It's Not Book Banning When The MRC Does It!

The Media Research Center embraced right-wing attacks on books that don't push preferred narratives -- but it's upset at being called censors for supporting the bans.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 5/19/2023

Alex Christy complained in a January 2022 post that CNN was trying to "portray Republicans as a bunch of dictator-loving book burners." Unfortunately for Christy, he didn't really do much to dispel that image. Christy used his post to complain that "Trumper-turned-Never Trumper Joe Walsh" was calling out Republicans in Florida and elsewhere trying to censor school content purportedly in order to keep children from feeling "discomfort" about issues such as race and the Holocaust. He went on to grumble:

Walsh's reference to the Holocaust was the original premise of the segment. A Tennessee school board voted to remove Maus from its eighth-grade reading list for profanity and nudity, but it is a stretch to say that they even banned it and irresponsibly false to say they banned it because they do not want to educate students about the Holocaust.

Christy then linked to a statement from the school board that banned it -- if you're prohibiting a book from being taught, it's a ban; because it's apparently not a total ban doesn't make it less of a ban -- that complained about the book's purportedly "unnecessary use of profanity and nudity and its depiction of violence and suicide."

Ironically, some years earlier, a 2014 MRC post touted the graphic novel edition of right-winger Amity Shlaes' revisionist, anti-FDR retelling of the New Deal years, "The Forgotten Man," as a classic on par with "Maus": "But graphic novels can be very sophisticated. Shlaes mentioned Maus: A Survivor’s Tale which is a critically acclaimed Holocaust narrative that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992."

Kevin Tober used a Feb. 1 post to wonder why students were allowed to read books he didn't like:

On Tuesday night, NBC Nightly News decided it was a good use of airtime to dedicate an entire segment complaining about how a school district in Katy, Texas has removed sexually inappropriate books from their library.

Anchor Lester Holt opened the segment by tossing to NBC News correspondent Antonia Hylton who proceeded to interview a young student by the name of Iris Chang who, according to Hylton, "identifies as queer always loved learning about the world from her hometown of Katy, Texas, until this fall when her district started banning books."

Chang told Hylton that "students of color and queer students are especially taking this hard", referring to the banning of her favorite book The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.

Hylton claims "an NBC News investigation found that the Katy Independent School District is one of at least a dozen Texas districts that have removed books about race, gender, and sexual identity after a statewide surge of parent complaints."

But the question remains, why were books about gender and sexual identity allowed in school libraries in the first place?

Tober didn't explain why the books must be censored.

Tober went on to huff that "Katy Texas isn't the first public school to have sexually inappropriate books on its shelves." But it's clear that his definition of "sexually inappropriate" involved anything that didn't promote heterosexuality.

Clay Waters tried to play whataboutism in a February 2022 post:

Monday’s front-page New York Times story -- headlined “Politics Fuels Surge in Calls For Book Bans” -- did liberal Democrats a favor, posing them in their flattering former costumes of fierce free-speech advocates. Meanwhile, today’s actual left-wing is a hive of free-speech squelchers and book banners, including the Times’ own reporters, who have an unseemly and anti-journalistic eagerness to “deplatform” voices they don’t like...when they're conservative "bigots."

But that's a false comparison. Public libraries being forbidden from making certain books available to a certain audience is not the same thing as a private business seeking to enforce standards and terms of service on its platform to battle lies and misinformation. Yet the whataboutism continued: "Besides the daily double standards of restrictions on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, Amazon.com pulled a book on transgender issues from its online shelf, and Netflix tried to cancel comedian Dave Chappelle for offensive jokes about transgenders." (Yes, the MRC complained about that too.)

But whataboutism could be reflected back -- for instance, pointing out that the MRC has long raged against "censorship" of social media while tacitly endorsing it at school libraries. Wonder what Waters would say about that?

That enthusiasm for and defense of book bans and censorship, as well as effectively demanding the censorship of books it doesn't like -- ironic given how the MRC loves to rage about purported "censorship" by social media -- continued throughout the year.

An April 2022 post by Curtis Houck complained that musician Janelle Monae -- dismissed in the headline as a "lefty singer" -- criticized GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for signing "a law that bans us talking about the LGBTQIA+ communities in books, bans critical race theory," huffing in response: "Of course, the laws in states like Texas aim to and do nothing of the sort. This is unless Monáe meant teaching sex education to preschoolers and teaching white kindergartners that, by existing, they’re oppressors toward their black classmates." Houck offered no evidence that any of that was happening in Texas. A couple weeks later, Alex Christy huffed that a CNN correspondent, "with the help of an anonymous teenager, accused adults of throwing temper tantrums as they seek to attack 'non-binary' youth when they seek to remove books about left-wing gender ideology from schools." He didn't explain what "left-wing gender ideology" is, let alone why it must be censored.

