Some More News - Some More News: Book Bans Are For Weenies

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

Hi. The free speech absolutists on the American Right really love banning books. They want you to think that people and history they don't like don't exist. Get the world's news at https://ground.news/SMN to compare coverage and see through biased coverage. Subscribe for 40% off unlimited access through our link.Hosted by Cody JohnstonExecutive Producer - Katy StollDirected by Will GordhWritten by Alex SchmidtProduced by Jonathan HarrisEdited by John ConwayPost-Production Supervisor / Motion Graphics & VFX - John ConwayResearcher - Marco Siler-GonzalesGraphics by Clint DeNiscoHead Writer - David Christopher BellPATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.comYOUTUBE MEMBERSHIP: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlj0IzjSnNoduQF0l3VGng/join#somemorenews #BookBans #FreeSpeechSign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial and start selling today at https://shopify.com/morenewsPluto TV. Stream Now. Pay Never.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Huh. Now, keep getting targeted ads for coffins. Like all coffins. Something called Tomb for One More? Blow a Casket? An app called Crypt with no why, of course, whatever. Clocking in! Hey friends!

SUP! That stands for Snake Coup, which perfectly brings me to today's subject, book bans. Because here's some news, most U.S. States are either banning books or fighting. to un-band books or fighting to un-un-banned the books they banned in the first place. And hey, I know what you're thinking. What are books? I also had to Google them. I went down a whole rabbit hole, which is a phrase apparently referencing a book.

It turns out that books are assorted stacks of press tree pulp that have information on them. That information is often put there by nerds, which makes fearing or banning books real weeny stuff. You scared in nerd books? books? Come on. Banning them? Come on. Can't even burn them. At least book burners can get a fire going. Book banners have not proven that. You're not gonna pass that final four on Survivor, you book banners. Hey, did you know? Survivor's been on TV for 24 years and counting. They're going on season 50 like it's the price is right. Survivor is the book of network TV shows. Network TV being

the book of entertainment when you think about it, which I will not. So imagine if someone tried to ban survivor. They'd look like a real weenie, right? Case closed. Okay, but for good measure, let's talk about book bans a little more. Book bans are for weenies. Hey again. So if you live in the United States, you might live in an area where books are getting banned. There might even be some people fighting against those bans? Or maybe there aren't. Either way, we are a book band nation. The main folks tracking book bans are Penn America. Penn, the first three letters of the word penis, is an American nonprofit that's led the fight for global free expression for more than 100 years, in a truly legit way and in an on the right side of the Cold War way, and also not totally

in a legit way for Gaza lately. It's complicated and important and not quite the topic this week. The point being that Penn America is the least worst option for exploring book bans, which is why we will be using them a lot today. So for example, from just 2023 to 2024, Penn found more than 10,000 instances of public school book bans in the United States. Some of that is overlap, so this came out to over 4,000 unique titles banned across 220 public school districts. But still, the United States, aka a freedom country, banned a book over 10,000 times in a school, a K.A. a Freedom Factory, in just one academic year. While this problem was relatively specific to three very unsurprising states,

Florida, Texas, and yes, Iowa, this is a widespread problem. Public school districts in 29 states, funded with the tax dollars from everybody in those states, banned a book due to complaints from a tiny fraction of taxpayers in those states. Often, bigots. Let's be clear, there's no two sides here. A small group of people, usually bigots, are dictating what kids can and cannot read in these states. Really? In a peer-reviewed study, a researcher at UC Boulder indexed U.S. book bans from the years 2021 and 2022, and found a book was five times more likely

to be banned if the author was not white. Meanwhile, the American Library Association's figures say 45.5% of all ban attempts against titles in the 2022-2023 school year, targeted authors who identify as LGBTQ, or books with subject matter suggesting that LGBTQ people exist. Recent bands overwhelmingly target authors who are not a straight white man. They often do this targeting without much attention to the actual content of the book. And of course, along with people of color and people of gay, queer, etc., straightforward historical fiction about the Holocaust gets banned all over modern America. Most notably, and recently, there was Mouse, a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman about exactly how awful the Holocaust was. Around the year 2022, districts in Missouri,

Tennessee, Texas, and Iowa all banned Mouse. The Missouri District also banned several ordinary works of nonfiction about the Holocaust, straight up history books. Because, they're bigots, you see. And bigots have a great talent for making their hate everyone else's problem, no matter how few of them there are. That's why they love book bans, which are extremely easy to push without needing a lot of support. Book banning is, for some bizarre reason, one of the few ways a single person can actually make a difference in this country. If you don't have a billion dollars. Or let's not discriminate, a quarter of a million dollars. For example, in In 2021, State Representative Matt Krauss declared himself the one-man book police of Texas,

not book police in the fun way, like in Seinfeld, but rather in an all-chapter's-way. Matt sent a letter to every public school in Texas demanding to know whether any titles on a list of 850 books might be on their shelves. For the record, Representative Krause is both allowed to do this and not in charge of doing this. He is just one of the 150 members of the lower house of a state legislature. Less than 1% of one half of a state legislature. He's barely allowed to make you read an email he sends you. But with that one letter, Matt Krause rallied every crank and kook in Cowboy Land.

The very next night, shouting wing nuts and wang dang doodles brigaded a school librarian at a random board meeting in San Antonio. Within a week, staff members at that same school asked their librarians if there is porn in the library because they heard that through the grapevine, entirely because one legislator acted like there might be evil books there, and hey, maybe porn is an evil book. Matt Krauss vibed his way into disrupting statewide public and school library services single-handedly. It took two more years for that Texas lower house to pass an actual bill banning books. But by the time they got around to passing that law, it was sort of unnecessary. Local districts already yanked hundreds of books off shelves to meet local complaints or get ahead of the local complaints they predicted.

