Crankshaft by Tom Batiuk and Dan Davis for September 28, 2024

At which point an enraged Mookie threw a trashcan through the Village Booksmith window.

Aww, Tom writing a character praising a Tom avatar! How totally normal for an author to do, and not a sign of megalomania!

That’s the spirit Ed! Knowledge is important.

Books are also banned because they’re pornographic. Is Ed going to ask Lillian for a copy of Fanny Hill next?

Can’t wait for the sideways Sunday with Ed reading Mein Kampf

Outstanding !

More of Batty being in “the pantheon of lofty ambition and clueless execution.”

People only want to make sure their children are reading age-appropriate books and that controversial topics are introduced by parents. Nobody’s banning books or burning bookstores.

“Ed, GO HOME!”

Like JJ said yesterday, Ed wouldn’t be able to comprehend Fahrenheit 451. Nice try Batty

Lillian sure is brave. Selling a book that 99% of bookstores in the US carry.

Affirmation………emotional support or encouragement.

Yes, Lillian, you are! Ed is right.

nobody wants to see cranky talking sense maybe he will make paper planes with the pages

I don’t follow the logic, but I agree with the principle.

Oh, go fire up your barbeque, Ed.

Anyone have a clue as to how much longer this crusade will go on?

“Well I was wrong. There was nothing worth reading in that book.”

Attaboy Cranky……you still got it!!

Perhaps I misinterpreted the artwork in yesterday’s strip. I thought Ed was taking a copy of ‘Fahrenheit 451’ for himself. Another commenter pointed out that Ed was helping Lillian put all the students’ copies of the book on the shelf.

This makes very little sense. Batyuk doesn’t know how in-store pickup orders work. Why take the books out of the boxes and arrange them on the store shelves? Why not just leave the books in the boxes near the cash register here the books can be quickly and discretely given to the students. During my college days, I worked a part-time job at an adult bookstore. A buyer would often make a special order for a magazine, book, video, or other merchandise. We didn’t tell that person we took their special order out of the box and placed it on the store shelves where anybody could see it. That buyer expected a certain level of discretion. They didn’t want any undue attention to their purchase.

In a similar vein, wouldn’t it be better to leave the controversial books in the boxes and not draw any more attention to them? Seems like Lillian is daring the arsonist to do something. She may as well take out a full-page ad in the ‘Sentinel’.

Lillian: (singsong) ♫ “Yoo-hoo! Arsonist. You failed again. Look at what we have here. Not a single damaged copy. ♫ Try again loser!” (blows raspberries)

And another thing, suppose a customer, not a student, came into Lillian’s bookstore and saw ‘Fahrenheit 451’ on the shelf. Imagine the awkwardness if they took a copy of the book to the cash register and wanted to buy it.

Lillian: “That book is not for sale. Those books are for the students in Les Moore’s class.”

Customer: “This is a bookstore. The book was on the shelf. I’m buying it.”

In closing, isn’t it possible the inconsiderate Les Moore might want to move the books again? It would be a shame to have to pack up all those books again.

Les Moore: “I changed my mind. I want to move the books again. They’re not safe here.”

He could’ve made this a much shorter speech from ed

Or at least make it take up less days.

“Why would anyone want to ban this ‘Mein Kampf’? There must be something worth reading in it.”

Books have not been “banned”. Anyone who wants to read these books can walk into the bookstores that choose to sell them, or order them online, and then read them. A school board’s deciding that certain books should not be taught, or a library’s deciding not to carry certain books, is NOT “banning” them. It is merely making a selection, which is their job.

Knowledge is important, but sexually explicit content in our schools is unnecessary. Leave it to the parents to teach their children about sexual things.

I was reading xkcd this morning, and the “alt-text” pop-up was a quantum theory joke. Which caused me to think about the quantum nature of the arsonist in this story. We know nothing about the arsonist beyond the fact that he/she had two hands (or was two people using one hand each… Skippy and Becks?) and isn’t very good at starting fires. I think there is a reason for this. For all his desire to be seen as “provocative,” Batiuk writes as if he’s terrified he’ll anger one or more of his readers. As long as the arsonist is unknown, readers can make their own assumptions about who he/she is, and more importantly what his/her motives were. We see that on this board, where some people assume the “banning” is coming from conservative politicians and some assume it’s the work of liberals. As soon as Batiuk identifies the arsonist, he collapses the both-at-once quantum waveform and identifies the person’s motives… which are likely to PO some part of his readership.

In other words, the arsonist is Schroedinger’s cat. Who, in the context of the FunKrankyverse, can only be Le Chat Bleu, the sometimes-here, sometimes-not talking cat that Les hallucinates from time to time.

I’m bored this morning, so I started thinking of how a competent writer might construct a plausible book-banning/bookstore-burning story in the universe of this strip. Consider, if you will, the following:

In his class, Les mentions in passing the existence of the book Fahrenheit 451, says it is a provocative book about censorship and a good read. When a student asks where he/she can find it, Les says the school library has a copy.

Student borrows the book from the library, is fascinated, shows it to another kid, who tells his parents, who are outraged and demand the school remove this offensive book. When the school refuses, said parent gathers up a few like-minded parents (none of whom have read the book), forms an organization with a dumb name and bombards their state representative with angry letters.

Eventually, the representative holds hearings and the Worstview school board caves to pressure and has the book removed from the library. By now, of course, the “forbidden fruit” has become more attractive than ever, and when kids ask where they might obtain a copy now that the school library’s copy is gone, he suggests Lizard Lil’s bookstore. A plot device might be needed to explain why Les doesn’t just suggest they buy the book online.

Upon discovering that dozens of Worstview students are now reading this offensive book, the angry parent organization goes to picket Lillian’s store. Their pet state representative gives an inflammatory speech, realizing this might just be what he needs to assure re-election and a desirable committee chairmanship. Tempers are hot, one thing leads to another and the bookstore is torched, in broad daylight, by an angry mob.

Afterward, the mob and the town have to come to grips with what happened, and hopefully learn some lesson.

This is a thing that can happen in the real world (and probably has). Don’t expect Batty to do anything like it, though.

Let’s apply the same logic to smoking and drinking…we allow adults but not kids, so there must be something good about them and that’s why we’re banning them.

Anyone else getting tired of this story line?

A very good point. It’s worrying that some people can’t abide encountering information they don’t agree with.

words of wisdom

And if people haven’t learned that by protesting a thing, they just make it more desirable, then there’s no hope. Thanks Tipper Gore. Now kids just look for the Parental Advisory label on their music.

I totally agree. Thanks for highlighting an important discussion.The state where I live has banned numerous books in the last two years and it’s heartbreaking. Literature, in it’s many forms, is the reflection of life at that time and the thoughts they had.

Brilliant!

If you are afraid that reading a book might change someone’s way of thinking, you are not afraid of books, you are afraid of thinking.

Most of the book banners haven’t read what they want banned.They depend on their oiuja board