Tag: Book banners

Breaking down Cindy Rose’s “pornography” claims!

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Hey y’all. We are as sick of writing about Cindy as many of you are of hearing about her. However, we would be remiss if we didn’t pay a little more attention to her pornography charges regarding the books she’s demanding be removed from FCPS libraries.

First of all, it’s important to point out that none of these books are part of the curriculum. They are in the library for students who are interested in expanding their knowledge or vocabulary. Two things that this Education Not Indoctrination slate finds very offensive.

Let’s begin by defining pornography by way of the good old Webster’s dictionary:

Definition of pornography

1: the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement

2: material (such as books or a photograph) that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement

Cindy has a lot of trouble with words and their meanings.

ICYMI, click here to read and watch the “performance art” Cindy put on at last week’s meeting. What we are going to do next is delve a little deeper into the two books she claims are pornographic and sexualizing our children. Please keep the above definition in mind.

1st book: Push by Sapphire. (Which was made into the movie Precious). Here’s a review by the Literary Phoenix:

Precious Jones, an illiterate sixteen-year-old, has up until now been invisible: invisible to the father who rapes her and the mother who batters her and to the authorities who dismiss her as just one more of Harlem’s casualties. But when Precious, pregnant with a second child by her father, meets a determined and highly radical teacher, we follow her on a journey of education and enlightenment as Precious learns not only how to write about her life, but how to make it her own for the first time.

What Cindy misconstrues (misconstruing things is her favorite) as pornography is a tragic rape, meant to show the reader real trauma the author endured. It is a terrible experience that she is eventually able to overcome through the help of a teacher. (Maybe this is the part that bothers Cindy? Never mind, she didn’t read it…). It is not, as the definition of pornography above shows, meant to sexually excite, nor is the intent to sexualize children.

2nd Book- Sold by Patricia McCormick. Here’s a summary from the website SparksNotes:

Sold is a contemporary YA novel by American writer Patricia McCormick, published in 2006. Written in short vignettes, Sold tells the story of thirteen-year-old Lakshmi, a poor but happy girl living with her family in a mountain hut in Nepal. When a Himalayan monsoon washes away her family’s crops, Lakshmi must find a job to support her family. On the advice of a stranger, she goes to India to stay at a ‘Happiness House’, but once there finds she has been tricked, and sold into prostitution. Mumtaz, the cruel woman who runs the brothel, tells Lakshmi she is now trapped until she can pay off her family’s debts. Mumtaz finds a way to cheat Lakshmi of even her small earnings, ensuring Lakshmi will be in her service for a long time. Despite the horrors of her life, Lakshmi finds a way to survive through friendships with other girls in the house and the hope that one day she will be able to escape. Sold was a National Book Award Finalist for Young People’s Literature in 2006.

This book is a fictionalized account, based on real stories, of what happens to many girls who are sold into sex slavery in Asia. It also tells the story of a young woman who is able to overcome absolute terror and reclaim her life. Again, this is not the definition of pornography.

So, those of you so shocked by her reading out of context vignettes of these books in an incredibly poor attempt to prove that the school system is offering pornography to kids need to wake up. These books, while graphic, are not pornographic. They are dealing with the very real issues of incest and human trafficking. (Side note: the only time Cindy was inspired to speak out against human trafficking is when it was a part of the Q conspiracies). These are stories of redemption and hope. If you don’t want your high schooler exposed to these books, then pay attention to what they are reading and what they bring home from school. We definitely do not need someone who hasn’t read any of these books AND previously demanded Click Clack Moo not be used in elementary school anywhere near our children.

Book banners suck…always.

Anyone in the mood for a good old-fashioned book banning?!

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The dream library of those who haven’t picked up a book since high school.

Surely you’ve heard of the Tennessee board of education’s decision to ban the graphic novel Maus, an account of the Holocaust. This board of education cited dubious claims of mouse nudity and profanity as to why children should not have their precious little eyes tainted by its pages. The grown ups in the room know it’s just another attempt to eradicate history and control information.

