Well, actually Middle School, not Elementary. Apparently “A Study in Scarlet”–the introduction to Sherlock Holmes–has been removed from a reading list in the Albermarle school district in Virginia because there were objections to the way Mormons were portrayed in it (since they were essentially depicted as a murdering, blackmailing cult).
In case you’re keeping score, Virginia was also the state that fought to the bitter end for the preservation of bans on interracial marriage. It’s also the home of Congressman Virgil Goode who sent around an email insisting that immigration laws had to be tightened up in order to make sure that Muslims didn’t flood into the US and wind up getting elected to high offices.
Perhaps Albermarle may want to consider publishing their own version, and every place in the story where the word “Mormon” is used, they can substitute “Black” or perhaps “Muslim.”
You can read more about it
here
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If someone doesn’t want their child to read certain books, fine. However, preventing others from enjoying those works is dispicable. For those who want the government to not meddle in their lives, they sure have no problem deciding what’s “best” for everyone else under the old excuse of “think of the children!”
Well, to be fair, they’re not keeping anyone from reading it. They’re not banning it or removing it from the library. They’re removing it from the required reading list…
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But it’s still stupid.
The school board does seem to imply they might add the book to the high school reading list. And there may be an argument that those of high school age are better equipped to handle a discussion on the reading.
There’s lots of quality literature with racist, or anti-religious language that can be used to spark discussions on the history of bigotry. But such a discussion might be more appropriate in high school.
But such a discussion might be more appropriate in high school.
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And yet, much like sex education, if you wait until high school to hold conversations on racism, sexism, and bigotry, it’s likely too late.
And yet, much like sex education, it should be up to the parents to decide to talk about certain topics with their kids.
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Maybe if our schools were more concerned with teaching our children the fundamentals they need to operate in our society – you know, silly things like math, reading and science – our young people wouldn’t stack up so embarrassingly poor compared to those in other countries. Because they take that stuff seriously while we have soft standards are obsessed with touchy feely stuff.
And yet, much like sex education, it should be up to the parents to leave their kids kids ignorant so that the kids can have higher rates of STDs and unwanted prgenanices.
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Maybe if our schools were more concerned with teaching our children the fundamentals they need to operate in our society – you know, silly things like math, reading and science, as in the ability to understand biology and its consequences – our young people wouldn’t stack up so embarrassingly poor compared to those in other countries. Because they take that stuff seriously while we have soft standards are obsessed with touchy feely stuff, thanks to the people that want to leave evolution, climate change, and any “controversial” books or subjects off the curriculum.
Point goes to Jonathan.
Penny Arcade summed this up nicely with their strip on Monday:
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http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/08/15
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Particularly because of the Internet, the notion of parents being able to decide to talk only about certain topics and completely avoid others, or when they get to hold those talks, is more or less out of their hands.
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Kids WILL be introduced to stuff that you don’t want them introduced to. And it is doing a child a complete disservice by trying to ignore a topic, or attempting to delay it just because you can. Worse, too many parents simply refuse to hold such conversations at all, for whatever reason.
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And yes, I think one of the worst are those parents who simply think if they never talk about sex, their child won’t discover sex. Because abstinence and ignorance has worked so well, right?
Actually, I don’t see the problem. It’s not being banned, it’s just being removed from the reading list (and they even said it might be added to the high school curriculum). It’s a good book, but it’s hardly a classic that every sixth grader should read. And it is almost shockingly anti-Mormon. There are reasons why every book is included or not included on a reading list. Presumably this just means some other book will take its place on the list, perhaps one more worthwhile.
I agree. No real problem here, as far as I’m concerned.
I agree. In this case it actually makes sense to remove it from a reading list.
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Why include on a reading list the really prejudiced Sherlock Holmes when it is neither great or unique. Another Sherlock Holmes book will do just as well as introduction to Sherlock Holmes.
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Oliver Twist, The Merchant of Venice, Huckleberry Finn, are unique classics, but this one Sherlock Holmes, not so much. It’s not even one of the more famous stories.
Excellent point, Micha.