And after the law passed, districts and legislators one upped it. A private school in Houston canceled their scholastic book fair just because that fair might sell the wrong book to somebody. Meanwhile, one Texas school board defined cartoon butts as excessive. content and cartoon frontal nudity as unacceptable, which is good to know. No hanging cartoon Dong in Texas, but you know they got those cheeks. That town is called Katie, by the way. So does she... She doesn't own a town, right? That's... No, she does not own a town. Anyway, that Texas bill also requires booksellers to index and rate every book they sell based on sexual

content or else not be allowed to do business with schools at all. Penn America helped get that blocked in court, so that's something, at least. Except, book publishers have very little patience for printing and shipping a bunch of books that any individual state legislator might pretend our pornoes to pander to their base. These companies know the next ban is around the corner, so they play it safe. They print fewer copies of fewer titles. So even if a law gets reversed, there's no way to quickly undo the damage. And remember, this is all because Matt sent everyone a memo, and it's still going.

On the heels of all those previous laws and bans and book fare cancellations, state lawmakers are now drafting a streamlined book ban system that can censor the entire state's library shelves in one go. Of course, Texas is not alone, despite what they claim. They say they're the, they're not alone. A similar back and forth wasted everyone's time in Iowa. Iowa's state government passed a book ban law that was so vaguely drafted, it left many schools confused whether any books were allowed anymore. Then a lawsuit blocked the law from taking effect,

but then a follow-up, appellate case reinstated the law less than a year later. And in those various stages of limbo, Iowa's librarians had to unshellve, reshive, and re-unshelve all of their copies of more than 3,400 titles. See, it doesn't even matter if these bands stick or are legal. Simply causing the chaos is enough for these freaks. It's about destabilizing and punishing anyone who dares to promote progressive ideas. They're like if the Joker fought the concept of learning. Why so curious? I can't stress enough how this is just a handful of people making everyone suffer. In Florida, a state I pray doesn't have a town called like Warmboville or something. A school district in 2024 banned some of the works of Tony Morrison, Kurt Vonnegut,

and Ein RAND, as well as books like The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Handmaid's Tale. Yes, I guess we're gonna defend Ein Rann books as well. I don't like it any more than you do, but hey, that's books. Also banned were a graphic adaptation of Anne Frank's diary and Sophie's choice. because if you pretend the Holocaust didn't exist, well, maybe it'll go away. But what's absolutely turd wild, or maybe you expect this already, is that at least half of these bands were spearheaded by just two people, one being a single guy with zero political power, who had only lived in Florida for a few years and has one teenage kid.

This guy named Bruce Friedman, who apparently has multiple versions of that shirt, is telling every kid in Clay County, Florida, what they can and can't read. Bruce moved out of New York City after deciding its schools brainwashed his kid. I mean, so you gotta move, right? What other choice do you have? Talking to your child? Letting them be their own person?

Nice try, wokeism. Instead, Friedman relocated his tragically mind-viriced family to Clay County and then lodged hundreds of book ban attempts in his new location. in his new location. Good job moving out of a place you hate to a new place you also hate, I guess. And so, along with just one other person, Bruce Friedman is personally waging this weird war on books.

Florida's school administrators spent 10 to 15 hours per week just dealing with two cranks. Again, a few people get offended, and everyone has to move the world for them. Over in another terrifyingly phallic state named Idaho, libraries are now having to create entirely new physical sections due to book complaints. That's thanks to a new law that requires them to have a special adult section for certain books. Yes, the same way video stores used to have those little porn areas.

The library now has to ensure that minors don't step into this special area lest they get in trouble. Some places are having to put books behind the counter like their cool cigarettes. What's more, if they fail to do this within 60 days, they have to pay the person who complained $250 for complaining about a book. In a library. I need to stress this. That's not a fine that the library pays to the state. The library pays the complainer. That's a bounty.

any random Idahoan can bully out of their library if they catch them in a busy couple of months. Because while this is absurd in itself, a lot of libraries simply aren't big enough to do this. I mean, are there even big libraries in Idaho? Pop quiz, name two large cities in Idaho. You lose if your response included second Boise. So if you're an understaffed small town library

now required to add an adult's only section, but can't afford to guard it or even build the extra area. What are you to do? We decided to become an adult only library. Tough call. Yeah. By Sherry Shalene. Safely, prepare ourselves to receive these fines. That's in Donnelly, Idaho, a town with the kind of population you're imagining when you imagine Idaho town population, where the library's size is a grand total of 1,024. square feet. I mean, look at it. That's like the size of a Chipotle dining area. This makes it

physically impossible for Donnelly's library to comply with the law, which makes it legally impossible to be a library for children, children being like the main people who go to libraries. But now it's an adult's only library, I guess. A parent or guardian is required to give permission for their child to enter the Donnelly library. Why? Because Idaho legislators passed a law against Idaho-sized libraries, on top of offering a gig-work version of Boba-Fet bounties to anybody who finds a black or queer book in the digital catalog and times their complaint right.

It's creepy. It's censorship. I don't like it. I think I might hate it. But hey now, Cody, hey, hey, yo, Cody. There's also some good news here, because there are, at least some states that realize how whack these bans are, bogus even. Last winter, the state of New Jersey passed a law banning book bands. You are banned bans! They also protected librarians from facing civil or criminal

charges for the demonic act of putting a book on a library shelf. And this is just the latest, greatest example. The first state leading this charge was Illinois. In 2023, their Pritzker-pilled government passed a law that withdraws state funding. funding from any library that bans a book for partisan or doctrinal reasons. This law inspired not just New Jersey, but Minnesota, Maryland, and Washington State. Washington State also took this in an interesting direction by focusing on a specific trend in recent book bans. Their law opposes book bans that target a protected class, such as people's race or sexual orientation.