Let’s swing on back to our upcoming BOE election because it’s super important to be vigilant about these local elections. So, ICYMI, Cindy Rose is a book banner and we have all kinds of fun receipts!

Click, Clack, NO!

We would like to take you back to 2018! In the post linked above, you will see some emails that Cindy wrote to FCPS about books (that she admittedly didn’t read!) that she didn’t want available to our students! The subject of those books apparently don’t fit reality as she sees it, so no child should be allowed to read them! I mean come on folks do you really want someone like Cindy deciding what is and isn’t appropriate for your kids to read? Especially when she didn’t even bother to read the books she’s complaining about?

Nothing to see here folks! But come on! When do snake’s oil advertisements equal real science? Just another example of her critical thinking skills.

In the above mentioned post, you will also get to see a Facebook post about the children’s book, Click Clack Moo! (And yes we really did contact the author!) She’s afraid that the cows and chickens in the story demanding the farmer give them blankets when they are cold will cause all the little children to revolt! Against what isn’t clear.

Cindy and her peeps really need to grow up.

Cindy also has some new thoughts about the FCPS hiring process:

The amazing thing about Cindy and people like her is that they think they are espousing American values! When, in fact, they want compliance to their way of thinking only! How un-American can you get?

A book that really affected one of your Lady Yokels when she was a wee lass was a book called Mexicali Soup.

In this book family members, one by one, come into the kitchen asking the matriarch to remove an item from the soup. At dinner time the family is shocked to learn the menu consists of only hot water. If everyone wants to remove something they don’t like, we are eventually left with nothing.

Frequently banned author, Stephen King, has lots of good thoughts about what do about these book banners (It’s long but well worth it):

First, to the kids: There are people in your home town who have taken certain books off the shelves of your school library. Do not argue with them; do not protest; do not organize or attend rallies to have the books put back on their shelves. Don’t waste your time or your energy. Instead, hustle down to your public library, where these frightened people’s reach must fall short in a democracy, or to your local bookstore, and get a copy of what has been banned. Read it carefully and discover what it is your elders don’t want you to know. In many cases you’ll finish the banned book in question wondering what all the fuss was about. In others, however, you will find vital information about the human condition. It doesn’t hurt to remember that John Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger, and even Mark Twain have been banned in this country’s public schools over the last 20 years.

Second, to the parents in these towns: There are people out there who are deciding what your kids can read, and they don’t care what you think because they are positive their ideas of what’s proper and what’s not are better, clearer than your own. Do you believe they are? Think carefully before you decide to accord the book-banners this right of cancellation, and remember that they don’t believe in democracy but rather in a kind of intellectual autocracy. If they are left to their own devices, a great deal of good literature may soon disappear from the shelves of school libraries simply because good books — books that make us think and feel — always generate controversy.

If you are not careful and diligent about defending the right of your children to read, there won’t be much left, especially at the junior-high level where kids really begin to develop a lively life of the mind, but books about heroic boys who come off the bench to hit home runs in the bottom of the ninth and shy girls with good personalities who finally get that big prom date with the boy of their dreams. Is this what you want for your kids, keeping in mind that controversy and surprise — sometimes even shock — are often the whetstone on which young minds are sharpened?

Third, to the other interested citizens of these towns: Please remember that book-banning is censorship, and that censorship in a free society is always a serious matter — even when it happens in a junior high, it is serious. A proposal to ban a book should always be given the gravest consideration. Book-banners, after all, insist that the entire community should see things their way, and only their way. When a book is banned, a whole set of thoughts is locked behind the assertion that there is only one valid set of values, one valid set of beliefs, one valid perception of the world. It’s a scary idea, especially in a society which has been built on the ideas of free choice and free thought.

Whoa! Those last few lines really say it all. We can’t let the book banners (and don’t forget about that slate she’s running with) on our board. Free thought and ideas, including critical examination of our nation’s history, are crucial in education. We’ll leave you with one last post we wrote a few months back:

Let’s not let the pearl clutchers prevent our children from learning the truth about history.
Don’t let the fascists win!