I have to wonder why anyone not living in this Pennsylvania community would even care. This seems like a local matter to me. Why would any adult with his/her own unique set of real life problems to deal with on a daily basis care about what some middle school somewhere takes off of their reading list? It just doesn’t seem like a very big issue to me.
Because any sort of book banning to avoid hurting the sensibilities of whatever offended group of the moment makes me want to vomit.
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And it’s equal opportunity disgust. It’s no better when the Left does it, like those retards (ooops, mentally challenged individuals) that wanted to suppress or change Mark Twain’s work.
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By the way, “The Hound of the Baskervilles” is a better novel than “A Study in Scarlet”, or the collection that has the story with Irene Adler. But that is not the point. It’s a matter of principle.
And why would anyone care whether or not you want to vomit?
Well, I care. And that is why I care if there is censorship abroad. It makes me want to puke, and my stomach is of utmost importance to me.
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Now, seriously, I don’t like that it sets bad precedents. Censorship is rarely a localized phenomenon. It seems like people who want to save their children from “bad influences” soon want to save other children too. And then they want to save adults. And then someday the a-holes will want to save ME from reading what may be a bad influence.
This isn’t censorship. The students attending this middle school can still read this story if they want to. It’s just not on their school’s reading list.
Rene, in any other circumstances I would be right there with you on this. I don’t like censorship or trying to erase bigotry from history or bending over backwards just not to offend the professionally offended.
But this is not the case.
Here we have a decision to remove a book that is part of a series from a required reading list but not from a library because this one chapter is exceptionally bigoted. This seems to me a reasonable level of sensitivity.
Supposed you were having a party and decided to show a chapter from a classic series. You would probably not pick the one chapter that had racism or sexism or homophobia in it if you had other chapters that were equally good but without the awkward bigotry. Unless you had a specific reason to prefer that chapter.
It seems to me our anti-censorship instincts have become so strong we sometimes jump the gun even wen it is unwarranted. There is no shortage of better cases to attack, I think.
Micha has a point here. If I were, for instance, to be trying to persuade someone that WaRP’s Elfquest were a good book for their teenager to read, presenting solid values and important lessons about tolerance, I don’t think I’d want to start with the issue with the Go-Back orgy.
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Or, for an example more here would probably get, if I want to introduce a new reader to PAD’s X-Factor, I doubt I would start off with the issue that closes with the reveal of Shatterstar and Rictor’s relationship – unless, of course, I knew they harbored no prejudice toward homosexuality themselves.
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Similarly, if you want to introduce children to the Holmes canon, and its lessons about logic, reasoning, and clear observation of what is really there, one could start with A Study In Scarlet, or The Affair of the Speckled Band, or The Hound of the Baskervilles, or… 🙂
Frak it, I meant to type “Instead of A Study In Scarlet, they could use…”
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It’s exceptionally hard to type when a hyperactive five-year-old is dancing on your toes, demanding Fruit By the Foot.
Whenever book banning comes up, I remember when I was a ten year old student reading the Scarlet Pimpernel and (mild spoilers) encountering some rancid antisemitism. And it hurt terribly.
But the dragon of prejudice exists. Kids see it all the time. Reading books, and discussing them teaches them the tools to fight back. The ability to say “The author was wrong to say mean things about a person’s religion.”
It’s a tough but vital lesson. You can’t protect kids from hate, but you can empower them to challenge it.
The Hebrew translation of Scarlet Pimpernel has a footnote next to the slightly anti-semitic part saying that it was a common belief at the time.
I don’t understand the difficulty with the word – FICTION. And why not take this as an opportunity to teach a little bit of tolerance, unfortunately I will use wikipedia as a source, but I think the associated sources are valid:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Study_in_Scarlet
there is a section on Controversy that goes over the history of this story and I believe its resolution. Granted no one is banning this work, but to blindly cast it aside so it can be forgotten is lazy and irresponsible.
I’m pretty sure that if the villains were fanged Jews, you wouldn’t have an issue with removing it from a list of books that 12 year olds are required (?) to read.
