Close Readings: Randolph County bans Invisible Man

By Dan Brooks in Close Reading 5 Comments
The Randolph County, NC Board of Education: who knows, but on some lower frequency, I speak for like five white people?

The Randolph County, NC Board of Education meets in front of some Successories posters.

In response to a parent’s complaint, the Board of Education for Randolph County, North Carolina has voted to remove copies of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man from school libraries. The complaining parent is one Kimiyutta Parson, mother of an 11th grader at Randleman High, which is presumably named after Kevin Randleman. Committees at Randleman and at the school district level recommended that Invisible Man be kept on the curriculum, but members of the BOE—who were given copies of the book to read last month—disagreed. Board Chair Tommy McDonald called it “a hard read.” “I didn’t find any literary value,” said member Gary Mason. Excerpt from Parson’s complaint after the jump.

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Close Readings: Our glorious satellite, the Moon

By Dan Brooks in Close Reading 1 Comment
A chart of science

A chart of science

My brother recently forwarded me a spam email wondering if he had yet made his decision re: the important lunar transit. “To be honest I was hoping for some kind of contact from you either by email for through my web-page as we are getting closer and closer to this date,” it reads, “a vitally important day for you as it marks the beginning of a period of 6 months of chance and fortune when you will be living under the full and beneficial influence of our glorious satellite, the Moon.” Thus begins a striking amalgam ancient and modern bullshit, as contemporary business prose enters the house of astrology on the cusp of internet phishing. Long excerpt after the jump.

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Close Readings: Republicans will shut down gov’t unless Obamacare defunded

By Dan Brooks in Close Reading 7 Comments
Senator Mike Lee (R–UT) describes the big city shortly before breaking into song.

Senator Mike Lee (R–UT) describes how a filibuster works, shortly before breaking into song.

A group of Republican senators led by Mike Lee have signed an open letter promising to vote down any continuing resolution that contains funding to implement the Affordable Care Act. Essentially, they’ve threatened to shut down the federal government unless Obamacare is repealed, or at least defunded. Besides Lee, Marco Rubio (R–FL) and John Thune (R–SD) have signed the letter, along with an undisclosed but ostensibly large number of fellow conservatives in the Senate. The putative reason for this scorched-earth opposition is the delay of the employer mandate, which Lee et al see as proof that the Affordable Care Act cannot work as written. That delay in enforcing Obamacare was too much for the senators who are committed to repealing Obamacare, apparently. Full text of the letter after the jump.

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Close Readings: North Korea’s declaration of war or something

By Dan Brooks in Close Reading 2 Comments

 

This is sarcastic clapping. I will turn your production of Our Town into a sea of fire.

This is sarcastic clapping. I will turn your production of Our Town into a sea of fire.

On Friday, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea ruined imperialist weekends by declaring war on South Korea and the United States, sort of. The official declaration is hard to interpret. On one hand, you’ve got sentences like “It is the resolute answer of the DPRK and its steadfast stand to counter the nuclear blackmail of the U.S. imperialists with merciless nuclear attack and their war of aggression with just all-out war.” It sounds like they’re standing in steadfast resolve to attack us mercilessly/nuclearly, right there, but then you also get sentences like this: “The state of neither peace nor war has ended on the Korean Peninsula.” So maybe Kim Jong Un is threatening nuclear peace. Also we’re pretty sure he does not have nuclear capabilities, and the whole baffling plate is slathered over in a runny translation that makes this state declaration sound like it was edited down to 500 words from 1000, then stretched out again to 750. In short, it’s a prime candidate for Close Reading.

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Close Readings: Dick Morris on the Romney landslide

By Dan Brooks in Close Reading 1 Comment

Harrumph!

On Halloween, political analyst and former Clinton adviser Dick Morris besmirched the good name of The O’Reilly Factor by predicting that Mitt Romney would win in a landslide. He had sailed that claim majestically around the mediasphere for weeks, despite the fact that it was, you know, insane. Romney did not win in a landslide. No actual data suggested he would, but Morris—an ostensibly unbiased analyst—had, in his own words, “worked very hard for Romney.” Was he deluding himself? Kind of. Was he deluding others? Also yes, kind of, as he explained to Sean Hannity in a thicket of prevarication that is the subject of today’s close reading. Props to Ben al-Fowlkes for the link. Bad faith after the jump.

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