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Sep (lord of all I survey) ([info]sepiamagpie) wrote in [info]unfunny_fandom,
@ 2011-01-01 21:21:00


Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Twitter rant: Read bottom to top
To begin with, a sock twitter account for Laura Ingalls Wilder (the writer of the Little House On The Prairie books) was giving out the tweets of her family for New Year's.

Here's the one for her Ma:

HalfPintIngalls Laura Ingalls Wilder:

Ma's resolutions: knit more; be less racist.

Well... anyway, a nineteen tweet rant from another user followed. It's sort of epic.


troposphere
troposphr troposphere
:



@HalfPintIngalls @sippey 'Be less racist'? That's what I call a cheap, defamatory shot. I read those books 100s of times, and

the only racism one can take away is whatever pre-existed in your own racist, bigoted head,

wherein you ascribe to an individual you've never met character traits based on nothing other than their skin color.

'Ma resolves to be less racist.' HAHAHA, that's teh funny.

If you'd actually read the books you would know that a black doctor treated them when they were all sick; that they

had never seen a black person before. You're incapable of reading any text & not injecting your defamatory illogic

whether or not the text in any way supports it. Bcs you were never college-educated, only college-indoctrinated

and taught to label all whites as racist and evil, and that the Indians/'First Nations'/Native Americans never went

around scalping one another, because you were brainwashed into believing any person of color is morally superior

You know who needs to make a new years resolution to be less racist? YOU do.

You don't understand, and therefore mock, people who actually apprehend God (the REAL God, not your crappy morally

relativistic 1, which you actually created in YOUR own image, whether they lived a century or two ago, a millennia

or 2 or 4 ago, or are one of your own contemporaries. In this regard you are hopelessly ignorant and blind; having

no idea of why you are even here in the first place. Blind, misled, and believing only in your psychobabble B.S.

What else have you been "taught"? To smear & denigrate the WASP pioneers/founders who made this country

the greatest nation in the history of mankind -- actually, they were only instruments of GOD, which you do not &

will never comprehend, because you don't know God and in fact have been taught to be actively hostile towards Him.

People like you, who have no comprehension of the what or why of the most basic principles of what this country is

about are simply tools, useful idiots, in the hands of those who seek to destroy America -- the REAL America, not

the bastardized, self-hating, self-loathing, apologetic, Marxist/Fascist false Obamatopia you seek to compel your

fellow citizens into climbing aboard that space-shuttle-disaster-in-the-making piece of crap Marxist state where

you believe there will be no more HAHA-Racist-HAHA Ma's -- only sub-human fascist slave-drones like yourselves.



(please note, the reason that it's formatted like this is because it was a series of nineteen tweets, which can only be 140 characters in length and each time they had to include the name of the people they were addressing)

And what does our dear Laura Ingalls Wilder have to say?

Laura Ingalls Wilder
HalfPintIngalls Laura Ingalls Wilder
:


@troposphr You really ought to have Dr. Tann look at that muskrat bite because you're foaming at the mouth.

And that's that.

I think it's hilarious, in the same way I think watching my cat totally lose it on a paper crane is hilarious, but the topic of racism and racism in the Little House books as potential for discussion is definitely unfunny, so I put it here.


(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)


[info]amadi
2011-01-04 12:58 am UTC (link)
See, the brilliant thing about children's literature is that good, solid literature that doesn't have storylines full of racist, classist, sexist and ableist depictions is being produced every year.

Your suggestion seems to me to be that we must find a way to cling to these classics for the sake of themselves, that because they're "classic" they're automatically important for impressionable kids to take on board, and must therefore be freely available because, well, because they're there, and they're famous and perhaps won awards during less enlightened times.

Why do kids need to read books that dehumanize minorities or women or people with disabilities in vile ways? Just because those books are famous? Because they're (allegedly) otherwise well-written? Because they're "beloved?" Because there was once a TV show or movie adaptation?

Why not fill school library shelves with the thousands of books that aren't filled with objectionable material, books that help exemplify today's values to today's kids, living in today's world and needing to learn how to navigate a life wherein racism, sexism and other manifestations of privilege-borne bigotry are increasingly intolerable, and certainly shouldn't be subtly (or not so subtly) reinforced through the books we give them to read as entertainment?

