Tennessee being forced to read about jewish mice

[yankeedoodle]

A jew wrote a stupid graphic novel about the holohoax that depicts the jews as mice and the "Nazis" as cats  that includes some profanity and nudity , and the people in Tennessee just don't want their children to be forced to read this jew's shitty book, and, as you can imagine, the jews are outraged. 

Tennessee school board bans Holocaust graphic novel 'Maus' – author Art Spiegelman condemns the move as 'Orwellian'
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/26/tennessee-school-board-bans-holocaust-comic-maus-by-art-spiegelman.html

A Tennessee school board has voted to remove the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel "Maus" from an eighth-grade language arts curriculum due to concerns about profanity and an image of female nudity in its depiction of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust.

The Jan. 10 vote by the McMinn County School Board, which only began attracting attention Wednesday, comes amid a number of battles in school systems around the country as conservatives target curriculums over teachings about the history of slavery and racism in America.

"I'm kind of baffled by this," Art Spiegelman, the author of "Maus," told CNBC in an interview about the unanimous vote by the McMinn board to bar the book, which is about his parents, from continuing to be used in the curriculum.

"It's leaving me with my jaw open, like, 'What?'" said Spiegelman, 73, who only learned of the ban after it was the subject of a tweet Wednesday – a day before Holocaust Remembrance Day.

He called the school board "Orwellian" for its action.

Spiegelman also said he suspected that its members were motivated less about some mild curse words and more by the subject of the book, which tells the story of his Jewish parents' time in Nazi concentration camps, the mass murder of other Jews by Nazis, his mother's suicide when he was just 20, and his relationship with his father.

"I've met so many young people who ... have learned things from my book," said Spiegelman about "Maus." The image in the book that drew objections from the board was of his mother.

"I also understand that Tennessee is obviously demented," said Spiegelman. "There's something going on very, very haywire there."

Tennessee has been won by every Republican presidential nominee since 2000. Then-President Donald Trump in 2020 won McMinn County with nearly 80 percent of the votes cast.

Neil Gaiman, the author of "The Sandman" comic book series and other award-winning works, blasted the school board's action, writing on Twitter, "There's only one kind of people who would vote to ban Maus, whatever they are calling themselves these days."

Board President Sharon Brown did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment about the ban of Spiegelman's book.

"Maus" depicts Jews as mice and the cats are Nazi Germans — who had a notorious history of banning and burning books. It has won a slew of awards, including a 1992 Pulitzer Prize.

Minutes from the Jan. 10 meeting of the McMinn School Board show that Director of School Lee Parkison opened the session by saying: "The values of the county are understood. There is some rough, objectionable language in this book and knowing that and hearing from many of you and discussing it, two or three of you came by my office to discuss that."

Parkison said he had "consulted with our attorney" and as a result "we decided the best way to fix or handle the language in this book was to redact it."

"Considering copyright, we decided to redact it to get rid of the eight curse words and the picture of the
woman that was objected to," Parkison said.

But board members worried that might violate the book's copyright, the minutes show.

One member, Tony Allman, was quoted in the minutes as saying, "Being in the schools, educators and stuff we don't need to enable or somewhat promote this stuff."

"It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids, why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff, it is not wise or healthy," Allman said, according to the minutes.

Julie Goodin, an assistant principal, replied to Allman, saying: "I can talk of the history, I was a history teacher and there is nothing pretty about the Holocaust and for me this was a great way to depict a horrific time in history."

"Mr. Spiegelman did his very best to depict his mother passing away and we are almost 80 years away. It's hard for this generation, these kids don't even know 9/11, they were not even born," Goodin said, according to the minutes. "For me this was his way to convey the message. Are the words objectionable? Yes, there is no one that thinks they aren't, but by taking away the first part, it's not changing the meaning of what he is trying to portray and copyright."

Allman then replied to Goodin, saying: "I understand that on TV and maybe at home these kids hear worse, but we are talking about things that if a student went down the hallway and said this, our disciplinary policy says they can be disciplined, and rightfully so. And we are teaching this and going against policy?"

The meeting ended with all 10 members of the board voting to remove "Maus" from the eighth-grade curriculum.

School board member Rob Shamblin told a CNBC reporter Wednesday night he did not remember when the board took its vote. He declined to comment further and referred questions to Brown, the board's president.

