BOOK: Criticism from the east

The School Board must stick by plans to ban certain books because of their disgusting, amoral, and un-American content. Yes, some will point out that Steinbeck, who wrote the offending “Of Mice and Men,” won only one Nobel Prize. This does not excuse his use of swear words. There are other things to remove from the shelves: Greek myths (what did Oedipus do with his mother?); Shakespeare (“Hamlet” with its disgusting portrayal of base human passions); and the Bible (fornication is mentioned 12 times in the New Testament).

Remember that Congress condemned the following people as un-American in the 1950s: lawyer Clarence Darrow, Albert Einstein (author of relativity), Frank Lloyd Wright, Ernest Hemingway (another Nobel Prize winner but he committed suicide in Idaho), Aaron Copeland (author of the most loved piece of American music, “Appalachian Spring,” but gay!), and Pearl Buck (yet another Nobel laureate but who worried about the rights of women and minority groups). We need only white traditional American family values, not these folks and their works.

Ultimately, the question arises, why books at all in school? Our children have television and the Internet for culture where they will never encounter cussing and filth, only family values and traditions such as those in the Bible. The Nazis had a good approach, burning books in 1933, and Russia under Putin with its censorship of music and art is another good example to follow.

PAUL JOSEPHSON

Waterville, Maine