If classics must exist in kids' orbits just on the merit of being "classic" then why not have them in the classroom where they can be addressed with full view on their artistic merits and their problems?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]theorclair
2011-01-04 02:10 am UTC (link)
Because people did think those things in the past? Blackface "minstrelsy" was one considered a perfectly acceptable form of entertainment. That doesn't mean it should still be. But it also doesn't mean it's okay to ignore the fact it once was.

Those depictions of the time show what people thought at the time. I can see cutting parts out that have no relevance to the plot line, like with the Lofting example above, but the whole point of the Little House books is to show the "colonization" of the prairie. The best way to show any "less enlightened time" is to show it the way it was, warts and all. Otherwise we fall victim to the idea the past was somehow perfect.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]amadi
2011-01-04 03:01 am UTC (link)
Yes, but there's a difference between being watching a minstrel show and engaging it solely as a form of entertainment and being taught about minstrel shows and discussing them in an academic/critical way. Hence the distinction between books available for free reading in a library for the youngest readers and books that are a part of a literature curriculum.

I absolutely encourage using fiction as a means of opening discussion about history, both larger history and artistic history. I think it's a brilliant way to get people interested in the past. My own engagement with ideas that I've incorporated in my life due to their environmental benefits initially came, ironically, from the Little House books.

But when encountering these harmful aspects of the past, like undiluted racism or sexism, young kids need and deserve adult guidance that they're not necessarily going to get when reading a book that they simply pulled off of the shelf of the school library.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]phosfate
2011-01-04 02:01 pm UTC (link)
Yes. I needed so badly to be protected from terrible, terrible ideas as a child. Yes.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]tez, 2011-01-04 06:43 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]missdaisy, 2011-01-04 08:39 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]ekaterinv, 2011-01-04 09:16 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]quantumreality, 2011-01-05 01:47 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]txvoodoo, 2011-01-12 06:35 pm UTC

[info]snarkhunter
2011-01-04 03:07 am UTC (link)
Because there's only one The Secret Garden. Because the story in itself--a story about learning to love and respect oneself, about the beauty of Yorkshire and finding healing in nature--is beautiful and worthwile. It's not because a book is a classic that it's valuable. It's because a book is valuable that it's a classic.

I would be a much emptier person if I'd never read The Secret Garden or Anne of Green Gables or, yes, even Little House on the Prairie as a child. I'm not blind to their problems. But I don't love them because they're classics. I love them because I find the stories beautiful, despite their flaws, and I have loved being able to share them with the children in my life.

I'm sorry if I'm misrepresenting your position here, but surely you're not actually suggesting that we throw out any book that might have objectionable content. Because if that's true, then I, for one, am out of a job, since I specialize in 19th-century British literature. I am hard-pressed to find literature there that isn't offensive. And, you know, there goes Shakespeare. (If you're going to protest that you're talking about elementary school, my fifth-grade class read and performed Macbeth.) And yet I still intend to give my niece and nephew Alice in Wonderland as soon as they're old enough. (Filled with misogynistic imagery, but somehow still delightful to me.)

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]amadi
2011-01-04 05:37 am UTC (link)
One more time...

There is a difference between engaging with problematic content as entertainment and engaging with it from an academic or critical perspective.

So yes I am suggesting that for the youngest readers, in elementary schools, we do in fact, keep these well-known problematic texts off of library shelves (like we do with countless media we deem inappropriate for young children) where they will be engaged with as entertainment first and foremost, and instead make them, to the extent that they must be engaged in the elementary years at all, a part of a literature curriculum where they can be encountered with guidance and through a contemporary lens.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]snarkhunter
2011-01-04 07:59 am UTC (link)
How about school librarians do their OTHER job, and instead of acting as gatekeepers keeping children away from the dangerous books, they offer a kid who enjoyed Little House on the Prairie one of the books that Debbie Reese recommends as a follow-up? Librarians are also meant to be guides.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]amadi, 2011-01-04 08:18 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]snarkhunter, 2011-01-04 08:23 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]amadi, 2011-01-04 08:41 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]snarkhunter, 2011-01-04 05:51 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]platedlizard, 2011-01-04 08:59 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]octopedingenue, 2011-01-14 06:31 pm UTC

[info]amadi
2011-01-04 05:40 am UTC (link)
And were I a parent of a ten year old whose teacher thought that a story as filled with deceit and violence as Macbeth was appropriate to be the class's play, I'd tear the school down around people's ears. Ten year olds miming murder? We're meant to be okay with that?