Intern Wallace White screamed for censorship in a July 12 post by using the old tool of the wannabe censor, taking things out of context:

If there isn’t a surge in homeschooling in Oregon’s Salem Keizer School District, something is very wrong with the water in that part of the world. As reported by Libs of TikTok July 12, a school district committee has voted to keep Gender Queer available for children. It’s an extremely pornographic LGBT book.

The school formed a “special committee to determine if the book should be removed,” per Libs of TikTok. The head of the committee, Suzzane West, has a job description that reads, “Crafting and developing strategies that support the district’s movement to become a more anti-racist and anti-oppressive school system.” In other words, normal parents didn’t stand a chance.

The book contains graphic sexual imagery and nudity, as well as panels about binders for transgender people and sex toys. Also featured is an image of gay sex. I wish I was joking. If you don’t believe me, look for yourself (at your own risk).

White then got mad that people brought up pesky things like context in opposition to his plucking random images from the book out for shock value:

West desperately tried to justify her decision to lots of righteously angry parents in emails sent in reply to complaints. One reads, “The book will be necessary to keep in schools, to help be more inclusive and allow all students from the LGBTQ+ community to have a resource to refer to. In addition, the pages taken out of context do not represent the intention of the book and only served as an illustration to help provide understanding of what the author was trying to portray in their book.”

Yeah, I don’t think context is going to fix the fact there is graphic depictions of gay sex in a book children can read.

In fact, there is a thing called the Miller test, which is the Supreme Court's measurement of whether a work is obscene -- and one of those requirements is to judge the work as a whole. Indeed, a couple weeks after White's manufactured-outrage post, a court refused to ban "Gender Queer" as obscene. And author Maia Kobabe, who wrote the book based on personal growing-up experiences, implored readers to "please read the whole book and judge it based on the entire contents, not just a tiny snippet" -- something White clearly did not do.

Tierin-Rose Mandelburg cheered official censorship in a July 21 post, which, again, was based on cherry-picked out-of-context images and not the entire work:

Well this is shocking! A school board just rejected wokeism ... for now.

The Miami-Dade County School Board just reversed a previously made decision to approve sex-ed books for students. The vote was 5-to-4 against using the textbooks! Thank goodness.

[...]

According to the scanned pages, books provided information about “pulling out” and even explained the difference between sex and gender. Ah! Indoctrination at its finest. One page talked about what people do with unplanned pregnancies. It said that some “choose to place the child for adoption, or in some cases, end the pregnancy.” As a cherry on top, one book also presented questions for kids to ask doctors like “Will you tell my parents or others the information I tell you?” and “If I want to, can I talk to you without my parents in the room?”

Mandelburg got petulant when a parent pointed out the censorship stuff:

A different parent, Marika Lynch claimed that the vote against the books “is an attack by right-wing extremists,” who are “trying to censor books all across the country.”

Oh so if you don't want your kid indoctrinated, you're a "right-wing extremist." Got it.

The book does have inappropriate content in it and shouldn't be distributed. That's the bottom line.

The school board will be going through new material before the school-year starts. Hopefully stuff that kids should actually learn about and not this woke crap.

Kevin Tober played the "indoctrination" card in an Aug. 18 post:

On Wednesday night’s The 11th Hour on MSNBC, host Stephanie Ruhle proved that she hates conservatives who want to prevent the ideological and sexual indoctrination of children so much that she allowed one of her guests to compare their efforts to that of book burnings in Nazi Germany.

After smearing Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis for preventing Critical Race Theory and LGBTQ indoctrination from being taught in schools, which she suggested is making the teacher shortage worse, she cried to Texas Democrat Senator Roland Gutierrez: "Texas is also facing a teacher shortage. It’s not a surprise. Teachers are woefully overworked, underpaid, and now under attack. How do you get more qualified teachers in Texas classrooms?"

Of course, neither Mandelburg nor Tober are actually opposed to indoctrinating children in schools -- they simply want their favored right-wing indoctrination to be imposed.

Mandelburg was back to demanding censorship of inconvenient things in an Aug. 31 post, raging against a high school health book that "listed the following for types of gender identities: agender, androgynous, bigender, cisgender, gender fluid, gender nonconforming, gender questioning, nonbinary and transgender," going on to huff:

Kids, high school students included, are easy targets. They are in developing years and are extremely impressionable and easily influenced. Targeting them at this stage is a perfect way to groom and, as the mother said, exploit them and their innocence.

