The Dumbest State In The Republic

In what may come as a shock to some, I spent part of my evening reading. I do like a good book, and this book that I currently have my nose in will be featured on Teebz's Book Club in the future. While I was reading, though, I also had a pretty well-known movie on as the Kevin Costner baseball film Field of Dreams was where I had stopped changing channels. As you likely know, there's a character played by James Earl Jones whose name is Terence Mann, and one of Mann's book came up for debate during a PTA meeting in Iowa in the movie on whether it should be banned in schools. Hang in with me on this one, folks, because there is a hockey slant to this, I assure you.

In the scene below, Mann is described as many things, but it should be noted he is "a Pulitzer prize-winner" and "was widely regarded as the finest satirist of his time" by the school administrator whereas the angry crowd who wants his book banned uses terms like "pervert" and "Communist" while describing his writing as "smut", "filth", and "pornography". Here's the scene featuring Lee Garlington as the woman at the microphone and Amy Madigan as Annie Kinsella.
Just so we're clear, Field of Dreams was nominated for the 1990 Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. In other words, it has historical significance in our culture, and it holds a place of distinction in Hollywood. While it lost both categories to Driving Miss Daisy, there is an argument to be made that the cultural significance of Field of Dreams has lasted up to and including today.

Hollywood history aside, the above scene brought a current issue squarely into focus as the state of Florida is currently banning books from classrooms and criminalizing any efforts to teach children about important topics that the conservative-led state views as "unsolicited theories that may lead to student indoctrination". A lot of the books being outlawed by the new state laws include Pulitzer Prize-winning and Nobel Prize-winning authors, many of whom were seen as some of the sharpest and finest writers of their times.

Sound familiar?

According to Judd Legum's Popular Information substack, librarians in Florida are told to err on the side of caution when it comes to allowing books in classrooms. He writes,

"... librarians are told: 'There is some overlap between the selection criteria for instructional and library materials.' One slide says that library books and instructional materials cannot include 'unsolicited theories that may lead to student indoctrination.'

"A subsequent slide provides a list of 'unsolicited theories that may lead to student indoctrination,' which includes information about 'sexual orientation or gender identity.' It also includes a variety of topics related to race, including 'Critical Race Theory' and material that might make someone feel 'guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress' as a result of their race. The training instructs librarians to 'err on the side of caution.'"

When the threat of not complying with the new laws is a third-degree felony charge for each instance where a librarian has allowed material that goes against the above outlines, the librarians in schools across Florida are forced to strike down books that even hint at any of the above topics. It should be noted that a third-degree felony in Florida carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a $5,000 fine, and/or put one on probation for five years even in cases where the crime is a first offence.

PEN America, an international group that advocates for literacy freedom, filed a report last year that "lists 2,532 instances of individual books being banned, and 1,648 unique book titles, between July 2021 and June 2022", and those banned books were ones where "41% had LGBTQ themes, protagonists or prominent secondary characters, 40% had characters of color as primary or prominent secondary characters, 21% dealt with race or racism, and 22% contained sexual content."

Examples of books that are under review and not allowed to be displayed or read in classrooms at this moment include Roberto Clemente: The Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates, a children's book written by Jonah Winter about the life of the Latino baseball Hall of Famer that won a Carter G. Woodson Elementary Level Honor Book Award; Barbed Wire Baseball: How One Man Brought Hope to the Japanese Internment Camps of WWII, a children's book by Marissa Moss and Yuko Shimizu about the life of Kenichi "Zeni" Zenimura set in a Japanese internment camp during World War II; Henry Aaron's Dream, a children's book by Matt Tavares about MLB's homerun king who lived in segregated Mobile, Alabama and rose to fame through the Negro Leagues and Major League Baseball; and, My Two Dads and Me, a children's book by Michael Joosten and Izak Zenou about the busy life of kids whose parents are both dads.

I specifically highlighted these four books because they're children's books that talk about difficult subjects that parents may not know how to broach with their kids. Racism and LGBTQIA+ phobias aren't easy to discuss at any point with people who may not have those experiences, but these books can offer a way into those discussions without being preachy. They're written FOR kids about things they grasp - sports and family - but instill the lessons that they need to understand about racism and non-traditional families.