That is not okay.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]platedlizard
2011-01-04 07:39 am UTC (link)
lolwut

If my kid wanted to be in Macbeth at age ten, I'd let them. Can never start them too young on Shakespeare IMO. Most kids would probably prefer Midsummer's Night Dream, but if the kiddo wanted to play Lady or Lord Macbeth the more power to them.

I hope you never give your kid a watergun. They might 'mime murder' with one after all.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]ekaterinv, 2011-01-04 07:44 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]platedlizard, 2011-01-04 07:48 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]ekaterinv, 2011-01-04 07:51 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]platedlizard, 2011-01-04 07:58 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]ekaterinv, 2011-01-04 08:07 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]platedlizard, 2011-01-04 08:01 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]snarkhunter, 2011-01-04 08:20 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]sandglass, 2011-01-04 09:50 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]ekaterinv, 2011-01-04 10:03 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]sandglass, 2011-01-04 10:04 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]ekaterinv, 2011-01-04 10:35 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]tehrin, 2011-01-04 10:01 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]ekaterinv, 2011-01-04 10:25 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]missdaisy, 2011-01-04 05:11 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]sneer, 2011-01-05 07:44 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]blue_penguin, 2011-01-05 07:59 pm UTC

[info]ekaterinv
2011-01-04 07:43 am UTC (link)
I read all of Shakespeare's major plays before I was 10. I read lots of horrifically violent fairy tales before that.

I think you're drastically underestimating the capabilities of children. It's entirely possible to read The Secret Garden and books like it, as a child, and separate the parts that are bad stuff from the past, from the parts that are bad stuff we still grapple with today, from the parts that are good. I didn't have the tools of deconstruction and literary theory when I read them, but I still was able to think about how they portrayed different groups of people, gender roles, etc., and come to my own conclusions, since I was lucky enough to have a large number of different books to read, which helped me develop critical thinking skills, imagination and empathy.

I would even argue that it's necessary to read things like that in order to gain any view of history and people, and the fact that the world changes. Removing every book from the shelves that doesn't line up with modern mores AND that doesn't have problematic content would leave kids with very slim pickings indeed. Also, I don't trust people in power who want to keep reading material away from children.

Ten year olds miming murder? We're meant to be okay with that?

...yes? It's not like Macbeth is a mere game of cops and robbers; it has the message that murder is wrong. It's a very simple play, really. Ten year olds are entirely capable of separating pretend from real and of thinking about things on many complex levels.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]snarkhunter, 2011-01-04 07:57 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]ms_treesap, 2011-01-06 03:00 am UTC

[info]snarkhunter
2011-01-04 08:00 am UTC (link)
Oddly, our parents thought it was pretty cool, and they attended the performances.

I played Lady Macbeth. It was a terrific experience.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]platedlizard, 2011-01-04 08:10 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]snarkhunter, 2011-01-04 08:18 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]ekaterinv, 2011-01-04 08:20 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]snarkhunter, 2011-01-04 08:23 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]cmdr_zoom, 2011-01-04 05:41 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]tehrin, 2011-01-04 10:05 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]witty, 2011-01-05 02:10 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]serafina20, 2011-01-06 08:42 pm UTC

[info]phosfate
2011-01-04 02:05 pm UTC (link)
Destroying a school to protect the children from the books inside is totally heroic.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]anonyrat
2011-01-04 04:12 pm UTC (link)
Hahaha, oh wow.

Really? REALLY? Do you even remember what being ten years old was like?

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]tez
2011-01-04 06:31 pm UTC (link)
Gee, I don't insult my daughter's intelligence by threatening to tear the school down if someone hands her a book that involves deceit and murder...oh wait, I do that on my own already. Fascinatingly, she's fully capable of comprehending what's right and what's wrong and is able to separate fiction from reality.

Oh, and she's eight.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]theorclair
2011-01-04 11:22 pm UTC (link)
I was ten when I first read Huckleberry Finn. I loved it then as much as I do now. I missed some of the subtler satire in it, but I did get that the message was that Huck realizes Jim is a human being just like him - which plenty of anti-slavery advocates at the time the book was set didn't think.

