There are more male babies born in the United States each year with three testicles, than there are adults who move to ban books in that country.
Book banners are edge cases -- so far at the fringe that you could fit every book banner in the country on Gilligan's Island, with room to spare.
So, when a book banner comes round the Hotdog Factory passing himself off as some ordinary person who's just looking out for the welfare of his kids, I say liar.
What do you do when you're worried a certain book or movie or piece of music is, somehow, going to do your child harm? Don't allow them access to it.
What you don't do is deny everyone's kids access to this material.
I mean, that'd make you look like some kind of out-of-touch megalomaniac.
Hundreds of millions of people around the world live under such oppressive political conditions, who'd give their right arms to have access to a fraction of the information that's readily available to any North American.
People have fought in wars so that we would have the freedom of thought and expression and access to information.
What do some people do with that war-won freedom? They impose their ignorance on others and ban books.
This tyrannical act is made all the more odious when the book banner does it in the name of a religion-based "moral compass."
The Book Banner of Bedford, New Hampshire embodies the saying, The devil gave man religion to keep him from god.
I don't believe in this god deity, but I do believe in the mind-fogging properties of religion.
Religion is about one thing: bigotry. It's the final wedge between people who might otherwise have everything else in common.
George Carlin said it best in a short bit set in a time when the concept of religion was new. He dramatized it by acting out two men speaking:
Man #1: Do you believe in God?
Man #2: No.
Boom! Man #1 shoots and kills Man #2.
Later
Man #1: Do you believe in God?
Man #3: Yes.
Man #1: Do you believe in my God?
Man #3: No.
Boom! Man #1 shoots and kills Man #3.
Standing over the corpses of the two men he's killed, Man #1 proclaims, "My god has a bigger dick than your god!"
Inside the Hotdog Factory will monitor developments out of Bedford -- and elsewhere -- regarding the books that have been banned and any future titles that find themselves on the chopping block.
The motto of Inside the Hotdog Factory is: "You provide the stupid, we provide the satire."
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