The hockey part of this is that there has been a lot of racism in hockey over the years, and books about the struggles these Black men faced would be banned under Florida law. From Willie O'Ree to Val James to Herb Carnegie, their stories are specifically about breaking the colour barriers seen in hockey when Black men weren't welcome in the game. Their stories would be erased from history in Florida because of the racial overtones presented in their books, and, like the stories of Clemente, Zenimura, and Aaron, wouldn't be known or told to young BIPOC players in Florida.

This is a vital part of both hockey and societal history with respect to how these men were treated, and it's absolutely baffling that the stories of O'Ree and Carnegie at the very least wouldn't be taught to young hockey players. If hockey is for everyone, the stories of James, O'Ree, and Carnegie are the pathways needed to show BIPOC players that there is a place in the game for them. If Florida prevents young BIPOC players from discovering these stories, Florida has ensured that the NHL's diversity numbers will never increase.

On top of this, while the NHL looks to shed its virtually all-white colour spectrum, the moronic Florida governor decided that a job fair hosted by the NHL in Fort Lauderdale was discriminatory because the event was only open to "female, black, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+, and/or disabled registrants" and veterans.

"Discrimination of any sort is not welcome in the state of Florida, and we do not abide by the woke notion that discrimination should be overlooked if applied in a politically popular manner or against a politically unpopular demographic," DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin said. "We are fighting all discrimination in our schools and our workplaces, and we will fight it in publicly accessible places of meeting or activity. We call upon the National Hockey League to immediately remove and denounce the discriminatory prohibitions it has imposed on attendance to the 2023 'Pathway to Hockey' summit."

That sound you may have heard was me face-palming myself because the NHL wasn't invoking a "woke notion" in any way. It's not discriminatory if the NHL seeks someone other than white men to join their teams. Asking disabled people to aid the NHL in making arenas and events more accessible to disabled people is a smart business choice. Asking BIPOC people, LGBTQIA+ people, and veterans for their voices and opinions by hiring them is, again, a good business strategy and not a political "woke notion". If "woke notion" means making smart business decisions, it's not surprising that the same state that bans books about concepts for which readers gain greater understanding and knowledge is using words like "discriminatory" when the NHL is trying to be better than what it currently is.

Let me say it in completely certain terms: Ron DeSantis would encourage the burning of books if it were morally acceptable. Thanks to a specific era of Nazi Germany, that incendiary act is not, but his laws to ban all books in classrooms until vetted by librarians who are staring at prison terms if they don't choose how the state likes isn't far off. And if it means books about Clemente, Aaron, Zenimura, James, O'Ree, and Carnegie aren't able to be read by people in Florida, DeSantis' whitewashing of books is literally no different than dousing them in gasoline and tossing a lit match onto the pile.

Florida's students already need help based on Manatee County's assessment that only 50% of students read at their current grade level. By banning books about topics that they'll encounter in the real world, DeSantis is only making life harder for these kids to learn, understand, and accept one another as equals and as people as opposed to being taught that LGBTQIA+ people don't exist, the history of Black people in America doesn't exist, and that racism in society and in instituions doesn't exist. When this ban extends to the books written by O'Ree, James, and Carnegie, the NHL, as an institution, gets its history whitewashed pretty completely. Suddenly, education in Florida suddenly seems like a freshly-fallen blanket of snow.

Steven King, famed author, tweeted out the following on January 18,

"Hey, kids! It's your old buddy Steve King telling you that if they ban a book in your school, haul your ass to the nearest bookstore or library ASAP and find out what they don't want you to read."

Those books should include The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and all of the books listed above. These books are all banned in various states across the USA including Florida, and it leads me to thinking about Amy Madigan asking the crowd at the PTA meeting, "Who wants to piss on the Constitution of the United States? Anybody?"

Ron DeSantis is effectively forcing Florida to become the dumbest state in the republic by banning books. With libraries removing titles off shelves, now is the time to invest in buying books. Source them online. Have them delivered. Read them. You'll find they contain knowledge and wisdom that you can't get anywhere else.

If knowledge is power, books are a source of that power. Read all that you can, and be powerful in the face of Floridian tyrants.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!