the good griefing continues...

[acroyear]

Texas BOE Bans Children's Book Author : Dispatches from the Culture Wars:

Just how utterly clueless are the religious right intelli-phobes on the Texas State Board of Education? They banned a children's book author with a very common name because one of the dolts on the board did an Amazon search and found a different author with the same name had written a book about Marxism.

What do the authors of the children's book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and a 2008 book called Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation have in common?

Both are named Bill Martin and, for now, neither is being added to Texas schoolbooks.

In its haste to sort out the state's social studies curriculum standards this month, the State Board of Education tossed children's author Martin, who died in 2004, from a proposal for the third-grade section. Board member Pat Hardy, R-Weatherford, who made the motion, cited books he had written for adults that contain "very strong critiques of capitalism and the American system."

Trouble is, the Bill Martin Jr. who wrote the Brown Bear series never wrote anything political, unless you count a book that taught kids how to say the Pledge of Allegiance, his friends said. The book on Marxism was written by Bill Martin, a philosophy professor at DePaul University in Chicago.

To make matters worse, there's a crazy he-said-she-said on who was actually responsible for doing the "research" on the Bill Martin's...and none of the board members had actually read the "marxist" book (which itself seems more a continuation of Marx's legitimate critiques of Capitalism from an ethical standpoint)...nor, it seems, the banned children's book for that matter.

I'm waiting for them to also ban some Marillion albums since their album covers were done by Bill Martin Studios.