Maus

 The McMinn County Tennessee school board banned the graphic novel Maus because it contains “rough” language and nudity.  Maus was written by Art Spiegelman about the experience of his parents in Poland.  Nazis are portrayed as cats and Jews as mice.  Evidently the school board wants a more sanitized version of the Holocaust.

As stupid as this sounds, the school board could point to past efforts to eliminate a New Deal mural in Washington High School in San Francisco because it portrayed a dead American Indian at the feet of George Washington and made students uncomfortable, or the demand for “trigger warnings” for passages in readings that might upset students, or demands that Huckleberry Finn be banned because of Mark Twain’s language.

Let’s all take a deep breath and let people read what they want to read and allow teachers teachers to teach and librarians to stock their shelves.  And no, I’m not advocating that we stock school libraries with child porn.  I’m advocating common sense.