated
to her exploring like her sexuality and
stuff like that
i mean can you imagine if they ban anne
frank's diary from from school
curriculum that's insane it's insane and
i remember
that reading that
even at such a young age really helped
me comprehend
the holocaust you know help me
understand from a very personal
perspective
what had transpired how it had like
destroyed people's lives
it was it was a powerful diary which is
why it's a very well known
i could totally see the right wing
trying to ban that from school
curriculum
it's just crazy absolutely madness
my thing is if we're gonna do this just
banned gratuitous violence and horrors
from books can we start with the bible
yeah i mean that would be nice let's
just ban it throw it in the trash folks
we're done with it too much violence too
much sex get it out of here anna burning
it burn them all i think that was the
best point made thanks for watching the
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