Spiegelman later emailed CNBC an image of a bookmark he created in 2014 after his publisher asked for one that could be distributed to libraries.

It shows a cartoon mouse behind a book and says: "Keep your nose in a book – and keep other people's noses out of which books you choose to stick your nose into!"




[Here we have the case where the jews are sticking their noses into what books people are choosing to read, because they are choosing NOT to read the holohoax books the jew demand that they read.]

[yankeedoodle]

The jews are determined to force their filth and lies into the innocent minds of children everywhere.   

The great 'Maus' giveaway is on as bookstores, professors and churches counter Tennessee school board's ban
https://www.jta.org/2022/01/28/united-states/the-great-maus-giveaway-is-on-as-bookstores-professors-and-churches-counter-tennessee-school-boards-ban

A rural Tennessee school board's decision earlier this month to remove "Maus," the celebrated graphic novel about the Holocaust, from its curriculum has attracted fierce backlash from other pockets of the state and beyond.

A nearby comic-book store is pledging to give away the book for free to every student in the county, an area church plans to hold a discussion on its themes and a college professor intends to offer free classes on the book to students in the county.

Nirvana Comics, a comic-book store in Knoxville, announced Thursday on social media that it would be giving away copies of Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning book to any interested students, saying, "it is a must-read for everyone."

"'Maus' was a book that opened my eyes and changed my worldview, because I grew up on a small town in Tennessee where I honestly don't know if to this day there is a single Jewish person," Nirvana Comics store owner Rich Davis told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Davis, who is not Jewish, said he had become "immediately angry" when he'd heard that the school board of nearby McMinn County had voted 10-0 on Jan. 10 to remove the book from its middle-school classes, citing its use of profanity, nudity and depictions of "killing kids" as reasons for its inappropriateness.

"But then I realized you don't fight anger with anger, hate with hate," Davis said. "I just felt like I needed to do something."

The resulting Nirvana Comics initiative, "Project Maus," was at first only supposed to loan copies of the book to students "like a library," he said. But as word of the store's intent spread through social media and supporters rushed in to help, those plans expanded. A GoFundMe that Davis set up to support giveaways of the book has raised more than $6,000 to date, and the book's publishers at Penguin Random House negotiated a deal to sell 500 additional copies of "Maus" to Nirvana at a reduced price with the intent to give them away to students.

When "Star Trek: The Next Generation" actor Wil Wheaton shared Nirvana's story on social media, "that's when it really, really exploded," Davis said. "That doesn't surprise me because 'Star Trek' fans are some of the most amazing and committed fans on the planet."

In addition, Davis said, he was in talks with a group of "Jewish attorneys and businessmen" whom he declined to name, but who he said were interested in purchasing an additional 1,000 copies of the book for free giveaways to McMinn County students. As the county itself only numbers around 50,000 people total, Davis said it could prove possible "to donate a copy of 'Maus' to every kid in McMinn County."

In the county itself, a local Episcopal church in Athens announced it would be conducting a discussion of the book Feb. 3. The event will include discussion about the complicity of many churches in the systematic murder of Jews during the Holocaust, as well as modern-day antisemitism.

Scott Denham, a Holocaust and German Studies professor at Davidson College in North Carolina, launched an online course about the book specifically intended for 8th grade and high school students. On the course's website, Denham said the lessons would not be public and would only be offered to students in McMinn County.

A representative for Denham said the professor was currently experiencing a family emergency and wasn't available to elaborate on his plans for the lessons.

As of Friday, Jan. 28, "Maus" — originally published in two volumes in the late 1980s and early '90s — sat at #23 on Amazon's bestseller list. The county school board's rejection of the book generated international news coverage, with prominent authors including Neil Gaiman harshly criticizing the board's decision. Organizations like the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum emphasized the book's frequent use as a Holocaust education tool for middle and high school-aged readers.

For Davis, who is also the author of the horror comic series "Cult of Dracula," the incident at its core stemmed from misguided intentions.

"I'm sure they thought they were protecting their children." Davis said about the McMinn County parents and school board members who had initially raised concerns about the book's content. But, he added, he believed "they're actually harming their children... If 'Maus' offends you, then you certainly don't know very much about the Holocaust."

