The Four Color Media Monitor

The Bucks County Courier Times published some apologia for woke comics and other such books, in another attempt to hypocritically compare parents objecting to literature normalizing LGBT propaganda in schools to the Wertham era moral panics and hysteria:

In February 1955, a Girl Scout troop in Indiana, Pennsylvania, kept warm around a “Bonfire for the Future,” a comic book burning.

The ceremony, targeting comics that refused a then-new industry censorship code, displayed the troop’s opposition to “obscene” reading materials threatening to indoctrinate the nation’s youth.

Like more than a dozen other comic book burnings across the country over a decade prior, the smoldering fires were fueled by many things, primarily parental fear and stories about an alleged icon of fascism: Superman.

The comic book industry had been booming through the later years of The Great Depression and into World War II, a cheap form of entertainment and pro-war propaganda.

While stories of Captain America winning fist fights against Adolf Hitler helped drive the popularity of comic books at home and abroad, the visual medium of comics led to a public perception that they were children’s books with no literary or artistic value.

The rise of superhero comics in the late 1930s opened the door for crime and horror comics in the 1940s, prompting scrutiny by teachers and parents over stories of the macabre and the supernatural.

Spurred by anxieties that illustrated dime magazines would turn their children into criminals and sexual deviants, parents and lawmakers pressured a burgeoning comic book industry into self regulation.

For decades, a set of guidelines made "a positive contribution to contemporary life” by censoring stories that undermined government institutions, disrespected family values or even hinted at “illicit sex relations” threatening the “sanctity of marriage.”

While cultural changes eventually ended the Comics Code Authority of the 1950s and made book burnings and censorship taboo, the moral panic that created them is alive and well in a parental rights movement today that’s sweeping the nation.

Public and school libraries are the new battleground where protecting children from “pornography” or “grooming” by sexual predators usually means restricting books about systemic racism, gender, sexuality and anything that one side considers “woke” political indoctrination.

A library policy passed by the Central Bucks School District, the third largest in Pennsylvania, has become boilerplate policy language considered or adopted in smaller districts across the state.

Readings of classic and contemporary titles tackling systemic racism, sexual assault or LGBTQ issues are read out of context in school board meetings to push restrictive library policies as lawmakers across the country push parental-rights legislation.

Although not the sole focus of this new pro-censorship movement, comic books and long-form graphic novels are often singled out as “subliterate” picture books with no educational value for children.

Ah, see where this is going? So we're lectured that parents are entirely in the wrong here, and there's somehow nothing wrong with exposing younger children to issues like sexual violence and LGBTQ propaganda. While sexual abuse is obviously something students need to learn about and why it's negative and offensive, underaged children cannot be expected to comprehend, and that's one more reason why anybody who's implying it's acceptable to teach underaged children about this is truly in need of a psychologist. Besides, something else that's not addressed here is that men claiming to be transsexual have proven fully capable of sexual abuse themselves, and don't belong in women's prisons.

In the battle for the library, comic books might hold the most valuable lessons for all sides.

Unfortunately, if it's possible for Hitler to write up a repulsive book like Mein Kamph, it's equally possible for a racist/sexist to concoct a comic that's quite the polar opposite of a lesson, and more like indoctrination; that's what many National Socialist propaganda films were made for too, and if memory serves, wasn't "Birth of a Nation" a racist film? So, what's the point here?

In addition to blaming comics for the violent fights at the unnamed New York school, Wertham said the “ethical and moral confusion” from comics were also responsible for at least 26 teen pregnancies.

The nation’s sons were corrupted by tales of glorified youth while its daughters were being “seduced mentally long before they were seduced physically,” Wertham said.

Now this is something quite weird to highlight, considering this being an era where daughters are being seduced mentally to desecrate their bodies for the sake of transsexual propaganda, and abortion is seen as fully acceptable by the left, which Wertham was part of, something that surely embarrasses many modern leftists whether they admit it or not. Seriously, one could make a valid case that the whole notion a teen pregnancy and potential grandchildren were in the making is only a bad thing, is insulting to the intellect. If the columnist's siding with LGBTQ propaganda, what's the use of bringing up this specific issue? It's decidedly contradictory.

Wertham also suggested in “Seduction of the Innocent” that Batman and his sidekick Robin were actually a gay couple, citing various scenes of the two characters at home in Bruce Wayne’s mansion.

“It is like a wish dream of two homosexuals living together. Sometimes they are shown on a couch, Bruce reclining and Dick sitting next to him, jacket off, collar open, and his hand on his friend’s arm,” Wertham wrote.

During his testimony, Wertham more directly laid out the dangers of these “homosexual fantasies” in comic books.

“Nobody would believe that you teach a boy homosexuality without introducing him to it,” Wertham said.

In other words, Wertham argued that comic books could turn children gay. It’s important to note that being in a same-sex relationship was illegal until states slowly began repealing anti-gay laws in 1961.

The Supreme Court didn’t rule anti-sodomy laws as unconstitutional until 2003.

Incremental cultural shifts like the gay rights movement would eventually reshape the CCA over decades, but its restrictions against “illicit sexual relations” would have lingering effects on gay representation in mainstream comics.

Marvel Comics debuted its first gay character, Northstar, in 1979, but the character’s sexuality was left mostly to innuendo and rumors for more than a decade.

