{"id":91212,"date":"2022-02-07T17:21:39","date_gmt":"2022-02-07T17:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=91212"},"modified":"2022-02-07T17:21:45","modified_gmt":"2022-02-07T17:21:45","slug":"in-tennessee-the-maus-controversy-is-the-least-of-our-worries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=91212","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;In Tennessee, the \u2018Maus\u2019 Controversy Is the Least of Our Worries&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/02\/07\/opinion\/culture\/maus-tennessee-book-bans.html?smid=em-share\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times:<\/a> &#8220;It\u2019s what the teenagers of McMinn County do\u00a0<em>not<\/em>\u00a0carry in their pockets that explains why \u201cMaus\u201d is a necessary text for classroom discussion. They don\u2019t carry an understanding of what the Nazis did to the Jews so recently that there are still\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/nation\/2022\/02\/01\/holocaust-survivor-lily-ebert-tiktok\/\" target=\"_blank\">survivors sharing their memories<\/a>. They don\u2019t carry an understanding of the emotional fallout of that history, or the persecution of Jews that continues to this day. Most of all, what the teenagers of McMinn County do not carry in their pockets is a gifted teacher who can help them recognize the atrocities that human beings are capable of without succumbing to existential despair themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">History teaches us that banning books has always been futile. The first translation of the New Testament published in English was banned in England, its translator executed for heresy. Anybody care to guess how many English-language Bibles now exist in the world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The present is showing us how futile it still is. Shortly after\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/tnholler.com\/2022\/01\/mcminn-county-bans-maus-pulitzer-prize-winning-holocaust-book\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Tennessee Holler broke the news<\/a>, \u201cMaus\u201d hit the stratosphere, becoming\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2022\/01\/28\/maus-amazon-bestseller-after-tennessee-school-ban.html\" target=\"_blank\">a No. 1 Amazon\u00a0<\/a>best seller 36 years after it first appeared in book form. Shortly thereafter it was sold out at Amazon and nearly everywhere else.&#8221;&#8230;Still, it is possible to trust that the parents in McMinn County are acting in what they believe is the best interest of their children, and also to recognize that these parents are being manipulated by toxic and dangerous political forces operating at the state and national levels. Here in Tennessee, book bans are just a small but highly visible part of a much larger effort to privatize public schools and turn them into conservative propaganda centers. This crusade is playing out in ways that transcend local school board decisions, and in fact are designed to wrest control away from them altogether.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NY Times: &#8220;It\u2019s what the teenagers of McMinn County do\u00a0not\u00a0carry in their pockets that explains why \u201cMaus\u201d is a necessary text for classroom discussion. They don\u2019t carry an understanding of what the Nazis did to the Jews so recently that there are still\u00a0survivors sharing their memories. They don\u2019t carry an understanding of the emotional fallout&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsstory"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=91212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91213,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91212\/revisions\/91213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}