You don’t know our host very well, do you …
Beat me to it by a minute.
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PAD
Your name doesn’t ring any bells with me, so I’m going to go on the assumption that you don’t know me very well. Because if you did, you’d be aware how dead wrong you are.
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Unflattering portrayals of Jews are a staple of British fiction. To be more specific, if “Oliver Twist” was under attack because of the depiction of Fagin (usually referred to by Dickens simply as “the Jew”) I would think it’s just as ridiculous.
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PAD
And let’s not forget THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, where Shylock is the villain of the piece (despite that he was driven to villainy by the loss of both his daughter and money). One of the ironies of that play is that Shylock is condemned for usury (loaning money and getting interest on the loan), but at the play’s end one of the Christian “heroes” decides to practice usury himself, with no condemnation.
I think that when a work contains controversial/racial elements, it’s important to explore them, rather than let them overshadow everything else about the work. ROBINSON CRUSOE is one of the most racist classics out there, yet it’s also an amazing work in terms of both the transition to capitalism and facing father issues. I think H.P. Lovecraft is one of the greatest horror authors ever, yet he shouldn’t be ignored because of some racial elements. (I loaned a black friend a collection of his greatest stories, and the friend loved it — despite the fact that the opening story, “The Rats in the Walls,” had a protagonist whose black cat was named Nìggër Man.) And anyone who fixates on the name “Nìggër Jim” in HUCK FINN simply misses the myriad of other important elements of that book — including its very anti-slavery and anti-racist positions.
I think controversial/problematic elements should be an opportunity to discuss them — the historical persepctive, the meaning today, the basis or falsehoods behind them — instead of running away and hiding from them. Isn’t that what education should do?
I liked that in the George C Scott version of Oliver Twist, he got to deliver a rather scathing speech to the mob hounding him.
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(It’s not as good as the Scott Christmas Carol, if only because Tim Curry just isn’t convincing as Bill Sykes. Casting Oliver Reed is one of the things that Oliver! got right…)
James, you beat me to the “Merchant of Venice” example I would have posted. I was a bit surpirsed by one sentence, though, since I’ve gone over the play fairly recently; who decided to practice usury at the end? I don’t remember that part.
Jonathan Ross asked, of The Merchant of Venice, “I was a bit surpirsed by one sentence, though, since I’ve gone over the play fairly recently; who decided to practice usury at the end? I don’t remember that part.”
It’s a question of interpretation that a professor of mine claimed. Rereading the play, I find thes lines in Act 4 Scene 1 (sorry, it’s an old edition with no line #s) as Antonio accepts half of Shylock’s worldly goods in lieu of condemning him to death:
“I am content, so he will let me have
The other half in use, to render it,
Upon his death, unto the gentleman
That lately stole his daughter:”
She thought the phrase “in use” meant he was going to going to practice usury. I’ll look to see if any other editions have a different wording; but it would speak well of Shakespeare not being anti-semitic, if one of the protagonists practices the same financial actions that were condemned in a character because he’s a Jew.
The Ferengi.
James,
If Antonio is going to practice usury with Shylock’s fortune he would end up in big trouble. It was illegal for Christians to lend money and charge any sort of interest as well as considered a mortal sin by the church. Its why he went to Shylock in the first place, Jews weren’t bond by that law and hence could be money lenders. It was a large part of the reason for the wealth of the Jewish community and the fact that they were hated for the interest they charged.
I always took the use the money, as the fact that he would invest it and trade with it, simply use the money
To add my two cents…I think Dan (accidentally) opened the door another good example, namely…The Ferengi. Because, let’s face fact, who are the Ferengi must like…Indeed, the Dutch. So, why aren’t there angry crowds of Dutch people calling for banning Star Trek ? After all, the Ferengi are greedy, sexist and whole bunch of other nasty things. Well, being a Dutchie myself, I can answer that…Because it’s FICTION. Sometimes, you have to have a thick hide and move on. There are more important issues to focus on. (Like keeping that racist, fascist b*$t@rd of a Geert Wilders from becoming Prime Minister. Because if he does, the country will become all frakked up. But that is a discussion for another time…)
Wait, the Ferengi are like the Dutch? Why, because they’re traders? Isn’t that a bit of a stretch?