Because we need that, it seems. States are also on their way, like Massachusetts, which is working on a law that, along with protecting librarians, which apparently we need to do, would incorporate the American Library Association's Bill of Rights. That ensures libraries would have access to books and no material be excluded. That law would also make a clear distinction about who picks books to go into circulation and lay out a process to object to certain books. And while we're talking about good news, it's worth noting that book bans make books objectively

scientifically, way cooler. Remember those weak-ass parental advisory stickers? Those sold millions of CDs back in the day, and those CDs weren't even banned. Bookstores do solid sales numbers during the annual Band Book Week. The slew of American bands on Mouse back in 2022 also made Mouse one of 2022's bestsellers. This kind of rebellious reading goes back many decades. When Australia a band of the novel Portnoy's complaint in the 1970s, underground bootlegs of the book became national icons and museum pieces. To be clear, book bands are terrible. This is not the best way to market books, let alone get books in kids' hands. Also, book bands can wreck the careers or emotional lives of the authors on the receiving end. But it's nice to know that they are ineffective at the

very least, and no one should ever do one unless they're weeners. So, hey, Cool, there are heroes on both sides. And just like that Star War, there is so much more for us to cover. But first, enjoy some ads. Ads are not books. I promise Texas will never ban our precious, precious ads. Unless one queer person holds up a can of Bud Light, probably. Boy, hope that doesn't happen.

So we can get money. Will we get money? Let's see. GADZUCS. That's my pitch for the name of a new podcast featuring Josh Gadd and Jason Manzukas. Anyhousies, ground newsies. It's a website and app we sought out to sponsor us. Given that we here at the show to use them every week to track the latest news stories

and how the various political sides are covering those stories. For example, I just read that the Big Bootylicious GOP bill is going to add $4.1 trillion to the deficit over the next decade according to the Congressional Budget Office. I've never cared about the deficit too much, but conservatives ostensibly do, which is why I was stunned, stunned, I say, to see that right-leaning outlets, at least when I looked it up, basically weren't covering it at all. Funny that, maybe because borrowing costs being driven up for years to come would make certain people look bad? He was to say. Josh Gad? Maybe his current silence is definite.

get these headlines and more over at ground.news slash SMN. With that link, you'll save 40% off unlimited access, which gets you the biased distribution of every major news story, a factuality chart, and will clue you in as to who broke the news in the first place. That's 40% off the vantage plan at ground.news slash SMN. I've been working with ground news for a long time now, and when you try it for yourself, you'll see why. The link is in the description, and now to check the internet to see if the internet

to see if Jason Manzoukis has released a statement about all this yet, okay? I just, I can't, I can't believe he hasn't spoken out yet. Come on, Zougas! Get it together! When I first started my podcast, Clone Life with Katie Clone, it felt like I had to figure everything out on my own. Scripts, set up, filming schedule, trying to remember if I'm KD1 or KD12. Well, fortunately, I found a new tool that has changed,

the game. Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, including Red Bull and Dr. Squatch toothpaste. Two things I definitely combined when I came up with this podcast concept. They get you set up with your own design studio, email, and social media campaigns, and they've got world-class expertise and everything from managing inventory to international shipping. Katie 563 is loving Thailand, so I'm told. Shopify has taken care of so many of my business hassles that I can spend my time focusing on an upcoming interview with Katie 52, the one that speaks in a British accent for some reason. So turn your big business idea into

with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash more news. Go to shopify.com slash more news. Gonna say that one more time as Katie 101, which I've designated as sporty Katie, even though she hates it. Shopify.com slash more news. I'm going to let you on a secret. They're all just me. Don't tell my listeners.

But yeah, they're all just me. All right, settle down. We're back. We, as in you, have been watching me, as in royally, we. Talk about all the book bands happening in the country. And before we step further into that abyss of turds and bigger turds, we should probably ask, what are the basics of a book band? What are the steps of getting a book banned? We mentioned that Massachusetts is trying to create an actual framework.

around who picks books and how to object to those books. And that's because, at the moment, book banning is simpler than you'd think. In most states, with book ban legislation, a parent of a student simply files a complaint. These complaint systems can be online or on paper. I'm sure J.K. Rowling uses a lot of owls to whine about trans people existing. She's got some real whimsical hate. In a lot of cases, you don't even have to be the parent of a child in that school district, or even enrolled in public school, which is, perhaps, bad.

After that, the process continues to vary. If the complaint goes to a school or a district, either the board members or a designated committee reviews the material. The material usually gets yoinked off of shelves in the meantime because books are guilty until proven innocent. Not to mention judged by their covers, so sad. It should also be noted that some of these book bans are temporary or not literally bans.

This is according to a very fair and balanced-ish study by the right-leaning Education Freedom Institute, titled The Book Ban Mirage. Sounds very reasoned. But in this very clearly politically aligned studies defense, they are technically correct in that these banned books are sometimes still available. To quote the study, and I apologize for the length here, but I'm grateful we get to go full screen now. The advocacy organization, Pan America, is the primary source for, claims that there is widespread book banning underway in American schools. But Penn America's claims hinge on a definition of ban that most Americans would not recognize. In order to assess Penn America's claims by the common definition of banned, i.e. made

unavailable, we reviewed the 2021 to 2022 index of banned books against online school library card catalogs. We find that 74% of the books that Penn America lists as banned are listed as available in the same districts from which Pan America says those books were banned. So there you have it. Book bans never happened. Why are we even making this video? Ads or wait, wait, wait, wait. Maybe, maybe let's keep reading into it. Books, reading is good. See, this study's main point is two things. One, that books often banned are later unbanned and two, that some of these books

weren't literally banned, but rather restricted. The latter is a semantics game, obviously. It's like the lowest form of argument that ignores all context, and coincidentally, something conservatives love to use as discussed in our semi-recent episode about some guy. But yeah, if a book is restricted, meaning that you have to get it special

from behind a desk or an adult section of a library, it's not technically banned. But it's being made harder for kids to access freely and without having to go to an adult. So if a kid, for example, felt a tad bit gay but didn't want to tell everyone about it, they're probably way less comfortable finding literature if it means talking to their, perhaps, conservative and or abusive parents.

