mini-series from Marvel Comics and for co-writing 
with 
“Scrotum” Dangerous for Children
I’m so disappointed in people today.
Apparently Susan Patron’s Newbery Award-winning book, The Higher Power of Lucky, is being kept off the shelves of school libraries because the word “scrotum” appears on the first page.
Details: NPR, Publisher’s Weekly, NYTimes, and the LA Times.
You should have seen Barbara Walters and her cohorts discussing it on The View (which I really don’t watch, it was on when I turned the tv on and they immediately started talking about this).
What’s-her-face, the stupid, young blonde one, said that she ALTERS the books she reads to her 2 year old daughter. Actually takes a black Sharpie to them and changes the text. She whipped out Babar and said she wouldn’t read it to her daughter because Babar marries his cousin. She was ridiculous.
The rest of them, Barbara Walters included, engaged in a spirited discussion of what word would possibly be acceptable. The guy in charge of the bleep button was working overtime.
It’s a sad state of affairs when someone responsible for disseminating information nationally brags that she censors books – children’s books, no less. (What are the odds her daughter has something pierced by age 11?) Of course, this is The View – not World News Tonight…but still, it speaks to the current moral/political climate.
That’s pretty sad, but here’s something equally sad: the NYTimes had a piece on this a week or so ago, and so much of the blog coverage (I can’t bring myself to say blogosph…no! can’t!) focused on “Heh Heh Heh, the Times said scrotum!”
Case in point:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/02/a_brief_history_of_times_genit_1.html
Pretty much everybody sucks, really, except us.
Of course, I probably deserve that for reading New York and its bloggy offspring, but I get bored some times.
Wow.