[yankeedoodle]

A Missouri school district could ban 'Maus,' citing concerns about whether it is 'explicit sexual material'
https://www.jta.org/2023/06/14/united-states/a-missouri-school-district-could-ban-maus-citing-concerns-about-whether-it-is-explicit-sexual-material

A Missouri school board is preparing to vote next week on whether to ban Art Spiegelman's Holocaust graphic memoir "Maus" — even though no parent in the district has challenged it.

Spiegelman himself is among those exhorting the board of Nixa Public Schools, a district of about 6,000 students in Christian County just south of the city of Springfield, not to remove his book and several others.

"We haven't learned much from the past, but there's some things you should be able to figure out," Spiegelman said in an interview with the literary free-speech advocacy group PEN America published as part of a campaign directed at the Nixa school board. "Book burning leads to people burning. So it's something that needs to be fought against."

Nixa is at least the third district in Missouri to seriously question whether current state laws allow it to stock "Maus" in schools. Its board will meet Tuesday to determine the fate of "Maus," along with six other books including an illustrated adaptation of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale," which portrays a dystopian society in which the United States has been placed under a fundamentalist theocratic rule.

Spiegelman's book was an early, visible casualty of the nationwide conservative-led movement to remove or restrict books from school libraries for perceived inappropriate content when a Tennessee district voted to remove "Maus" from its middle school curriculum last year. There, school board members cited profanity in the book and a drawing of a naked mouse, which represented the author's mother after she died by suicide.

Books with LGBTQ content and books about race have been the primary targets of the movement, with graphic novels in particular facing frequent challenges. Over the past year, several other Jewish books have been caught up in purges across multiple states, including an illustrated adaptation of Anne Frank's diary, a novel about the Holocaust by Jodi Picoult, and a children's picture book about a Jewish family with two dads.

Unlike in many of these cases, no parent in Nixa challenged the appropriateness of "Maus" or several of the other books facing removal. Instead, the district is concerned that the book could risk violating a state law that establishes a criminal penalty and possible jail time for educators found to have provided children with access to "explicit sexual material."

"Maus is pending review by the school district due to a recently passed Missouri state law making it a crime to provide materials of visual depiction of sexual act or genitalia to students. Any material that could potentially violate the law are being presented to the board," Zac Rantz, a district spokesperson, said in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Rantz emphasized that "Maus" was not being targeted because of its subject matter.

"These actions should not be viewed as an attempt to limit students' access to information about the Holocaust or be viewed as antisemitic," he said in the statement. "The district does not tolerate hate speech of any kind and has the teaching of the Holocaust as a part of various classes. The material is being reviewed solely on the basis of the new state law in order to help protect the staff from legal action and place the decision on the board of education."

Nixa school board president Josh Roberts told the Washington Post the book was "potentially violative" of laws and policies but did not provide further detail. Roberts did not return a JTA request for comment.

Some other Missouri school districts have interpreted the law broadly to mean that comic books and graphic novels, in particular, could expose staff to legal liability. One district near St. Louis ordered staff to temporarily pull not only "Maus," but also hundreds of other illustrated books, including several Holocaust history books for young readers and art history books featuring Jewish artists.

An email the Nixa school district sent to staff after the law passed instructs its staff to have all materials in their classrooms approved by the district.

"The law defines sexual material as a visual depiction of a sexual act or genitalia," the email said in part. "There are exceptions for works of art that have serious artistic significance, or works of anthropological significance, or materials used in science courses like biology or anatomy."

At the time of the Tennessee district's initial removal of "Maus," Spiegelman spoke to a local Jewish federation about the controversy, saying it was "about controlling." He has since appeared on CBS and in other media outlets as a leading voice for authors opposing restrictions on their books in schools.

Now the Pulitzer Prize-winning comics artist is partnering with PEN America to decry attempts to remove the book. PEN has also launched a petition in an effort to convince the Nixa board not to remove the book.

Attacks on "Maus" and other books are "a real warning sign of a country that's yearning for a return of authoritarianism," Spiegelman told the Washington Post. Reflecting on the wide array of books that have faced bans, he said, channeling the view of the bans' proponents, "It's one more book — just throw it on the bonfire."

At the Nixa board meeting, the seven-member board will vote individually on each book brought before them. Its vote for "Maus" will not consider questions of appropriateness, only whether the book could conceivably be found in violation of state law.