That's what this is about, making information and learning freely available for kids without permission, allowing a kid to find a book while browsing and discover something about themselves or the world. And even when you temporarily ban a book, you are not only suppressing the sales of that book, but closing that window for kids. So, yeah, this is all to say that this study about the book ban Mirage is, in itself, some kind of fake image, fake image, a fake image. What's the word? Like if you were in the desert, you saw something that wasn't real, they named a desert-themed casino after it?

Uh, Caesar's Palace? Sure. Anyway, that's the nuts and oaves of book bans. But it's also worth talking about the history of them, because learning is... Says here fun. That might be a typo. It's more that there's a certain pattern to book bans we need to point out. In some ways, book bans are pretty new, but in other ways, they are the opposite of new. In conclusion, America is a land of contrast, et cetera.

The U.S. actually started banning books more than a century before there was a U.S. The first migrants from Jolly Old E, England-E, sprinted off their sailboats in feverish search of books to ban, it seems. In that they banned Native American culture in the sense that they destroyed their oral history and art and customs and, you know, people. Then they kept searching for bold new books to ban. Was a book being black in Jamestown, Virginia? Nah. Was a book being gay underneath Plymouth Rock? Nah, although if it was, that's totally the book version of a power bottom.

Instead, in the year 1650, there was a guy named William Pinchon who lived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He used a bird quill or block printer or whatever to write and publish the meritorious price of our redemption. This was a pamphlet about theology that basically said that anyone could get into heaven so long as they follow Christian teachings, which was apparently Marxist lib crap because the colony's Puritan Calvinist majority thought God was a little more picky. than that, Pinchon was called a heretic and his pamphlet was banned and burned. This is considered

the first book ban in what would become a United States. That pamphlet ban and pamphlet burning was cruel. It was also effective. Only four copies of that pamphlet survived today. You've never heard of William Pinchon unless you're a dweeb. His ideas died with his burned and banned pamphlet. And this sort of word lockdown continued and ramped up after we created a United States and a Constitution and a First Amendment. Oh, if you thought the First Amendment would have like prevented book bans, well, you are just adorable. Turns out, Americans shit-canned most of the Constitution's rights and freedoms as soon as possible, starting with our second president. Of course, that choice to shit-can human values before the 1700s even ended is less

weird when you remember our first president. That guy was so bloodthirsty, the native Seneca people nicknamed him their language's word for town destroyer, like he's a fucking Thor villain. Also, don't try to paint a mural of our first president doing those crimes and other crimes because a school board will order you to cover that mural up, even if none of the facts in the mural are inaccurate. Who boy, America. Home of the redacted. Moving on to the mid-1800s and southern states banned every from abolitionist handbills to the novel Uncle Tom's cabin. I guess in hopes that they could keep plantation slavery going if nobody read criticisms of it. And if you live in a northern state,

I need you to not get all smug about this. I know that's hard for you. But in 1873, the northern dominated post-Civil War federal government passed a law called the Comstock Act, which stayed on the books for more than 60 years. The Comstock Act banned two things, mailing any obscene, lewd, or lascivious book, pamphlet, picture, paper, print, and any article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of conception or procuring of abortion. Ah, shucks. More like the Comsock Act. Ooh, yeah. Prevention of conception? Better not send any pictures of J.D. Vance, am I right? Zinga! Oh, that dude dries the canals faster than the dust bowl. But Kauza! But seriously, J.D. Vance's image makes your genitals ineffective. Okay?

He also would have loved this act, which included a ban on any information on how to get contraception or an abortion. That was the Comstock Act. Also, is the Comstock Act? Because when I said that J.D. would love this act, I wasn't speculating. He and his boss have considered and are considering bringing some version of this back. Cool. Cool. You see how the history of stuff kind of matters? You'd think 200-year-old laws shouldn't matter, but they do. After all, book bans have largely been enacted by bigots who think they can slow down progress by censoring any mention of it.

In 1959, Alabama banned a book called The Rabbit's Wedding, because one rabbit in it had white fur, and the other rabbit in it had black fur. Now, okay, you might think that this is some elevated Jordan Peel-ass metaphor. children's story about mixed race relationships. But I read it. For some reason, I read the book. It's just about rabbits. It's like, it's like 20 pages about rabbits. There's two rabbits getting married that happened to be different fur colors. And that terrified people. And sure enough, eight years later, the Supreme Court would legalize heterosexual interracial marriages. The rabbit's wedding was inadvertently predicting the future and the bigot subconsciously knew it and feared it.

I'm guessing that most of us can't even imagine what it's like to be upset over interracial marriage or rabbits. But for Alabama State Senator E.O. Edens, this book was propaganda for integration and intermarriage and should be taken off the shelves and burned. Imagine that. Imagine someone being furious and wanting to burn a book about two bunnies, wanting to have a bunny wedding.

I mean, it's a sham wedding because animals have no souls, except my dog, but the gesture is nice. Also, souls don't exist. Or if they do, I don't know what this character thinks anymore about anything. Point is, this is just one sad little dude trying desperately to paddle backward on the river of progress, and yet not a single lesson would be learned from this. Sad little dudes continue to try and ban and control books

as if that'll keep kids from being gay or trans or like aware of slavery or racism. We've done it for so long, Alabama schools forced their classes to use history textbooks that said good things about slavery well into the 1970s. In freaking 2018, seven years ago, a group of San Antonio parents noticed their children doing homework that required them to make a balanced view of human slavery, literally making them list positive aspects of enslaving another race. And in 2012, a Georgia school gave out math homework with a word problem where you had to multiply

how many beatings a slave got if you expand a beating rate of two beatings per day across a longer time frame. Oh God, that might be the most insidious one. It's just so casual. Like the slave beatings are just incidental units like eggs or pizza slices. Not to mention that it's being used for math,

something that already sucks, Imagine taking racist math, slave whip algebra 101, calculating how the path of that lash could match a sine wave for a trigonometry demo. Sorry, bad tangent. The worst of all trigonometric functions. So we're just making math jokes now. That's really who we want to be.