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The reason the Dutch aren’t trying to ban Star Trek because of the Ferengi is because… well, they’re the Ferengi. Not the Dutch. Two different things. It’d be like Asians trying to ban Annie Hall because she’s a bad driver.
No, the Ferengi are like the (early) Dutch because they are greedy, untrustworthy, heavily armed, Imperialistic traders. Especially in their first few appearances.
Okay, but my point is that, as far as I know, the Ferengi are not specifically based on the Dutch, so having a thick hide is not necessary or relevant.
I doubt if anybody, certainly not in the US, who has a specific stereotype of Dutch as greedy, untrustworthy, imperialistic or sexist.
Why would Albermarle wishing to remove this book from their list (because of the book’s depiction of Mormons) translate in any way to them having their own version where they replace the word “Mormon” with “Muslim” and “Black?” That seems like a non sequitur to me. Anyone care to educate me?
I remember the casual racism in “The Rats in the Walls” throwing me for loop when I first read it. What threw me for a second loop is when I was told some years later that Lovecraft named the cat in the story after his own.
I was far more shocked by the misogyny in Raymond Chandler than by anything Lovecraft wrote. Perhaps because with Lovecraft I was expecting it.
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But I still like them both. A lot of the fun in reading older writers is marvelling at the older viewpoints. Somehow it adds to the mystique.
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I find I am a lot less forgiving of living writers who have blatant prejudice in their work. When they are still active and out there, I just can’t distance myself, and I find I am draw into opposing their voices, and I am thrown out of the story, against my will.
What saddens me is that this shows that either the board doesn’t trust their teachers to teach, or the teachers have proven that they can’t teach.
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Over and over again, people freak out about racism in books, whose inherent racism is indicitave of its time, and again, teachers don’t know how to explain it.
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So they ignore it or do a bad job of it, and just cause more trouble.
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Not every teacher does this, and it’s definitely not a majority, but those that do are doing a disservice to the literature and their students.
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TAC
As a public school teacher, I’ll tell you right now that it doesn’t matter if I’m the best dámņëd explainer in the whole world. I don’t have the parents in my class, and I have NO influence over them. If one of them gets a bee in their bonnet over something, I will NOT be able to “explain” my way out of it.
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For goodness’ sake, this is not a teacher problem. This is a small-minded community problem. As are 70% of the problems with our schools, since none of our schools exist in a vacuum.
Eric is correct–this may well just be the school covering their áššëš. We live in a time when a jáçkášš politician can go off on people for using the term “black hole”; where a guy using the word “ņìggárdlÿ” got dismissed because “he should have known that people would think the word meant something else” (Luckily he was gay so they had to reinstate him, by the rules of The Hierarchy Of Politically Correct Victimization Index); another middle school teacher had calls for her firing for teaching her kids the same word (she was formally reprimanded); a teacher reading her 3rd grade kids a book called Nappy Headed Girl, written by a black woman with a PhD in literature as a way to teach self acceptance and celebrate diversity, was attacked in a public forum by a bunch of outraged idiots and had to leave her position (the school, to its credit, completely backed her up and offered to let her teach, albeit with added security; she wisely declined). her students wept at the news.
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So while it may be all fun and games to point out Virginia’s unsavory past (as opposed to, say, the purity of New York where one must look far and wide to find such examples) or mention one of it’s more idiotic politicians (ditto), I don;t think any school is exactly being unrealistic in fearing the possible consequences.
(Sorry to jump in over Bill’s comments, but he didn’t have a reply, so I jumped in after Eric)
I’m also a public school teacher, of 8th graders, and you’d be surprised what gets parents’ dander up (or then again, maybe not). I’ve had more complaints about Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings (and the many action figures and posters about them)in my room than I have for Edgar Allan Poe, Zane Grey, Elmer Kelton, Louis L’Amour, E.R. Burroughs, H.R. Haggar…I could go on. No parent seems to get that if it’s “literature” it’s going to offend someone, in some way. I always try to cut off problems by saying, “This is the way many people thought back then…Have things changed?” It’s a good cover that’s saved my hide more than once.
