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BYU Researchers (Almost) Advocate Restricting Speech Directed at Children and...
I was horrified when my four-year-old daughter ran out the door one morning with a copy of Go the F**k to Sleep in her hot little hands. She wanted to bring it to school. I’m not even sure how she...
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Banning Books that Promote Tolerance?
At the beginning of the month, there were news reports that a school district in Illinois had banned Todd Parr’s The Family Book because of its reference on one page to families with two moms or two...
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Is the Children’s Book Adorable or “Lewd” and “Unsuitable for Small Children”?
“It’s called pissed,” my daughter said, carefully enunciating the words. “Pissed?” I replied. “You read a book at school called Pissed?” “Uh-huh. It was great. There were these animals who talked...
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Lessons from A Negative Review on Amazon
It’s often interesting to read negative reviews on Amazon.com, particularly of books that received overwhelming praise. Really, you can’t please everyone. I came across a negative review yesterday...
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Banned Books: The Politics Behind Censorship
In 1976, a school district in the state of New York removed nine books from its libraries, claiming these books were “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Sem[i]tic, and just plain filthy,” and so the...
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“Consider This A Warning” On Books And Blogs
Content-based ratings are a step or two below outright bans on the censorship spectrum. These types of ratings purport to inform consumers, particularly parents, about controversial content, but they...
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More Thoughts on the Censorship Spectrum: Cleansing Racist Themes From...
As I discussed in two posts during Banned Books Week, I believe in making current First Amendment law in the United States more robust so that public school boards and libraries have less authority to...
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Who Should Be In Charge of the Robots?
On Tuesday, November 6th, Americans will decide who should be in charge of the robots. I am referencing a 1974 letter by the famous and now deceased Ray Bradbury, whose politics I do not share but...
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Banishing (Or, Better Yet, Ignoring) The Banished Words List
With the New Year quickly approaching, now is the time for annual polls and lists, including my least favorite type: the facetious “banished” words lists. I saw TIME’s poll, and, of course, the list...
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Vonnegut’s Literary Reputation: Evidence that American Culture Must Be in...
While having tea at my parents’ house yesterday afternoon, my father shared with me some unsettling news about the undergraduate and graduate students in his screen-directing class: They have never...
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In Defense of Ambiguously Lewd Speech
Certain four letter words – and longer ones with similar connotations – just don’t have the punch they once did. “Damn,” for example. Clark Gable’s famous last line from Gone with the Wind “shocked...
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Internet Booksellers: How Do You Know If Material is “Harmful to Minors”?
Last week, a group of booksellers and others who publish materials on the Internet asked a federal court in Louisiana to halt a criminal law that requires folks in that state to verify the ages of...
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