Who even gave you a math book monkey anyway? My point here is that historically, book bands have always been silly and sad and embarrassing. Basically any book where human beings show empathy has been threatened. Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, and the Canterbury Tales. Yes, the Canterbury Tales. Apparently, a set of pranks and fart jokes among Catholic monks

really freaked people out. We should, of course, mention the 1950s, when the Red Scare's right-wing authoritarians targeted anything that felt Marxist to them. McCarthyites also attempted a more fundamental reshaping of American education by going after civics textbooks and history textbooks. They accused those textbooks of devious crimes, like acknowledging that Franklin Delano Roosevelt existed

and had been president recently for more terms than anybody else in history. McCarthyites also accused textbooks of being a Stalinist plot to unite the world under one globalist government if they mentioned that the United Nations just got founded. Again, embarrassing. Always embarrassing. That's kind of the point here. Nobody has looked back and said,

Oh, I'm so glad that book was banned. There are no book banning heroes, especially not now. While modern book bands share most of the same weenie shit we just talked about, they are a tad different. For starters, today's book banners have a fixation on targeting new stuff. What I mean is that book bans of the past often targeted older books, even for that time. But almost every modern book band demonizes a contemporary book.

Don't get me wrong, they still play the hits. Tony Morrison continues to do Hall of Fame band numbers for her 1970s thought crime. Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn enjoys a special status as a target because it both prints the N-word a lot and criticizes the beliefs of people who wish they were allowed to say that word.

But beyond those outliers, modern book banners only want to crush new books. According to Penn America, in the 2021-2020 school year, seven of the top 10 most banned books in America were published in 2015 or later. And out of more than a thousand books banned that year, almost half of them were young adult fiction.

This is far more insidious for one very simple reason. These are the books that kids actually want to read. Like Catcher in the Rye, ah, who gives a shit? What is that even about? Baseball, bread, shooting a guy? But by going after modern fiction, these adults are cutting kids off from the new culture they most likely want to be a part of because those adults don't have any better culture to offer instead. It's indoctrination very clear and simple. It's also especially harmful to kids without the socioeconomic wealth to buy those fun new books. Another way book bans are different now is that technology makes it way more efficient to do. We mentioned that. almost all of Florida's book bands come from two people, one being New York's least favorite son, Bruce Friedman. The other Florida book band All-Star is an Escambia County schoolteacher named Vicki Baggett, who apparently uses her downtime to scour libraries for sexy passages she can read to school boards.

Let's talk about some new porn books that I can still find so easily. Once and future at West Florida High, Gwen was naked, chest heaving, curling fingers into Ari's hair while her legs trembled, and that's pubic hair, by the way. Oh, cool. Thanks for clearing up that hair thing. Vicky Baggett, or Baggett, I don't know, I don't care, has tremendous concern about the contents of Florida's books. And in all 178 of her complaints, has stated that she read each book in its entirety. And yet this astute literary critic was literally, just copy-pasting her concerns from a website called Book Looks. A book banner who doesn't like to write their own thoughts? Who would have thought it? If you're wondering, Book Looks has no content

beyond flagging titles for objectionable content, including profanity, nudity, and sexual content. They're nothing but a literary hall monitor and the perfect resource for anyone who wants to ban books and doesn't read. And this is how a few people can bang out all these bands. not because they are passionate readers, but ideological trolls. As writer Tom Lay observed for Defector.com in 2025,

our nation's cranks used to have to do a lot of labor, printing physical leaflets, calling landline phones, mailing things through the U.S. mail with stamps that probably have black people or queer people or manatees or some other woke group on them. I mentioned manatee stamps because you will love using them or receiving them. them. But these days, you don't need to do any of that. You can just sit in the bath, thumbing on your phone, running your thumbs through your phone's hair, pubic hair. And so we're past

the point where it's 100% necessary for an astro-turfed right-wing billionaire to drive something like book bands. The book-band germ has gone airborne. Don't get me wrong, that's in part because of larger groups making that happen. Like, it should be noted that book looks is shutting down, And according to the site, that's because, quote, God called us to this work in 2022, but after much prayer and reflection, it has become apparent that his work for us here is complete and that he has other callings for us. God, famous hater of books. Of course, when they say God has other callings for them, I'm pretty sure they actually mean conservative dark money, because it turns out that book looks was founded by a member of Moms for Liberty,

named Emily Makish. You know Moms for Liberty, right? We've certainly talked about them enough. Short explanation is that they are not really for liberty, nor are they a small group of moms so much as a Heritage Foundation-funded political tool. Emily MAKish claims that Moms for Liberty has nothing to do with booklooks.org.

It's just, I guess, incidental to those other enthusiastic, coordinated, anti-democratic book bans led by that group. Moms for Liberty bans so many books in so many districts. They're now banning new books about the topic of book bans in clear retaliation against people who've done journalism against book bans. Moms for Liberty folks, who helped Bruce Friedman ban the illustrated version of the Diary of Anne Frank from his local Florida schools. And coincidentally, sent out a newsletter titled with the quote, He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.