Parents can supposedly choose to “opt-out” of certain lessons, but if the school was even willing to order these books, there’s no telling what other sort of indoctrinating, explicit and grooming conduct goes on behind closed school doors.

Teaching young adults about gender identity isn't "grooming," no matter how mad Mandelburg gets over it.

Tim Graham complained about right-wingers being (accurately) called censors in his Sept. 21 column with the usual out-of-context content:

The cultural left never stops trying to drag America into their supposedly glorious “tolerant” future where we have an ever-expanding array of gender identities and grade-school children know as much about masturbation as they do about multiplication.

Unsurprisingly, CNN is promoting left-wing “anti-censorship” groups raging against conservative parents who object to precocious pornographic indoctrination. On The Lead with Jake Tapper, the CNN host interviewed Jonathan Friedman, the “director of free expression and education programs” at PEN America, pitched merely as a “nonprofit literary advocacy organization.” They advocate for literature, not for a cultural revolution.

Their latest report boils over at alleged racism and homophobia in parental objections in education. They assert most “book bans” are about “works with LGBTQ+ characters, protagonists of color, about race and racism, or with sexual content.”

[...]

As usual, Tapper didn't challenge the “free expression” champion on the actual contents of controversial books, like Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, the most challenged “literary” work. The New York Times gently notes this comic book (“graphic novel”) includes depictions of sexual experiences, masturbation, and menstrual blood. Put that on TV!

The Times explained how this book entered libraries across America. In 2020, Gender Queer won an Alex Award, a prize given by the American Library Association (ALA) to books written for adults that hold “special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18.” Librarians across the country look to awards like this when ordering new books, so high schools and some middle school libraries around the country began stocking it.

So the ALA promotes the book, and then goes on a “free speech” crusade when it’s challenged. Jonathan Friedman is quoted in the Times alleging “There’s definitely an element of anti LGBTQ+ backlash.” You can’t object without being the bigoted “backlash,” and not a part of “free expression.”

Graham concluded by whining:

The “anti-censorship” groups promoted by the liberal media have the same ideological sensibilities as their friends in the “news” business and the Big Tech sector. They all claim they’re saviors of “democracy,” but they don’t act like it. Their “free expression” credentials are just as easily questioned. They all tend to “censor” the specifics of what makes books objectionable. They aren’t good at debate. They’re good at squelching debate.

Actually, Graham and his MRC subordinates are are the ones who are trying to squelch debate by pulling allegedly offensive snippets of books out of context -- in defiance of the Miller test -- and demanding they be censored because they're "protecting" children from "indoctrination," while labeling anyone who opposes this approach as "groomers."

The MRC is so in favor of book bans that its gets upset when efforts to fight them even appear in fiction. An Oct. 31 post by Dawn Slusher complaining that ABC's "The Connors" "dedicated 30 minutes to denigrating" the efforts of (right-wing) parents "to have a say in what books their children are exposed to at school" with a book-ban plotline. Slusher cheered that the father character noted that "some parents just want to have a say in what their kids are reading," then whined:

But they still proceeded to make it a “book banning” issue when no parents are out fighting to have books banned completely. I’ve also yet to see anyone fighting to ban “the classics.” However, these days if “The Scarlet Letter” or any other classic mentioned were in a kindergarten library, that would be a problem.

Today’s parents are out fighting against books that talk about how to “eat pu**y,” sexual activities, sexual assault, abortion. And hundreds of parents in Michigan spoke out against sexually explicit LGBTQ books.

Slusher further complained when one particular hot-button book hated by right-wingers was referenced:

Did you happen to notice a very non-classic book placed in front with all the real classics? How is Gender Queer a classic when it was published in 2019?

Looks like the writers knew all along this has nothing to do with “the classics,” book banning, or freedom of speech and everything to do with sexually explicit books that are inappropriate for children. Gender Queer is one of the most protested books by parents given its extremely pornographic and pedophilic contents. But The Conners wants us to believe it should be included in a school library?

That alone speaks volumes about this show and its agenda.

Tierin-Rose Mandelburg prudishly cherry-picked all the naughty stuff from one book in an Oct. 21 post:

If you’d like to learn how to eat pussy, head on over to a middle school in Oklahoma.

Onward Pioneers middle school in Stillwater, Oklahoma reportedly had a book called “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” in its school library, Libs of TikTok reported. According to a parent who called out the school at a meeting, the book talked about “how to eat pussy,” “how to eat a butthole” said “fuck” 79 times, “shit” 51 times, “dicks” 11 times, had 15 “pussy’s” and 9 “god damn’s,” all for thirteen-year-olds to read.

