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Lies Our Teachers Tell Us
Our First Lady is all excited about promoting reading, partly because, as
Mrs. Bush told The Times's Elisabeth Bumiller, "There's nothing political about American literature."
It's good that Laura Bush isn't trying to break out of her proper place by doing anything "political"—politics are dirty and icky and should be left to men, you know.
Lies like this make me want to scream. If there's nothing political about American literature, how do you explain Uncle Tom's Cabin? Why have people tried to ban Huckleberry Finn or any of these books? Fahrenheit 451 has become something of a staple in high school literature classes—is that because there's nothing political about a book about burning books? Oh, yeah, I guess so.
UPDATE: Credit where it's due -- the link to our First Lady's bit of wisdom came via Slacktivist.
Posted October 13, 2002 09:54 AM | general politics
The full article's actually pretty interesting... it seems Bush is actually trying to create a substantive dialogue on literature, which strikes me as contrary to the anti-intellectual image sought by most White Houses. For example, she had what was apparently a rather interesting multi-day seminar on the Harlem Poets. What that means with regards to politics is beyond me, but it is odd... and somewhat fascinating.
Posted by: TPB, Esq. at October 14, 2002 08:41 AM
