Reminder: It's Banned Books Week

Huffington Post Michael Schaub: Banned Books Week: Saving Waldo and Terabithia from the Radical Right:

"How many banned books did you read this year? It's probably more than you think. Take a look at the list of the most frequently challenged books of the last decade - you'll find the usual suspects (Heather Has Two Mommies, The Catcher in the Rye, The New Joy of Gay Sex) mixed in with titles like Where's Waldo? and the children's classic Bridge to Terabithia.

Neither of those last two have been conclusively proven to cause children to go on Satanic murder sprees, but I'm sure the right-wingers have their reasons. Maybe Waldo was hiding in a gay bar. Maybe abortion was legal in Terabithia. Banned Books Week seems like a good time to ask: What the hell is wrong with these people?

There's no telling, of course, though British journalist Ben MacIntyre has a guess: 'The American list of opposed books reveals a society still struggling with major hang-ups about sex, race, religion and Holocaust victims who are insufficiently jolly.' (The last sentence refers to a handful of Alabama bureaucrats who challenged Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl because it's a 'real downer.')"