Originally published at: Florida district pulls "Arthur's Birthday" from schools because it might lead to "damaged souls" | Boing Boing
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Spin the bottle! That’s what you do at rainbow parties while high on jenkem, am I remembering my fretful old person correctly?
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Weird guy, reading inappropriate behaviour in to a simple game. Maybe, in Friedman’s circles, this leads to strange and disturbing antics.
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is this the freedom conservatives keep demanding? i want nothing to do with book bans.
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When I think of all the things that damaged my soul in grade school, “spin the bottle” does not make the list.
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What do you wanna bet this guy has a cache of CP for his “research” though? I mean, those souls are already damaged now so… it’s ok right?
Personally I think the concept of a “soul” that can be “damaged” is one of the most terrible and insidious lies one can poison a young mind with early on.
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You mess with Arthur, you mess with many of us/
You disrespect PBS, you’ll see plenty of us
You made powerful enemies today, dingbats.
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And it never occurs to these fine gentlemen running these fine states that accepting the scribbled palaver of the most irritable ignorant lunatics as a means to set school policy might not be the best way to serve society at large? Aren’t many school boards sufficiently backwards without canvasing “The debbil is among us!!” crowd?
“In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.”
― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
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If you don’t like it, don’t let YOUR kid read it. Better yet, don’t breed.
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Attempting to raise children in a complete ‘innocence bubble’ which ignores all the realities of full grown adult life rarely ends well, from what I have witnessed in my time.
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These christofascists are fine with indoctrination, as long as they are the ones doing the indoctrinating.
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If he hasn’t read them, cover to cover, then he doesn’t get to “ban” them.
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There is no book pure enough when your goal is a nationwide ban on all books – in libraries, in stores, in homes…
ALSO: Related: Houston public schools are eliminating librarians from staff and plan to turn libraries into “discipline centers.”
The state took over the Houston Independent School District recently, as well as other parts of Houston city government, partly because Houston consistently votes blue every year, and in numbers high enough to jeopardize GOP rule. And of course, white Republicans are an extreme minority in Houston, so state Republicans would love to punish the hell out of their largest city…
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What? Jesus Christ - let me google what the fuss is about.
Evidently this is based on an actual episode, and looking at the Amazon reviews, there are reviews about it over a decade old mentioning the bottle. It was originally published in 1998.
When looking for more info, there is also a book called Arthur’s First Kiss, which appears to be related to the book.
So - uh - yeah. Not sure why it is suddenly an issue. It seem pretty innocent, though maybe a bit anachronistic. I feel like that might be something kids in the 70s-80s played more than in the 90s or today. Certainly none of the birthday parties I went to. But it doesn’t sound like its nefarious or anything.
Maybe I am a little numb to things. We had a lot of inappropriate scenes in our PG movies in the 80s. Anyone else remember there was a bra and panty scene in Teenwolf? I sure didn’t when I showed my kiddo. I didn’t make a big deal of it, and I don’t think she was scarred.
I also watched some soap operas with my mom during the summer, because that was what was on TV. Lots of kissing there.
Anyway - FYI:
Wiki on the book
Wiki about the episode which sounds like the actually play the game?
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… except the Bible? Or was the original mistake teaching people to read at all 
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Do these pathetically small minded creatures realize that Amazon has a great page of banned books. It really is a handy thing, since it’s hard to keep up with what these creatin’s have most recently got their panties bunched up over. These really are scary people, they believe they have a right to think for us for our children. The punch a nazi notion surely includes these swine.
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Try our library. I’m sure we can find an appropriate place to file this request.
Unfortunately we do have to take all complaints given to us and consider their validity. While I think the results on this one would be obvious (no, we’re not going to actually bother the library board with it and the books would not be removed in the meantime.) we would at least review the complaint before laughing out loud.
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I’ve yet to see anything saying this guy is a parent, much less a parent with kids in those schools. Mostly he seems bent on determining what other people’s kids should be allowed to read at school. One quote has him saying he will show everyone what a clean library looks like.
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