THE BUZZ PRESENTS: Ten Books You Won't Believe They Tried to Ban in American Schools!
1. They Burned Barcelona (Ernest Hemingway, 1942) [1]
2. The Concrete Jungle (J. G. Ballard, 1979) [2]
3. Atticus (Harper Lee, 1961) [3]
4. No One Left to Lie To: The Kennedy family on Trial at Last (Christopher Hitchens, 2001) [4]
5. Following Mighty Colorado To The Sea (Edward Abbey, 1973) [5]
6. Moby Dick (Herman Melville 1980, 1994, 1996 in several states) [6]
7. The Adventures of Sailor Moon! (Naoko Takeuchi, 1992, translated 1993)
8. Fear and Loathing in Panama (Hunter S. Thompson, 1999) [8]
9. Orlando Returns (Ursula Le Guin, 1973) [9]
10. Point Horror: The Boy Next Door (R.L. Stine, 1988)
1). Hemingway’s book based on his exploits and experiences in Republican Spain during the Spanish Civil War in particular the May Day Battles was nearly banned in University’s and Schools for being Pro-CNT and the Catalonian Commune during a period where America was working with the USSR and Republican Spain to help fight the Nazi’s and Franco, both countries viewing the Anarchists and Trotskyists of Catalonia as ‘Counter-Revolutionary Fascists’. Eventually it was decreed that the book could be released as a limited edition. It would later get a wider release in 1946 as the Cold War began and the idea of teaching school children of the evils of Communism seemed like a good idea.
2) Popular children's author and sci-fi pulpist Ballard had often skirted close to the line as far as several countries were concerned, but "The Concrete Jungle" was rapidly infamous - a black comedy satire on new high rises, as an affluent middle-class block descends into barbarism due to their setting and the kids band together into a parody of a 'native tribe' (this part has since become controversial on its own) to survive the mad adults. In a similar parody of stories where whites are guided by a wise local aboriginal, the tribe is 'guided' by a local council estate kid who is actually making this all up and the middle classes just assume knows something. The implied violence, anti-authoritism, and general nihilism saw this banned from schools all across America, much to Ballard's open glee. Adapted into a film of the same name by Spike Lee in 1992, transported to Los Angeles and turning the 'tribe' into white kids emulating LA gangs, with their 'guide' being the only black (middle-class) teen there.
3) A sequel to Lee's 'To Kill a Mockingbird', it was a much more in depth analysis of the previous novel's antagonist, the eponymous Atticus Finch. In 'Mockingbird', Atticus is a sleazy New York lawyer who came to rural Alabama to lead the prosecution of innocent African-American for a crime that Atticus had in fact committed before the novel's beginning, though he succeeds in shielding himself from any repercussions. In 'Atticus', he reflects on his life before the trial from a jail cell after being retroactively of convicted for the events of the previous novel, before helping one of his fellow inmates escape a harsh sentence. The novel ends with Atticus leaving prison to return to work, only to be mugged and killed by a gang of African-Americans. The novel left a sour taste in the mouths of readers by retconing the end of the last book, and turning what had been an indictment of racial injustice in the South, to excusing the prejudices of white American, and martyring the embodiment of those prejudices. Ironically, the SNCC tried moving to ban the book after George Wallace's ban of 'Mockingbird' was overturned by the Supreme Court.
4) The noted foreign correspondent was already well respected in the world of journalism for his work covering the fall of Argentina's junta, but the revelations in his book on one of America's leading families caused major ripples. While it was widely acclaimed across most of Europe, Americans simply weren't ready to admit that Joe Kennedy Jr., the idolised hotshot commander of the USAF, was in private a raging anti-Semite donating money to William Luther Pierce. They weren't ready to admit that the fatherly Grand Old Man of the Senate had dumped his mistress off of a pier into Poucha Pond. And they certainly weren't ready to read about what the older middle child of the family was caught up in after his 'exile' to Vegas. The at-times graphic nature of those scenes was the excuse given for banning it in Massachusetts, but given who the State Attorney was married to, this was probably a pretext for trying to salvage the Kennedy family reputation. Hitchens would eventually accept a Pulitzer for his work, but the libel suit Pat Kennedy filed had to be 'settled out of court' by the publishers.
