Dumb and Dumber: Education Versus The American Way

ONCE, when people worried about censorship, they really had something serious on their minds. For example, in Zurich during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 74 writers were executed for saying the wrong thing about marriage and religion. When English journalist John Stubbs published a pamphlet that Queen Elizabeth I didn’t like, she had the executioner cut off his right hand.

So it’s no surprise that reports of the re-emergence of censorship have generated concern. Publishers Weekly has warned that America faces “new risks of censorship.” A panelist at a censorship meeting of the American Booksellers Convention maintained that “We are currently at an epidemic stage.” New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen informed readers of an authoritative “four-page list in very small type describing just some of the books challenged or banned last year.”

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James L. Payne

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ONCE, when people worried about censorship, they really had something serious on their minds. For example, in Zurich during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 74 writers were executed for saying the wrong thing about marriage and religion. When English journalist John Stubbs published a pamphlet that Queen Elizabeth I didn’t like, she had the executioner cut off his right hand.

So it’s no surprise that reports of the re-emergence of censorship have generated concern. Publishers Weekly has warned that America faces “new risks of censorship.” A panelist at a censorship meeting of the American Booksellers Convention maintained that “We are currently at an epidemic stage.” New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen informed readers of an authoritative “four-page list in very small type describing just some of the books challenged or banned last year.”