Brickbat: To Ban a Mockingbird

'To Kill a Mockingbird'

Officials in the Biloxi, Mississippi, school system stopped eighth-grade students from reading To Kill a Mockingbird after they'd already begun reading it for a literature class. Superintendent Arthur McMillan is refusing to answer questions from the media about why the book was pulled from the curriculum. School board vice president Kenny Holloway says there were complaints about the language in the book, presumably the use of the n-word.

Comments

[Telcontar the Wanderer]

Eww, gross! You can't expect kids to touch a book like that! They might get coolies!

[Radioactive]

Chinese laborers?

[Telcontar the Wanderer]

Quit cottonitpicking.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Sounds more like niggling.

[Telcontar the Wanderer]

GASP! {faints}

[PB defends rapist Weinstein]

I remember I was really disappointed when no mockingbirds were actually killed.

[some guy]

Mockingbirds can be real dicks.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Yeah, just ask my cat.

[some guy]

Cat's can be real dicks too, though.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Well sure, but my cat is female so that makes her a....

[Fist of Etiquette]

HOW DID IT END? I hope that Tom Robinson got his comeuppance.

[mad.casual]

The *SPOILER ALERT* duly-convicted black man gets shot escaping prison and the drunken redneck falls on his own knife. Well-heeled, socially-aware white family lives happily ever after. The only thing really missing from the narrative is a more direct indication that the hero, Boo Radley, is actually closeted rather than a plain-old recluse.

[Radioactive]

PETA complaint...not to mention that 4 & 20 blackbird debacle...

[Conchfritters]

I don't eat pies, as a rule.

[Woodchipper of the Apocalypse]

As someone who self-identifies as furniture, the scene where Tom busts up a chiffarobe for Mayella offends me. I'm glad they banned it

[Fist of Etiquette]

SPOILER ALERT

[some guy]

So why does the Biloxi school superintendent want to repeat that particular bit of history?

[Longtobefree]

So the clear lesson taught here is -- -- -- ?

[Conchfritters]

Coloring books and puppy videos aren't just for college anymore?

[Seamus]

Well, Atticus Finch *was* a rape apologist.

[creech]

Of course he was. He was expected to join everyone else in believing the woman's rape claim.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

And the purge continues. Eventually we will be made safe from everything and live in a big fat progressive dream world, of pure imagination....

[C. S. P. Schofield]

I don't believe I have ever read of a case of a public school banning a book that didn't make the school administration look like a bunch of complete imbeciles.

Anyone else know of a case?

[Rod Flash]

I remember back in the early '70s when my brother's principal at Mark Twain Jr. High tried to get Tom Sawyer banned.

So, no.

[BestUsedCarSales]

They should make them read Invisible Man instead.

[wef]

Niggard is a perfectly fine word.

[Michael Ejercito]

So why is the book being banned?

Because it discusses racism?

Because the hero of the book is a segregationist?

Because the book belies the message that rape victims are entitled to be believed?