If you liked this, please share it!
4 Responses to Book Banners
Leave a Reply
Buy my new book!
Shop for Savage Chickens Gear
Visit the store for mugs, t-shirts, and other fun stuff.
They’ve obviously never read a “Savage Chickens” book. 😀
There is an irony in a cartoonist worried about books being censored but who censors his comments. It’s not the written word that is inviolable, I suppose — it must be the binding.
By the way, the irony has a name: hypocrisy.
I can’t remember the last time I censored a comment. It is a very rare thing, and usually happens when somebody is overtly hostile to me or to another commenter. I have a simple rule for deleting comments that I call “The Living Room Rule”. If you say something here that, if you said the same thing to my face here in my living room, would cause me to ask you to leave my home, then I delete the comment.
Nine times out of ten, it’s a racist comment. This is my personal website, and not in the same ballpark as a publicly funded school or library, so I can do what I like. And I like deleting racist comments. I have no obligation to provide a platform for racists to spout their nonsense. They can go make their own websites if they want to do that.
I’m not sure if stopping by to call me a hypocrite falls under the Living Room Rule or not, but hey it’s a close call so I’ll let it slide. Sorry to disappoint you, but I expect you won’t find many authors out there who are pro-book-banning. It’s a practice that is rooted in fear of the unknown and fear of the other. You know, like racism.
By the way, there is a certain group of authors who support something akin to book-banning: academic authors who submit to peer review. Authors know that just because they write something does not mean it will or even should appear in print; they have to prove themselves to the reviewers and/or editors. Journals can even require the retraction of already-published articles that were fraudulent or otherwise very deeply flawed. This is different, but in degree, not in kind.