I’m surprised the question even came up. “A Study in Scarlet” is outright bigoted against Mormons, and there are lots of other Sherlock Holmes stories, equally good, that aren’t. Somewhere out there there’s a teacher who chose this story over the others? It’s hard for me to imagine a teacher who says, “I’d like my students to read a Sherlock Holmes story. I think I’ll choose the one that says that Mormons are a bloodthirsty cult.”
The human race is turning into an EPIC FAIL.
Largely due to the proliferation of such phrases as “EPIC FAIL,” in my opinion.
More likely due to people’s retardedly-high-sensitivity about non-issues like racism in literature, and complaining about modern popular phrases like “Epic Fail”
Point to Bladestar.
Geez, as if middle school didn’t suck enough . . .
Man, how early can “zeitgeist” be taught?
I wonder if we make a big enough noise about how devious and forbidden and corrupting those books are, then maybe more kids will read them? 🙂 Well, one can dream.
The part that I find ironic is this is the work that cleary lays out Holmes and his method for analysis and clear, ational thought. Neither of which are being deonstrated here, and one would think that would be something to be encouraged in today’s world. But then, given the anti-science bent and the way that some (I’ll say it again to emphasize the point) SOME people want to protect their kids from, well, reality. I’d rather have my kid come home scratched, bruised, dirty, and developed than all these beige, bland, needs-a-helmet-and-pads-to-go-to-the-bathroom types I used to see at the camp he used to go to. The story also gives a great chance to TALK to your kids about some of the elements.
A Study in Scarlet is a horribly written novel as all Sherlock Holmes stories are, at least in the original canon. But they’re absolutely fantastic. The characters and the mystery transcends Conan Doyle’s lack of writing talent. They are fantastic and everyone should read them. This is deplorable.
Maybe I’m missing something here, but…If the book was clearly racists as the Mormons claim, who did it ever get ON the list to begin with ? Aren’t there screenings against such things ? And shouldn’t they have objected at THAT time ?
And Virginia is also the state that voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and is rated as only the SIXTH most likely to flip back in 2012 if the economy stays sour.
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So maybe them changing “Mormon” to “black” might not be such a spiffy idea.
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Which those so quick to point out how ignorant those in the South supposedly are would realize if they actually used facts and common sense rather than cherry pick incidents that fit their narrative – including one that happened decades ago – and feel no research is needed because, well, we all know how THEY are and THEY never change.
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Such tactics would be funny if they weren’t so sad and dangerous.
Someone should write a new Sherlock Holmes story with a more accurate, sympathetic depiction of Mormons. Maybe Holmes is hired by a friend of Oscar Wilde, and it turns out there is a conspiracy of Mormons trying to send all gays to prison, for acts against God and nature.
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We could have a Dorian Grey/Sherlock Holmes team-up as they try to spring Oscar Wilde from prison. Let’s call it “A Study in Lavender” and ask Orson Scott Card to write it.
I’d buy it.
I’m more puzzled as to why “SIS” was required reading. Quite frankly, it is the worse of the Holmes’ books. “The Sign of the Four”, now that’s a good one. So is “Hound” (although Holmes is a tad insufferable in it)
So is “Hound” (although Holmes is a tad insufferable in it)
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Read an interesting take on that. It was a book called “Sherlock Holmes was Wrong” by Pierre Bayard. The main thesis was that Doyle hated Holmes so much by the time he wrote “Hound” that he wanted to portray Holmes negatively, even to the point of having Holmes reach the wrong conclusion.
While I liked THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, it does suffer from having a key clue being a visual one that readers are completely unaware of until Holmes points it out. That’s a bit of a cheat on the readers.
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Best outcome with cases like (or much worse than) this one?