That is, a Hitler quote. They quoted Hitler in an aspirational way. And I'm not sure why I'd do this, but putting aside the Hitler of that quote, it's still very telling. They are stating very clearly that they are trying to own the youth in order to manipulate the future. This is not, as they love to pretend to be, a handful of concerned parents. This is a funded and coordinated political movement of individuals. indoctrination. This is why a lot of America's local and state book bans are carbon copies of

each other. Remember those Pan America stats from the beginning of the episode? Many of the book bands pen totaled up in 2023 and 2024 were bans of the same books in new places. Book banners aren't avid readers. They're not banning from a place of fandom. They're hopping on the suburban mom version of 8chan, run by Republican operatives, to find the next title, somebody's passing around for banning. It's so clearly not about the books themselves, but rather a broad push against the libs. Remember Matt Krause? That Texas legislator who asked every library in Texas if they circulate any of his least favorite 850 books? It should be noted that he didn't explain why he picked those books. And in fact, he and his aides have

refused any opportunity to talk about it. Do you think he read all those books? books? There's actually a very telling detail in his list, which is mostly made up of left-leaning or diverse authors or ideas. You know, a book that opposes book burning by an author who happened to be gay, or a book that describes the history and origins of Kinsigneras by a scholar who happens to be Mexican and Jewish. But there's one thrilling exception. A book titled Cynical Theories, How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender and Identity. and why this harms everybody. That book is actually a right-wing critique of leftist language.

You might recognize one of the embarrassing authors, James Lindsay. Because this book critiques leftist language, that means it also uses a lot of lefty words as an example. And so Matt Krauss wants to ban it. So it sure looks like this Texas legislator, or whichever billionaire's employees wrote his list for him, compiled it by doing a control-f search for any word, they didn't like, and this one got flagged with all the rest.

That's it. You might recognize this as the Doge method or the Trump method, whichever you prefer. They don't read books. Of course they don't. They don't care about their context. They are just trying to erase words they think are dangerous to their political goals. It's so sad and obvious and luckily doesn't appear to be working as well as they'd like it to. That said, it is working enough to suck. And so, after the break, we're going to talk more about that. But first, ads. Capitalism. If you write the word capitalism in a book, there's a decent chance a Texas legislator will accidentally ban it. But here, we are free. Rick Perry, watch him, he's a summer of cinema. That's right. The summer of cinema keeps on

chuglin along. When will it end? Who can say? You'll never want it to end, though, with some of these hot action titles they've got over on Pluto TV. Movies you know and love, like Gladiator, Beverly Hills Cop, Tamagachi Death Squad, Mission Impossible, Ghost Protocol, the ancient Manticore Assassins, Good Burger, McGruff opens the trench coat rated NC17, plug and play with kid and play, Shazam, the Sinbad Genie movie they finally just ended up making, four brothers, Star Trek, Star Trek, Stranger Things, the College Years, a prequel, bulletproof giraffe, tango and cash two, it takes two to cash and tango. and stealth. Bring the action with you and stream for free on all of your favorite devices. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never, for brothers.

This ad is brought to you by Veeve Healthcare, the makers of Appritude, cabotegrivere. You never skip your SPF, and you carry hand sanitizer like an accessory. But what are you doing for HIV prevention? One way to help protect yourself from HIV is Appritude, a prescription medicine used to reduce the risk of getting HIV in adults and adolescents weighing at least 77 pounds.

You must be HIV negative to receive Apprude and get tested before each injection. If you think you were exposed to HIV or have flu-like symptoms, tell your doctor right away. More HIV testing may be needed. Appritude does not prevent other sexually transmitted infections. Practice safer sex to reduce your risk. Appritude as scheduled. Missing doses increases your HIV risk. Don't take Appritude if allergic to it or taking certain medicines that may interact. Tell your doctor about your

medical conditions, liver problems, and mental health. Serious side effects include allergic reactions or rash liver problems and depression. If these occur, get medical help right away. The most common side effect is injection site reaction. Bring your A-game and talk to your doctor. More at Appritude.com or call 1-888-240-0-340. Welcome back to all, even the leftist scum who hate America. We were talking about the history of losers trying to ban books and how it's exactly like the losers still trying to ban books, with the exception of today's losers being part of a concerned and ideological effort made possible by the magic of the World Wide Web. And while so far, book bans in America have often been reversed and don't seem particularly

effective at holding back progress, they certainly aren't harmless. At best, they are a waste of everyone's time and money, more than you might realize. In Texas alone, recent legal challenges to 1,470 books were projected to cost taxpayers at least $3.6 million in book cop costs and administrative time suck. Florida school districts spend roughly one staff salary worth of money every year to comply with book ban laws. But at worst, these bans are directly hurting kids and libraries, even before there is a ban. Book bans hurt libraries just by existing. As we mentioned before, there are tons of examples of libraries yonking books off their shelves ahead of possible bans,

just to try to survive as a library and institution and source of local jobs. Before Texas legislator Matt Krauss got any actual laws passed, a San Antonio school district ordered the removal of 400 books from their shelves. They self-censored and pre-complied in hopes of protecting their funding and their time from their state's predatory government. How's that for a Mirage Education Freedom Institute? Mirage! It's Mirage! I knew I would remember, and I finally did. It's Mirage.

That's the word. I digress. Remember, in at least one state, they put bounties on libraries that anyone can collect. There is a fear in the air. Libraries are already having to deal with doge-brained dildos who think every public service needs to make a profit. They certainly don't need the added stress. So Texas administrators are trying to stop the bleeding by taking Dr. Seuss and Judy Blume off shelves before anyone forces them, which they eventually did anyway, of course.

Pre-removing books, by the way, artificially deflates the statistics on how many books America bans. You gotta wait until you're forced. You gotta get those sous numbers up. Librarians in many other states are self-banning in another way by adding potentially banable books to their usual process for culling old and worn-out books. In regular times, in a good society, libraries actually destroy lots of books. Library books physically wear out, after all. They get smelly or get moldy. Pages get torn out to make blunts.

