Why Ban Books About Banning Books When We Can Just Burn Them

• Parent criticizes book ‘Fahrenheit 451’:

  A Caney Creek High School dad is fired up because the Conroe Independent School District uses the book “Fahrenheit 451” as classroom reading material.

  Alton Verm, of Conroe, objects to the language and content in the book. His 15-year-old daughter Diana, a CCHS sophomore, came to him Sept. 21 with her reservations about reading the book because of its language. “The book had a bunch of very bad language in it,” Diana Verm said. “It shouldn’t be in there because it’s offending people. … If they can’t find a book that uses clean words, they shouldn’t have a book at all.”

  Alton Verm filed a “Request for Reconsideration of Instructional Materials” Thursday with the district regarding “Fahrenheit 451,” written by Ray Bradbury and published in 1953. He wants the district to remove the book from the curriculum.

  “It’s just all kinds of filth,” said Alton Verm, adding that he had not read “Fahrenheit 451.”

He wants to ban a book about book banning that he hasn’t read during banned book week.

I think my brain just infarcted.

Supporting Superman Means You Support Illegal Aliens

Neil Gaiman & Adam Rogers have an editorial in Wired about “The Myth of Superman”. I mostly agree with it (mostly), but take issue with the conclusion:

Other heroes are really only pretending: Peter Parker plays Spider-Man; Bruce Wayne plays Batman. For Superman, it’s mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent that’s the disguise – the thing he aspires to, the thing he can never be. He really is that hero, and he’ll never be one of us. But we love him for trying. We love him for wanting to protect us from everything, including his own transcendence. He plays the bumbling, lovelorn Kent so that we regular folks can feel, just for a moment, super.

Bruce Wayne doesn’t play Batman. Bruce Wayne is Batman, who’s forced to play Bruce Wayne. It’s a theme Batman Begins emphasizes (and one of my favorite aspects of the movie).

The semantics used for Superman bother me as well. The one thing Superman can’t do is be normal, but he doesn’t play Clark Kent, he is Clark Kent. He’s forced to put on the mask of Superman (or lack thereof) because destroying the line between super hero and ordinary guy would destroy Clark Kent, the man he can’t be.

And, for the record, Batman can kick Superman’s ass.

Well, we could go to a bar, find some people we don't like and beat the crap out of them.