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http://io9.com/5828986/school-bans-vonneguts-slaughterhouse+5-so-vonnegut-library-gives-copies-to-students-for-free?utm_source=io9+Newsletter&utm_campaign=e9b6a4b8a3-UA-142218-29&utm_medium=email
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🙂
Want to know what’s REALLY sad?
We’re usually considered the “liberal” part of our district, surrounded by a sea of conservative counties.
My apologies for being dense, but can someone state more explicitly the objection(s) to this decision? To be clear, I’m not trying to build a case for supporting the decision. I’m a Holmes fan, and I also think if you claim to be an educational institution, you should err on the side of educating rather than ignoring.
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That said, I see a lot of comments here about censorship and book banning. And it’s not clear to me that taking a book off of a required reading list constitutes either of those things. So if it does, I’m asking for help in understanding why. And if it does not, then I’d like to know what the real objection is. Is it a slippery slope argument, that if we stop requiring books because they are objectionable to some then that makes it easier to ban or censor them (or other books) later? Or is it the pragmatic argument, that if we start worrying about offending one group pretty soon we’re worrying about them all and we can’t require any books? Or something else entirely?
I’m afraid I have to agree with you Andy. In this case I don’t see what the fuss is about. I read my first Holmes story, ‘The Case of the Speckled Band’, because it was included in a book of short fiction I was given by a relative. I have since read all the others. *None of them* were read for school.
The book has not been banned. It hasn’t been pulled from shelves. I haven’t even heard anyone say that before a student can read it their parents have to sign a permission slip. According to the stories I’ve read, it was pulled not because it was offensive to Mormons (even though that’s what started the debate) but because it was not considered age appropriate for sixth graders. It also was not being used district wide in the first place, but by only one teacher in one school. And the board said it *was* appropriate for seventh and eighth grade students in the same district.
The only questions I have are what are they going to replace it with, and is there any reason to get worked up over the replacement?
Off topic but check out Aint It Cool news for an interview with PAD! read it before the talkback douche nozzles take over the comments.
You read the comments at AICN?
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You poor, poor man. Have you considered therapy?
One of my Holmes collections speaks of Study in Scarlet during the preface. It stated that of a great many Holmes readers skip the whole part of the story from where Hope tries to escape through the window to where the story resumes in Baker Street. Why? Because neither of the main protagonists are involved.
I skip (or skim) that section when rereading for just that reason. The first edition of Holmes I owned was a collection called “The Boys’ Sherlock Holmes”, which was supposed to be a selection of the stories that would appeal most to boys (which itself sounds dated now, but it was published fifty years ago, so it is dated). It omitted the Mormon section on the grounds that it intended readership would find it uninteresting, and gave a brief summary in a footnote instead. Having since read the section in question, I can’t really disagree.
Well at least they’re not cutting it for lines like `”Simple!” I ëjáçûláŧëd.’ Something that I’m sure gets giggles from teen readers. 🙂
I’m currently reading Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, and I freely admit to giggling every time she uses the words “ëjáçûláŧë” and “intercourse.” And I’m 36.
In the late 19th Century murder and blackmail were not practices unknown to the Mormons. Times have changed.
The fact that the book has not been banned is not the point. Trying to insinuate that those “good ole boys” in Virginia would have no problem with a book that had unflattering depictions of Muslims and blacks given selective “history” – never mind that Virginia voted for Barack Obama in 2008 – while being sensitive to Mormons is the point.
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In other words, facts don’t matter. It’s another excuse to depict supposed rednecks as supposedly racist, uneducated and ignorant.And doing so despite the fact they voted for Obama in 2008.
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Er, on second thought maybe they ARE backward and uneducated.
I think your pro-Virginia arguments would carry more weight if it wasn’t the state that declared April 2010 to be “Confederate History Month”.
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Yeah, the Governor did that. And it was also a lot of Virginians who stood up and said that was a dûmbášš thing to do. It also doesn’t change the fact that Albemarle County is a strong Democrat base in that region of Virginia and surrounds a college town where you can find a lot of very progressive/liberal people.