Other books get weeded out, pun intended, for being an obsolete edition. All of that's good. It's good practice to pulp or even gulp burn those books. But a lot of librarians are starting to sneak books like Antango Makes 3 into their pile of weeded and called books. Even though that gay penguin book is so new, you might remember it being in the the news because people got mad about it. Oh hey, kind of reminds you of that interracial rabbit book, doesn't it? In that a bunch of people freaked out about natural social progress as told via cute animals, even though that, even the bunny one wasn't even about it, but this

penguin one is. But again, animals don't have souls. All right, I want to make that clear. But also their souls aren't real. Again, I'm confused about this character. But the point is that book is the only one we know about because of a lawsuit. There are no doubt scores of libraries quietly self-banning books by using this loophole. And while that does seem cowardly and shitty to do, for some librarians, this is simply an act of self-preservation. Parents and educators packed into the theater of the North Hundred in Borges Regional High School for the latest school board meeting and hurled harsh words at administrators and librarians over a handful of books on library shelves.

Police escorted him outside. Moments later, he left quietly. The controversy over embattled school librarian Martha Hickson and her refusal to yank illustrated sex ed books like let's talk about it off the shelves highlighted a deep divide. Yep, nothing more American than a violent dude wearing a Punisher's skull while shaking hands with the cops after threatening a sweet old library. lady for trying to provide kids' sex education.

So one of the other consequences to book bans is that a lot of librarians are getting called pedophiles for putting books on shelves and wearing cardigans and otherwise doing their jobs. You call someone a pedophile for being a decades-long best friend of a convicted pedophile and sex trafficker who was sent a weird pedophile birthday card from the person you're calling a pedophile,

not for cardigans. And man, that's just, it's just so sad. Imagine, furiously raging at a fucking librarian. What kind of upbringing and ideology leads someone to that? This is all sad. No other word. These people are sad. There's no nice way to say this, but assuming they aren't just racists or political operatives, the people pushing for book bans are ultimately just people who don't understand books or nuance or context or learning. There's a general anti-intellectualism and an anti-art movement in this country, and it's

being led by people who simply feel challenged by complex ideas and lack the humility to just shut the fuck up. Going back to Bruce Friedman and his efforts to ban the illustrated diary of Anne Frank, his reasoning was, of course, because there was gay stuff in that book. He went out and said in public, quote, the fact that little Anne Frank once had some lesbian thoughts that made their way into her diary, does that help a kid learn the horrors of Holocaust or inhumanity? No. So what is it helping the kid learn. As far as I'm concerned, it's grooming. To be fair to this weiner, he only wanted to ban the illustrated version of the diary. Friedman even went on to tell that reporter that he actually loves the book itself and was moved by the diary of Anne Frank when he

first read it as a nine-year-old. But then he says his big takeaway from it is that our cruelty to each other comes from, quote, not just the Nazis, it's the human condition. Oh, so like, I don't want to be mean, but I think Bruce Friedman is... Just a stupid guy? Like, put nicely, a dumb fuck. He apparently read the diary of Anne Frank, a book about only one child getting hunted and killed by only the Nazis, and no other characters except for some non-Nazis who protected Anne from Nazis as best they could, and the moral he took from it was not just Nazis or bad,

and he wants to ban a version of it because he thinks that the fact that Anne Frank was slightly bi-curious isn't relevant to the story about the Nazis, who specifically hated and slaughtered people for being gay. And therefore, any images of that should be banned. I know hypocrisy is dead. Six feet under. But it's incredible when you remember all the right-wing accusations of nanny state liberals policing words and giving out participation trophies and being overly inclusive. And then one empty trash bag stands up and declares that a book should be banned for everyone,

because it made him scared and confused. And yet, conservatives want to go off on trigger warnings? You know what trigger warnings don't do? They don't ban the content. Trigger warnings are not bans. They're pretty much just information. Banning books is more like a trigger surrender. Point is, these are just incurious, angry people.

But because they are all so fucking loud about their ignorance, we apparently need to listen to, and accommodate them. That's the thing. Beyond all the legal steps and school meetings and tedious paperwork, book banners share a common trait of never shutting the fuck up. Everybody banning books perceives themselves

to be free speech warriors because they think free speech means forcing your speech on other people at all times. Ironically, the book banners are louder and stubborner than every author they're banning. If a district says Anne Frank matters for her Holocaust insights, a book banner turns around and says the problem is the lesbian stuff. If the school says one lesbian-ish thought isn't a thought crime, a book banner says the librarians are pedophiles. If the librarians aren't pedophiles, the book banner keeps saying it until the librarians quit their jobs in fear, and the police have to restrain school board meeting attendees before shaking their hands in the hallway. All cops are courteous, two bastards. There is a way to combat this, but unfortunately,

Fortunately, it requires work. I hate to sound like a bumper sticker here, but ignorance is contagious. These people are essentially pushing their ignorance on others by forcing libraries and schools to make kids as ignorant as they are. It's a cycle. Someone grows up with a textbook that says Jesus used dinosaurs to free the slaves, but the slaves were like, no thanks. And then that person demands that those textbooks stay in circulation.

So the goal here is to stop the space. like any contagion. We got a Larry Fishburn this, baby! We need to push elected school board members and professional educators to update our curriculum. And the number one way to do that is to relocate the power back to those people, and not some asshole from New York City who thinks his new Florida County, named for a slave owner, by the way, is getting turned lesbian by libraries. So, hey, you.

Yes, you, with the hat. Hey, have you ever thought about running for school board? Creepy cranks sure have, but also, no one likes creepy cranks. So if you or someone you know runs against a creep crank, you might win. And then you can help improve the required books. For more than a decade, until around 2018, Texas classrooms used a normal sounding history book called Prentice Hall Classics, a history of the United States. That book included this paragraph.

Quote, While there were cruel masters who maimed or even killed their slaves, although killing and maiming were against the law in every state, there were also kind and generous owners. The institution was as complex as the people involved. Though most slaves were whipped at some point in their lives, a few never felt the lash. Nor did all slaves work in the fields.

