Lauren Boebert allegedly called a pregnant woman a “sad and miserable person“ after she asked the GOP representative to stop vaping during a Denver Beetlejuiceshow.
The right-wing congresswoman and a companion were escorted out of a Colorado theatre’s performance of Beetlejuice on Sunday night for allegedly vaping, singing, taking pictures and “causing a disturbance,” reported The Denver Post.
But c’mon, folks. Causing a scene and violating rules is a central tenet of modern-day Republicanism, and Boebert, a dollar-store version of the infamously disruptive Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, was just doing what she does routinely in the halls of Congress and in front of any television camera she can find.
She yelled at President Joe Biden during his 2022 State of the Union address while wearing a shawl with the words “Drill Baby Drill” on the back.
The previous year, she loudly pulled out a space blanket – like the ones often given to detained immigrants – during Biden's first address to the joint session of Congress, making a difficult-to-discern point about Biden’s policies.
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"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Thursday, September 14, 2023. Efforts to ban books increase, the family of a woman with dual citizenship (she's a citizen of Russia and of Israel) wants the US to play "cops of the world," and much more.
Though doppelgängers reliably elicit feelings of vertigo, I find the sudden prevalence of doubles oddly comforting. For years I struggled privately with a problem I considered rather niche: being perennially confused and conflated with another writer and outspoken political analyst named Naomi, Naomi Wolf, even though I bear only a passing resemblance to her. (And I would see the same thing happening to her.) Once best known for best-selling feminist books like “The Beauty Myth” and for a controversial role advising Al Gore’s presidential run, Ms. Wolf has more recently distinguished herself as an industrial-scale disseminator of vaccine-related medical misinformation, as well as a fixture on pro-Trump shows like the one hosted daily by Steve Bannon.
I sometimes wondered what I had done to deserve my doppelgänger woes. With popular culture feeling increasingly like a house of mirrors with duplicated and simulated and similar selves endlessly refracted, many more of us may soon be dealing with versions of doppelgänger confusion. What role is this proliferation of doubles, twins and clones playing? Doppelgängers, which combine the German words for doppel (double) with gänger (goer), are often regarded as warnings, or omens.
In an attempt to better understand the warnings carried by my doppelgänger experience, I spent many evenings immersing myself in the rich repertory of doppelgänger films. One that proved particularly helpful was Jordan Peele’s “Us.” This 2019 horror film imagines a society much like our own, only sitting on top of a shadowy underworld, inhabited by warped doubles of everyone living aboveground. Every move above is mirrored below in darkness and misery. Until the underground doppelgängers get tired of the arrangement and wreak havoc.
Who are these underground people? one terrified character asks.
“We’re Americans,” comes the gut punch of an answer.
The film has been interpreted as an allegory for capitalism’s entanglements with racial and other forms of oppression, with the comforts of the few requiring the exploitation of a shadow world. That understanding landed particularly hard during the pandemic, when I watched the film. Those of us who were part of the lockdown class were able to shelter in place because we were being served by “essential workers,” many of whom did not have the ability to call in sick. Doubles often play this role, offering viewers and readers uncomfortable ways into their own story. By showing us a character facing her doppelgänger, we are exposed to parts of ourselves we can least bear to see, but at a slight angle, and through a warped mirror.
We are, once again, at a historical juncture where our physical and political worlds are changing too quickly and too consequentially for our minds to easily comprehend. This is why I decided to start regarding my own doppelgänger as a narrow aperture through which to look at forces I consider dangerous, and that can be hard to confront directly.
Rather than worrying about people thinking that she and I were one and the same, I got interested in the ways she seems to have become a doppelgänger of her former self. Because I have been getting confused with Ms. Wolf for close to a decade and half, I knew that she had been dabbling in conspiracy culture for years. (I would periodically get harangued online for positions she had taken.)
Before the pandemic, her underlying values seemed somewhat stable: feminism, sexual freedom, democracy, basic liberalism. Then, rather suddenly, they appeared less so. In a matter of months, I watched her go from questioning masks in schools to questioning election results alongside Mr. Bannon. Next she was engaging in Jan. 6 revisionism, condoning the Supreme Court’s assault on abortion rights, posting about her firearms and also warning that “war is being waged upon us.”
This is a phenomenon far larger than Ms. Wolf, of course. A great many of us have witnessed it in people we know, once respected and even still love. We tell one another that they have disappeared “down the rabbit hole,” lost to conspiratorial fantasies, embracing apocalyptic language, seemingly unreachable by affection or reason.
During a Tuesday Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about book bans, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) read sexually explicit passages from two LGBTQ+ memoirs in order to justify censorship as a necessary way to protect children from pornography and sexual grooming.
However, other experts during the hearing pointed out book bans are also being used to ban non-sexual LGBTQ+ children’s books and other books about the anti-Semitic Nazi Holocaust, Native American genocide, and Black and Latino civil rights experiences.
The hearing, entitled “Book Bans: Examining How Censorship Limits Liberty and Literature,” featured testimony from five witnesses: two who claimed that the upset around book bans is over-exaggerated, and three who consider book bans an attack on democratic free-thinking.
[. . .]
However, Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) called the Republicans’ focus on overly sexual passages “a distraction from the real challenge,” adding, “No one is advocating for sexually explicit content to be available in an elementary school library or in [the] children’s section of the library.”
“I understand and respect that parents may choose to limit what their children read, especially at younger ages. My wife and I did. Others do, too,” Durbin said. “But no parent should have the right to tell another parent’s child what they can and cannot read in school or at home. Every student deserves access to books that reflect their experiences and help them better understand who they are.”
During her testimony, Emily Knox, president of the National Coalition Against Censorship, noted that the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom counted 2,571 unique titles targeted for in-school censorship in 2022 — a 38% increase from the number of titles targeted in 2021.
“Almost all of the books can be categorized as ‘diverse’ or books by and about ‘LGBTQIA, Native, people of color, gender diversity, people with disabilities and ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities,’” Knox said. “These attacks on our freedom to read, our libraries, and our schools are unconstitutional and unpopular. Seventy-one percent of Americans oppose book bans in public libraries, and 67% oppose book bans in school libraries,” she added, citing a March 2022 ALA survey.
The National Education Association (NEA) noted that recent book bans have targeted such titles as Art Speigelman’s Holocaust graphic novel Maus and numerous titles about the struggle for civil rights by people of color, including Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Sharon Creech’s Walk Two Moons, and Duncan Tonatiuh’s Separate is Never Equal.
Sam Seder addresses the hearing in the video below.
The League of Women Voters hosted a discussion on the topic of book banning this week.
As bomb threats earlier this week forced nearly half a dozen libraries in Chicago and the suburbs to evacuate, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias testified at a U.S. Senate Judiciary hearing on the state's first-in-the-nation ban against book bans.
“…What I am concerned with is political attempts to ban books that are driving libraries to close their doors, stifle creativity, make librarians quit their jobs," Giannoulias said during Tuesday's hearing. "And just a few weeks ago, literally have to evacuate due to numerous bomb threats at multiple locations.”
The first-of-its-kind law, signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker on June 12, states that Illinois public libraries that restrict or ban materials because of “partisan or doctrinal” disapproval will be ineligible for state funding as of Jan. 1, 2024, when the new law goes into effect.
Layne Ray (THE POST) provides context:
The American Library Association began observing Banned Books Week in 1982. According to its website, it “celebrates the freedom to read and spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools.” Teachers, authors, students, librarians and supporters of the First Amendment can all come together this Oct. 1-7 to bring awareness to this harmful form of censorship that affects our nation as a whole.
Now more than ever, education is being censored. Topics like racism and sexism as well as LGBTQIA+ themes being put to a halt in certain places are disregarding all students’ First Amendment rights. Florida laws like the Stop WOKE Act and the “Don’t Say Gay” bill don’t directly prohibit any titles from being incorporated into the curriculum, but they freely open the opportunity for books to be challenged and removed from school libraries and lesson plans. Evidently, many have done so as Pen America named Florida as having the second-highest number of banned books between July and December of 2022 at 357 books.
In a similar, but not as severe situation is Ohio. There have been 79 titles challenged in total, but House Bills 322 and 327 that prohibit teachings of “divisive concepts” being passed could increase that number quickly. The bills haven’t been dismissed but have been in the House committee since 2021. With the growing popularity and turmoil of such censorship, Ohio may follow the trend.
Bookshop.org, a popular online bookstore, has an entry titled, “We Don’t Ban Books Over Here” in which readers can purchase books that are typically challenged or banned in some schools or libraries. It includes works such as “Lord of the Flies,” “The Hate U Give” and “The 1619 Project.” One of the more ironic ones found on this list, which has been read by a large number of students who attended public high schools, is “Fahrenheit 451.” While its significance went over my head as a 15-year-old, it is certainly one of the most crucial books for readers today. Banning a book about banning books is a terrifying level of censorship that is inexcusable.
Banned Books Week is a week that highlights the undemocratic effort to ban books and celebrates our right to read. This year, it will be October 1st through 7th. ALA notes:
“This is a
dangerous time for readers and the public servants who provide access to
reading materials. Readers, particularly students, are losing access to
critical information, and librarians and teachers are under attack for
doing their jobs.”
- Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom
Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to read and spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools. For more than 40 years, the annual event has brought together the entire book community — librarians, teachers, booksellers, publishers, writers, journalists, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular. The books featured during Banned Books Week have all been targeted for removal or restriction in libraries and schools. By focusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books, Banned Books Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship.
In a time of intense political polarization, library staff in every state are facing an unprecedented number of attempts to ban books. ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom ALA documented 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number of attempted book bans since ALA began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago. The unparalleled number of reported book challenges in 2022 nearly doubles the 729 book challenges reported in 2021. Of the record 2,571 unique titles targeted for censorship, most were by or about LGBTQIA+ persons and Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
The theme for Banned Books Week 2023 is "Let Freedom Read." When we ban books, we're closing off readers to people, places, and perspectives. But when we stand up for stories, we unleash the power that lies inside every book. We liberate the array of voices that need to be heard and the scenes that need to be seen. Let freedom read!
ADDED AT 10 am PST:
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The following sites updated:
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Boe-Boe fits in nowhere9 hours ago
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