“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” book is currently rated ages 14-17 on Barnes and Noble yet the general age of middle school children is 11-14 and in the Stillwater school district, middle school only covers 6th and 7th graders. That means that 6th and 7th graders have access to books with vulgar language sexually explicit content.

Mandelburg went on to cheer a right-wing anti-book stunt in a Nov. 3 post:

Warning: This blog contains rated R, sexually explicit content.

Earlier this week, a group of brave mothers stood in front of their school board to publicly condemn the books that the board allows in its school system. The books contained extreme, graphic, and explicit sexual content that has no place in a school library.

[...]

She’s right, the excerpts from these books were traumatizing to hear as a grown adult. I can’t imagine, or rather, don’t want to imagine what trauma kids who read stuff like this would and do go through.

Public schools are currently a s**t show and this is just another reminder of it.

Mandelburg curiously didn't name the titles of the books whose cherry-picked contents were gleefully reproduced by her for maximum shock value. She has clearly never heard of the Miller test, Mandelburg has clearly never heard of the Miller test.

Alex Christy complained in a Dec. 13 post that right-wing book bans were called out:

MSNBC host of The 11th Hour Stephanie Ruhle wondered if conservative attempts to “ban books” was the reason the FBI recently reported a raise in hate crimes. Instead of simply answering no, that’s ridiculous, former assistant director for counter intelligence Frank Figliuzzi says it is too soon to tell, but they certainly don’t help.

[...]

There was no attempt to explain what is in these books or justify the presence of sexually explicit material in school libraries or curriculum, simply that conservatives are bad and Republican politicians are bad for going along.

Tim Graham complained that false information about a targeted book was fact-checked in a Jan. 3 post:

On the front page of Tuesday’s Washington Post is a very passionate, very through defense of a novel with passages of two ten-year-old boys who “meet in the bushes after a church youth-group gathering, touch each other’s penis, and progress to oral sex.” That’s the description by Post education reporter Hannah Natanson.

The story went from the front page to the entire back page of the front section. How long was it? If you click "Listen," it says "17 minutes."

The headline was “2 moms, and misinformation led schools to ban a book: How false claims about pedophilia in ‘Lawn Boy’ fueled parents’ anger.”

What’s the “misinformation” here? Some parents -- like Stacy Langton in Fairfax County, Virginia -- wrongly claimed it was sex between a 10-year-old boy and an adult man, as opposed to “the book describes a man in his 20s meeting another man in his 20s and remembering the consensual sexual encounter they shared in the fourth grade.”

Earth to the Post: Couldn't just the graphic oral-sex scene be enough for parents to protest, even between boys?

Graham is clearly OK with misinformation if it forwards right-wing narratives. He went on to complain that "A positive book review in 2018 never found the sex stuff." Perhaps because that's not the focus of the book?

Graham churned out another attack on "Gender Queer," as well as its author, in a Jan. 5 post:

On Wednesday, NPR returned to the ongoing media party for Maia Kobabe, author of the comic-book memoir Gender Queer, celebrated throughout Liberal Land for having the “Most Challenged” book of 2021. Not only was there a seven-minute interview on Morning Edition with anchor Rachel Martin. There was also a Kobabe essay on NPR.org. claiming "Struggling kids told me my book helped them talk to parents."

The book came out in 2019, but NPR is doing a "Banned Books" series. Martin claimed: "The book has been praised in some circles for how it talks about identity, but it's also drawn a lot of rebuke from people who cite its sexually explicit nature and the illustrations. Gender Queer has been banned in more states than any other book."

This can be interpreted as “state governments banned this book,” not it’s been “removed from public libraries in more states than any other book.” The gender-queer lobby thinks books like these must be in taxpayer-funded libraries – as if they can’t be found on Amazon or shared at LGBT centers.

As usual, NPR won't explicitly explore what is "rebuked" by protesters, including depictions of Kobabe envisioning having her imaginary penis in mid-fellatio, as well as talk of masturbation and blow jobs. Twitter blocks these illustrations as sensitive content.

Graham then sneered at the author's preferred pronouns: "Unlike other supportive media, NPR completely avoided that Kobabe prefers the pronouns 'e/em/eir,' and Martin never used a personal pronoun, just the 'you.'" As if Graham actually cares what other people want to call themselves if it deviates from heteronormative tradition.

Graham didn't say a thing about how the obsessive efforts of himself and his fellow MRC subordinates -- as well as that of their fellow right-wingers -- to censor books like "Gender Queer" may be creating a Streisand effect.