As I may have noted a time or two before, while Wertham perceptions back in the day were a huge exaggeration, homosexual interactions today in mainstream literature are far more deliberate, and what he said ironically makes clear it's possible to indoctrinate youth into homosexuality, if that's the intention of the educator. Why, if only so many youths in Islamic regimes could be indoctrinated with the Koran, then why wouldn't any of this modern "literature" promoting LGBT ideology serve similar purposes? It's not the comics themselves that can turn children homosexual, but rather, any educational counseling that accompanies it, and how the educator in question describes it to the students. That's what's obscured here. Also troubling is the citation of anti-sodomy laws. If laws meant to protect victims of sexual violence were struck down by the SCOTUS 2 decades ago, isn't that disturbing? Interesting how no comment is made on how the official 1992 confirmation Northstar was characterized as homosexual occurred in one of the worst stories ever written by Scott Lobdell, whose reputation in comicdom is very poor. Which goes to show ideology apparently trumps merit.

By the early 2000s, the CCA became a relic of a bygone era ignored by publishers and comic sellers alike. By the early 2010s, the Comics Magazine Association of America was dissolving and the censorship code along with it.

The rights to the CCA Seal of Approval were transferred in 2011 to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit helping to fund censorship battles against authors, publishers and comic book stores since 1986.

If memory serves, the CBLDF's already had its image tainted by former manager Charles Brownstein's sexual misconduct scandals, and for all we know, they haven't given any backing to right-wing creators, so this is equally useless for citation.

Censorship had become a four-letter word to many Americans, book burnings were seen as extremist and comic books were in the midst of a popular culture renaissance.

Look how arguments regarding censorship apply selectively, since in the 2 decades since, there's been a regrettable slide back to censorship by the left, in what's got to be a classic example of their believing being liberal grants them the full right to "give and take" as they see fit. Nobody argues about censorship when it's coming from the left. Just 2 years ago, there was a whole scandal discovered in Canada with book burnings, comics included, all because they were supposedly offensive to Indians, and the ringleader turned out to be a race-faker. If it could happen across the border up north, it'd be ill-advised to think it couldn't happen again in the USA. And as for "renaissance", well, it definitely hasn't happened with mainstream superherodom.

The murder of George Floyd in 2020 prompted protests against police brutality and systemic racism, which in turn led to discussions about how racism was taught in schools.

Well in that case, doesn't this make clear comics could be used to teach racism too, if some monster wanted to employ the medium as a means for the indoctrination? Yet no complaints about all the anti-white incitement that rose following the incident involving a man who turned out to be a criminal.

Those discussions led to fears that “critical race theory,” a college-level legal analysis through the lens of race, was being taught in grade schools.

A common early concern from groups like Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education was that the books were teaching children to hate the police, that America is founded on racism and that white people should be demonized.

In early 2021, those groups began to “expose” school libraries allegedly filled with “pornographic” material that would prime them for sexual abuse or make them believe they were transgender.

Notice the paradox in how somebody arguing racism was taught in schools is suggesting nothing similar could be done with the comics and other books in question serving leftist goals. That's why Florida governor Ron deSantis had such propaganda banned in schools there. Because CRT is a form of racism in itself.

The most challenged book in 2021 and 2022 was an autobiographical graphic novel, “Gender Queer,” following author and illustrator Maia Kobabe’s nonbinary coming-of-age story.

A ban by any other name

For almost two years, supporters of the new censorship movement have called out “Gender Queer” for “pornographic” imagery and rebuked critics’ accusations that they are singling out LGBTQ books.

The visual medium of comic books make them often more accessible for readers, but it also means they are easier to use out of context to rally opposition.

While Kobabe explores the complexities of gender identity, gender-neutral pronouns and sexuality through frank and vibrant illustrations that some might call “necessary representation,” the new censorship movement deems a few frames as “pornographic” and ignores the rest of its 241 pages.

“This book contains obscene sexual activities and sexual nudity; alternate gender ideologies; and profanity,” reads a description on BookLooks.org. Framed as an objective rating system for library books, BookLooks has become the favored resource among groups such as Moms for Liberty.

While BookLooks website says it is not tied with Moms for Liberty or other organizations, critics and censorship researchers have said the ratings website and largely conservative groups seem to at least work in tandem.

And this is a problem why? Conservatives are entirely invalid? Oh, guess that's what the buffoon's trying to say. Also, if "non-binary" is presented as positive belief system and lifestyle, why shouldn't anybody be concerned and offended that what we have here is a form of self-hatred for one's born gender?

Titles rated a five on the website — BookLooks' worst of the worst material — gain the rating for having “aberrant” content, but a book that champions hypermasculinity apparently gets a pass.

The five-page inventory of questionable content for “Fight Club,” which is 10 pages less than Kobabe’s book received, also doesn’t include multiple instructions for homemade explosives in Palahnuik’s book.

Just like in the CCA of the 1950s, the new censorship movement is less about analyzing the context of literature and more about promoting a certain group’s values.

What if it turns out the Fight Club citation's distorted? Additionally annoying is how the puff piece attacks what it calls "hypermasculinity", without really explaining what they mean and why they think it's bad. Oh, and what about the "values" of the LGBT movement being promoted? And when the article brings up Mark Millar's Superman: Red Son, it says:

Millar’s series presents two lessons aptly applied to the new censorship movement.

The first is a moral lesson: Forcing the world to bend to one individual’s ideals means robbing others of their agency, even in the name of protecting those important to us.

The second is a simple reminder: To fascists, words are the most dangerous weapon.

Yes, but so is censoring words as the left's been doing of recent. And how is indoctrinating children into transsexual propaganda or worse not stripping them of an identity, and agency? How's it even protecting them? That's another something the paper's not interested in pondering. This puff piece is one of the biggest disappointments coming from a MSM source, and demonstrates how leftists are completely unconcerned about negative effects of these products on children in any way.

Labels: censorship issues, golden calf of LGBT, golden calf of villainy, history, libraries, msm propaganda, politics, violence