Tag Archives: politics

To that Texas politician: You can have my books when you pry them … well, you know the rest

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If I were to turn this space into a full reporting of every assault on books and literacy and writing and publishing and privacy and freedom of choice, I’d never get anything done. The folks at Book Riot – that’s their image above – are doing a good job of keeping track of every petty tyrant’s ambitions to tell you what you can and can’t read.

But I will note this: In a month of frustration and anger at the attack on books and our freedom – and you bet your ass those two are connected – by everything from greedy AI companies (who need to go broke and out of business sooner rather than later, please and thank you) and petty tinpot wannabe dictators over their own little fiefdoms, there’s little that has presented as so ignorant and intolerant as “We’re coming for the books,” uttered recently by repugnant Republican Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.

Here’s how the Texas Tribune reported it on August 19:

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on Wednesday vowed to pass legislation punishing public schools that do not remove graphic books from their shelves by knocking them down a notch in the state’s annual school performance ratings, which the state uses to seize control of underperforming districts.

Flanked by easels displaying printed covers of books he found obscene, the lieutenant governor said school boards and administrators have not been following a 2025 law aimed at weeding out lewd books from the shelves in Texas’ more than 9,000 campuses attended by some 5.5 million schoolchildren.

“It’s the law and we expect you to follow the law. So we’re coming for the books,” Patrick said during a news conference at the Texas Capitol. “We ask that you do it on your own and remove these books.”

The law from last year, Senate Bill 13, granted school boards the authority to approve and remove books based on complaints they receive, such as those from parents and activist groups. Before, those powers largely belonged to school librarians. But Patrick said an overwhelming majority of school boards have not taken any action, as the law nears one year in effect.

Patrick is no stranger to controversy over his ignorant, intolerant and politically questionable acts. I’ll leave it to more comprehensive online sources to tell you about that.

Book Riot notes that this is “manufactured panic over the content of books in school libraries,” and there’s certainly some head-shaking in noting that Patrick was conducting a publicity stunt for his podcast. The far-right activist/busybody who stood on stage with him was his next podcast guest and she’s put together a list of 2,200 “dirty books” that Patrick is touting as the state’s unofficial list of books that will get school libraries in trouble.

All of you know this space has become increasingly noisy lately regarding authoritarian-wannabe and oligarchs’ attacks on books and writing and publishing and privacy and freedom, because please have no doubt that anytime a politician and would-be authoritarian wants to ban books in school libraries, what they really want to do is control every aspect of your life, from your reading material to who you marry and how and when you reproduce.

Huge sweeping generalization there? I’m not gonna go the easy route and compare these wannabe dictator moves to the best-known authoritarian movement of the 20th century, But that’s what’s at work here.

So to cop a phrase from the old gun lobby bumperstickers, “You can have my books when you pry them out of my cold, dead fingers.”

As Kelly Jensen so ably put it in that Book Riot piece:

If laws like SB 13 are about local control, then why does one partisan activist brag about having been engaged in censorship attempts at 163 schools where she doesn’t have a student or pay taxes toward? Why does one partisan activist get to decide which 2,200 books are illegal in Texas?

This isn’t about local control. It’s about Republican control of anything and everything, down to local availability of books.

Colbert, Letterman and the death of CBS’ late-night slot

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There were some genuinely funny moments in the final episode of “The Late Show,” Stephen Colbert’s late-night talk show airing Thursday evening from the Ed Sullivan Theatre. Probably my favorite line was when Seth Meyers, host of an even-later late night show on NBC, told Colbert he was sorry to see him go because where would the world hear what middle-aged white guys thought of the news? (All of the current late-night hosts are in that cohort.)

I hadn’t been a dedicated follower of Colbert’s show, or any show past 11:35 p.m., really, but the manner in which CBS unceremoniously yanked Colbert – indeed the whole damn “Late Show” brand, founded with David Letterman’s CBS show in 1993 – is part and parcel with how the network and owner Paramount have kowtowed to the current occupant of the White House and guaranteed I’d tune in to Colbert’s last few shows – at least to see clips I wasn’t already watching on Instagram.

Colbert appears to be a nice person and a smart person, so while the end of his show after 11 years was no doubt a blow to the talented former host of “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central – that show I did watch every night – the end of his show and the resulting blowback might prove uncomfortable to CBS/Paramount. Possibly even a kick in the nuts, if the recent downturn in anything Paramount touches continues.

At any rate, while I won’t do a comprehensive assessment of the state of late-night TV talk shows or a comprehensive history of the shows and timeslot, I will share a few thoughts:

I grew up enjoying being the last person awake in my household, even when I was a kid. I could watch TV after my parents went to bed. That late-night period was, as I’ve noted before, an educational and formative place for me. I was a devotee of Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” on NBC and watched it for decades until his retirement. Where else could a kid from rural Indiana learn about jazz – from the Tonight Show Orchestra and guests like Buddy Rich – and Jewish comedians like Henny Youngman? Not to mention the authors Carson highlighted in the final segment of most shows.

I was definitely a fan of David Letterman, another Hoosier who seemed destined to inherit Carson’s “Tonight Show” crown but, as we all know, did not. When Letterman hosted his funny and offbeat NBC show following Carson, I would actually sit up every night and record the show AND cut commercials from my VHS recordings. I had an ungodly number of tapes filled with commercial-free Letterman episodes, at least until almost all of my hundreds of VHS tapes went to a landfill with the advent of DVDs.

The CBS plans for the slot – fill it with comedy programs leased from comedian Byron Allen – in effect means the return of infomercials to a national network following the 11 o’clock news. I wonder if CBS affiliates are obligated to air the network’s programing or if they can fill it with syndicated shows that might draw more viewers, like police procedurals? I’m old enough to remember when CBS (and ABC at times) threw everything they could find into the post-news slot, which meant we got to see lots of Canadian-made thrillers.

CBS is, in effect, abdicating the entire time slot, recalling the days before Letterman tamed that frontier for CBS and the network would air “The CBS Late Movie” – including repeats of made-for-TV movies – from 1972 to 1976 and then reruns of “Kojack” and “The Night Stalker” until 1985 and then “CrimeTime After Primetime” for a few years until Letterman debuted in 1993.

CBS, as if to erase all memory of the politically offending Colbert, not only fired him but ended the whole “Late Show” franchise Letterman and his company, Worldwide Pants, created.

It’s hard to imagine anyone tuning in from here on out.