Some were house servants or skilled artisans. Many may not have even been terribly unhappy with their lot, for they knew no other. Oh, neat. Way to both sides of slavery school history book. See, see, you see, see, see, okay, so see. So some slaves maybe weren't terribly unhappy because they didn't know what it was like to not be a slave. Heck, you know what? some slaves might have been merely pretty unhappy.

That book never should have been in a classroom. And now it's not. The publishing company no longer prints it and actually uses that passage I quoted as an internal example of how not to cover slavery in future books. That, sadly, is a whim. Your state and your district could do that same good thing for yourselves if necessary,

because there's a lot more work to be done. For example, as of 2014, there were 14 U.S. states spending tax dollars to teach creationist curriculum. That is the actual problem, not fucking gay penguin adoption. Let the gay penguins have a kid. It's fine.

Another word for gay is happy. It's just happy feet. Calm the fuck down. But if you can't run for school board because you're lazy or have a bunch of priors, There is one other big thing we can all do. We really need to normalize allowing experts and professionals and artists to do their jobs. Even before Trump, there's this weird growing push, perhaps related to the internet,

where ignorant people seem to think that they should get a say and stuff they know nothing about. I know this sounds kind of mean, but I think it's important that we mock those people. I think it's important that ignorance is once again shameful. so that those people might finally shut the fuck up and go read a book. This mockery can come in many, many fun ways. Back in 2011, for example, a publishing company released a censored version of Huckleberry Finn replacing the N-word with slave.

In response, a group of people created a robot edition of the book, as in replacing the black character Jim with a literal robot in order to mock the idea of watering down the racism depicted in that story. Or, more recently, down in Florida, this happened. Movies like a film highlighting Ruby Bridges, integrating schools, and books like this one, centering a same-sex penguin couple, have come under scrutiny over the past few years after being flagged for being potentially inappropriate content. But now, some Floridians have filed complaints that the Bible is full of inappropriate content. That Bible ban is being supported by at least one pastor.

The point obviously not being that the Bible is bad, but rather that book bans. are. Old Ronnie DeSance called this performative and fraudulent, without seeing the obvious irony that all book bands are those things. But it's a start, because as I keep saying, book bands are stupid weenie shit. That's why we shouldn't do them for any reason. Like there are a bazillion different conservative books published every year, often by large publishing houses who only print that viewpoint. There's no need to ban those books and make them seem cool or dangerous. We We don't have to do it back to them. We can just mock them and support the books they are so scared of.

Make it cool for kids to ignore book bans, which already is. The writer of this episode co-hosted an entire podcast about the author Kurt Vonnegut. Like and subscribe, it's called Vonnegai's amazing title for a fantastic author. And that writer of this episode discovered Vonnegut in high school, specifically because one Vonnegut book was on a list of band and otherwise interesting books. He read a Vonnegut novel called Cats Cradle, which is a worthwhile book about the apocalypse and humanity and admittedly some footstuff. An Ohio school district banned the novel Cat's Cradle for some of those reasons back

in 1972. There were also many bans thrown at Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse Five. There was even an incident when a North Dakota school superintendent seized and burned dozens of copies of Vonnegut's work. That's a tragedy, but that's also notoriety and a powerful signal that those books contains something opposed by troglodytes. Without that infamy, this episode's writer might never have found his favorite writer. He's one of millions of kids who followed a book band to intellectual freedom.

Because book bans are for babies. They're for parents, billionaires, and random freaks who can't understand that a child can process an idea. Bands are the cowards way out. They're loser shit. They're an attempt to erase history in order to forget it ever happened or might apply to today. Oh my gosh, what if history applied to the day? Book banners think you can fix the Holocaust by playing peek-a-boo with its memory. And if all the problems in America, book bans might be the one we're most able to solve with optimism and warmth and choosing to not be an asshole unless you're mocking idiots.

You know. Also, unless you want me to be an asshole. I can do that. I can be a complete piece of shit. I'll do it. Okay. Do you want me to do that? You want me to do that? Huh? Jeff Probst? Surprise, by the way. This is the entire video, this entire time. I'm so sorry. It's actually been an audition video for the CBS television show Survivor.

I can be whichever personality you want, Jeff. I'll be a puck. He's not from Survivor, but he was a famous asshole on a reality show. I'll be another person or another type of character. I don't really watch reality TV, but I want to be on it so bad. Whichever personality wins me the grand prize that is still $1 million, even though that's barely money now, Jeff. It's not the year 2000 anymore, Jeff.

Our money inflated into near worthlessness, and iPhones exist, and you no longer have this face. Hell, I no longer have this face. I just need to win that one million dollars. Okay, please. I just, I just, I just, I just want to own a home before I die. Jeff, please, Jeff, please. Put me on your torment island, Jeff. I'll bring my own torch. Jeff! I didn't know I was gonna say that. Sorry, I'll bring my a torch. Uh, I don't know. Ow!

I think I'd be good on Survivor. I think I'd be good on Survivor. Ow! Just give me a million dollars. Hey, everybody, real quick, I gotta go to the hospital. We make, like and subscribe, and leave a comment that's nice or mean, or just give, like, gives me advice on how to use a lighter. And we've got a podcast called Even More News.

You can check it out on this channel twice a week or at the podcast place twice a week. And we have this show, Some More News, as a podcast. If you don't want to see my survival skills with your eyes, you can just listen to them. Oh, wow, he's surviving. Thanks, Guy. See, it's all audio. We've got a patreon.com slash some more news. We've also got merch with, you know,

what you'd expect, which is merch. Surprise, there's merch at the merch store. We got all kinds of stuff. We got, uh, you know. This. Other stuff. I didn't really burn my hand, but you knew that, obviously. Wait, wait, I got it. Okay.

The Aristocrats.