5. A recurrent Bete Noire of the Reagan Administration, Abbey’s book was one of the dozens of books denounced and lambasted by Abby Reagan and Pat Buchanan on their infamous broadcasts of “Good Morning America”, and its author deemed as the “most degraded immoralists since the Marquis de Sade” by Secretary Volcker, and was as such often burned by the thousands in the marches of the League of Decency and Mothers for America. Hailed as an inspiration for the modern environmentalist movement.
6) This book was also banned due to Edward Abbey - his frequent allusions to it in "Mighty Colorado" led to the book being a reference point for other radical environmentalists. (Indeed, the R. Crumb cover of Abbey's first edition showed Abbey and several monkeys with wrenches pursuing Moby Dick down the Colorado River.) In various states in 1980, small, conservative areas banned the book from school libraries due to association. This, of course, meant more kids read it, and the whole thing was roundly criticised as stupid by America at large. Despite all that, in 1994 another school tried it after an (infamously terrible and bowlderised) film of "Mighty Colorado" came out, claiming it - and "Mighty Colorado" - could lead to vandalism. The third ban, in 1996, was because several kids in Indiana did vandalise several tractors and wrote "The Sons of Ahab" everywhere, solely because the case in 1994 gave them the idea.
7. Less famous than his attempts to ban Walden and the works of Upton Sinclair but twice as stupid, President Trump’s nativist campaign against Japanese imports in the wake of Mitsubishi’s purchase of the Empire State Building reached the heights of farce after Senator Strom Thurmond was tasked with explaining and denouncing the work while gesticulating at panels of the manga on the senate floor. Often brought up in the 96 debates.
8. Based upon Hunter S Thompson’s reporting of the Panama Crisis in 1989 and it’s aftermath it would become a controversial teaching tool for many teachers to help them teacher about the Crisis. Eventually in the wake of 9/11 and the Bush Presidency it would be banned across various schools in America. It would lead to a legal rights battle lead by a variety of famous figures, it would eventually be unbanned in the wake of Dean’s Presidency in 2004.
9. The sequel to Virginia Woolf's classic saw Orlando and their husband move to America, hoping to indulge in the Roaring Twenties - right as the Depression hits, leaving them destitute and becoming part of various poor underclasses from 1929 to 1970 (when Le Guin started writing), where Orlando has served two terms in Vietnam for the money (and shifted gender in the process). In the process, Orlando writes of their new understanding of life now they've lived at the bottom. Naturally, the bisexuality and gender work, the blunt treatment of American poverty, class structures, & race relations and the book's scene of sexual assault did not go down well with various schools. Three court cases - in 1976, 1981, and 1985 - were held on First Amendment grounds, the first two failing. The movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1981) pointedly shows Linda Barrett reading it on campus.
10. An in-depth study of of Senator Ted Bundy and the revelations of his double life as a serial killer and the suspected cover up of the same by the Republican establishment. Subject to over a decade of court actions and suppressions it was finally released in 1998 and has cast a pallid cloud over former President Trump over his suspected knowledge.
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Chancellors of the German Reich -Post Kapp Putsch
1919-1922: Wolfgang Kapp (DNVP) (1)
1922-1929:
1929-1932:
1932-1934:
1934-1940:
1941-1945:
1945-1952:
1952-XXXX:
(1) In successfully capturing the Government at the Reich Chancellery Lüttwitz forces stop the orders for a general strike and force the Weimar Government to accede to the demands of the Putsch conspirators. Kapp became acting Chancellor and dissolved the Reichstag, promising fresh elections within 6 months. However unrest within the West of the country increased, leading to a harsh military crackdown and the promised elections with consistently pushed back. Kapp became increasingly sickly with cancer and the day to day running of the Cabinet fail to his aides, influenced more and more by the military and selected technocrats.