And I wasn't any less shocked when I switched schools and on the third day at the new school a girl told me that the reason she was so screwed up was that she had previously gone to a school with lots of black people in it. OF course, she didn't say "black people", she instead used a word that I saw all the time in Huck Finn.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]tehrin
2011-01-05 01:03 am UTC (link)
Ten year olds miming murder? We're meant to be okay with that?

They already do that when they play video games.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]evilsqueakers
2011-01-05 09:21 am UTC (link)
Ten year olds miming murder? We're meant to be okay with that?

Excuse me. I was the ten-year-old that was reading classics because I had run out of BSC and SVH books by that point. Oh, wait. No. There were problems with those books, too. Jessica's sociopathy, Elizabeth's passiveness on most things, Lila's almost rape, death of most of Jessica's boyfriends, drugs, sex, rock-and-roll. Again, I had read a lot of those by 10. I had also read the Little House books, up to her personal letters, along with whatever was on the classics shelf that looked interesting like Anne of Green Gables, Jane Eyre, and several Jane Austen books.

And quite frankly, I do not appreciate this idea that a child must be coddled, treated as no more than a mindless zombie attached to only parental/societal ideals. I was reading before six. On my own. Heck, I used to recite Psalms to my godmoms before I was 6, without having heard them before, because I had reading skills and I loved books that challenged me. To this day, on an average month, I can read 10 books without pause. I'd say that reading those classics didn't brain damage me and helped me on the ACT in high school so that I was half-asleep and scored 28/36 without trying. I knew those words from my childhood, and had processed them by reading them on my own, without assignment. At 29, it's helped me all my life.

My librarians in elementary school knew I was about four grades above the rest of my classmates and would point out the classics in order to give me something to do when I was done with my assignments early on in the day and needed something to keep myself occupied and out of trouble. Clever children are hell in a classroom when bored. I had a lot of straight faces in kindergarten because I talked alot since I was finished and I'd read all the books in the classroom library.

God save any child that must be saved from reflections of past ideals that are still mostly relevant today. You know, in case the kids, want to shape their own views and understand why a friend might be upset over a word tossed at them without needing a For Dummies Junior book attached. People die every day. Why is it wrong to point that out, not look down on the ickle children, and let them make their own decisions?

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]sneer
2011-01-05 05:12 pm UTC (link)
Ten year olds performing a play that beats you over the head and face with the message that MURDER IS BAD, M'KAY? Totally okay with that.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]chash
2011-01-05 09:01 pm UTC (link)
We did Macbeth for our fourth grade play. I was Duncan! I was really excited because I got to die and wear armor. It was awesome.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]ms_treesap
2011-01-06 02:59 am UTC (link)
Well, considering what I'd lived through and known by the age of ten? Hell yes I'm ok with that.(It wasn't as bad as many, and I don't want to talk about it here). I agreed with your points until now, but this comment just makes you sound like a patronising n00b to humanity. Oh, and fuck you.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]wankprophet
2011-01-04 09:17 am UTC (link)
Everything else aside -- I'll let y'all slap it out -- are you seriously, without a trace of irony, asking why we don't make a conscious effort to fill library shelves with deliberately indoctrinational materials? Regardless of best intentions, there's a difference between trying to teach certain social values and trying to turn a library into a postmodern Goskomizdat.

Also, it sounds really, really, reeeeeeeaaaaaallllly boring. By and large, the goddamned longhaired nogoodnik hippies were pretty damned dull writers. I except "Watership Down," of course, since I'm not sure Richard Adams was really much of a hippie. And, more importantly, killer bunnies are always awesome

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]sepiamagpie
2011-01-04 09:18 am UTC (link)
I have a killer bunny for you.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]wankprophet
2011-01-04 09:28 am UTC (link)
I...I have no icon capable of winning a battle against a laser-eyed bunny. The best I can find is cheese. Because, frankly, cheese is awesome.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

also has a killer bunny - [info]snarkhunter, 2011-01-04 05:35 pm UTC
Re: also has a killer bunny - [info]wankprophet, 2011-01-04 09:22 pm UTC
Re: also has a killer bunny - [info]melannen, 2011-01-05 03:23 am UTC

[info]phuck_u
2011-01-04 01:45 pm UTC (link)
WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHEEELLLLDRRUUNNNNNNN

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]sandglass
2011-01-04 09:45 pm UTC (link)
You=awesome.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


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