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I’m a little torn on this one. On the one hand, this is not, despite the misrepresentation of the situation by some in the press, an actual account of censorship or of a book being banned. The Albemarle County Public Schools did not take the books off of their shelves. It’s still there and any student who wants to read it when discovering or continuing their discovery of the Holmes stories can pull it off the shelf, check it out at the desk and take it home and read it.
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No book was banned and no act of censorship has been committed. A book has been removed from the required reading list that was once on it. That happens all of the time. Does that now mean that any book removed from the required reading list while still readily available in the school library has been “banned” and removing a book from that list is censorship?
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Of course, the other side of this coin is that this was all started by more or less just one parent who happened to be a Mormon. Yes, a committee of teachers, students and members of the central staff was formed to look at the book and make the decision, but this was essentially a response to one parent and I think that was totally unnecessary. One parent complains about something and it gets yanked? No. What the school should have done was, as has been done before in other places, make an allowance for that student to read something else in that books place. You do not let just one parent dictate the shape of the reading list for the entire school district.
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Maybe, maybe, I can see pulling the book from the reading list on these grounds if the entire school district were filled with people objecting to the materials, but not for just one person. And, of course, the first option I would go for is using the characters in the book that held these views as a teaching moment to look at how this particular religion had been viewed at that point in time by many.
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But yanking it all together from the reading list because one person got a bee in her bonnet? No.
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As to some of the stuff that started this thread…
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“In case you’re keeping score, Virginia was also the state that fought to the bitter end for the preservation of bans on interracial marriage. It’s also the home of Congressman Virgil Goode who sent around an email insisting that immigration laws had to be tightened up in order to make sure that Muslims didn’t flood into the US and wind up getting elected to high offices.
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Perhaps Albermarle may want to consider publishing their own version, and every place in the story where the word “Mormon” is used, they can substitute “Black” or perhaps “Muslim.””
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Well, yes, if we are “keeping score” and cherry picking from the state’s history, then, yeah, we can discuss all of that and use it to create a slanted picture of the situation from the word go and maybe spin things to imply that those evil Conservatives are at it again. However, if you want to keep currant rather than keep score…
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First, Virgil Goode was the representative for Virginia’s 5th district. Go look up the 5th district. Albemarle County is only a tiny part of that and, if you also look up old vote stats, not one of the parts of the 5th that Goode considered a stronghold or sure bet for votes.
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Albemarle County itself is in Northern Virginia by the way. You know, that place where all the people talking about the electoral goings on back in the 2008 election were saying would be the part of Virginia that would put Obama over the top insofar as our state’s vote totals because of its heavy liberal and Democratic voting base. Albemarle County is represented on the local level by mostly Democrats, including the man, R. Creigh Deeds, who the party chose to run as its Gubernatorial candidate in the last election, with some moderate Republicans and Independents mixed in. Albemarle County is also one of the little spots of blue VS the many spots of red that you see in the maps showing who voted for whom here in Virginia in the last Presidential election. Albemarle County went Obama with 59% of their vote. It also has Charlottesville nestled nicely in it’s boarders. Charlottesville went for Obama with 79% of their vote.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/campaign08/election/vacounties.html
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Most of these people aren’t the people who would be just fine and dandy with the book if only the word “Mormon” were replaced with “Black” or “Muslim” instead. Most of these people are actually the types of people who one would expect to be behind a modern example of “banning” or “censoring” a book in some way or another. These people are the Left and not the Right. These people voted in quite large numbers for the black guy running in 2008 that many on the Right tried to paint as a Muslim. So, yeah, I can see how you could certainly think that they’re the types who would be happier about the book if only it were attacking blacks and Muslims instead.
Again, Jerry, you are using facts and logic. It’s much more fun (and takes a lot less effort) for many to cherry pick incidents that fit their narrative – even if they’re decades old – and laugh at others as being ignorant and feel no research is needed because, well, we all know how THEY are and THEY never change.
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Then the same people will talk about how simple-minded, uneducated. ignorant and divisive their opponents are while feeling they are enlightened. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
It would be interesting to know if The Valley of Fear is subject to a similar treatment in Pennsylvania. After all, descendant of the Molly Maguires could find it objectionable as well.