DeSantis Signs Law Limiting Book Challenges After The Shitty People He Encouraged To Be Shitty Proved To Be Even Shittier Than He Thought They’d Be
from the well-well-well-if-it-isn't-the-consequences-of-my-own-actions dept
Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, and Florida’s legislature have combined forces to craft and pass some of the most unconstitutional laws ever written in the United States. A series of bad laws has led to series of injunctions from federal courts, including one that traveled all the way to the Supreme Court just to have the First Amendment reaffirmed by the top court in the land.
It’s a campaign of hate. The laws, without exception, target either people the governor and his legislative fanbois don’t like (a lot of this targets LGBTQ+ people) or people who don’t like DeSantis or his legislative fanbois (hence all the legislation targeting social media services which don’t find it all that profitable to host hateful content).
Like other states with the same set of bad ideas and worse legislators, Florida has turned libraries into battlefields where the First Amendment matters less than the petty outrage of people who can’t stand to have any ideas they don’t agree with given shelf space. Book challenges are the new normal in far too many places in the United States.
But Florida leads the way by a large margin. According to stats gathered by PEN America, Florida has served up more than three-quarters of the nation’s book bans over the last six months of 2023.
The vast majority of school book bans occurred in Florida, with 3,135 bans across 11 of the state’s school districts. A spokesperson with Florida’s Department of Education declined NPR’s request for comment.
Across the nation, 4,349 book bans were reported over that same period. And that six month period produced more book bans than the entirety of 2022.
Apparently, that’s beginning to be a bit of a problem for the state that leads the nation in book challenges. Realizing that most challenges are filed by just a handful of extremely petty people with far too much time and ideology on their hands (the NPR report notes a single Wisconsin parent was responsible for 444 book challenges), DeSantis is now trying to unreap at least part of the harvest he has sown.
Florida residents who don’t have children attending school will have significantly fewer chances to challenge books in local K-12 libraries under a new law signed Tuesday by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Meant to curb what lawmakers described as a “logistical nightmare” facing school districts flooded with requests to remove books, the policy marks an admission from Republican leaders that last year’s expansions to book challenge laws may have gone too far after national backlash from free speech groups and even some conservatives.
We’ll see if this actually deters the book ban overachievers from filing challenges as quickly as they can change the To: field in their form letters. Somehow, I think this will just encourage a lot of “straw” challenges from people who either don’t exist or don’t realize some shitty sociopath is using their name to engage in ideological warfare with ideas and content they don’t like.
This would all be stupid enough if it weren’t for the statements made by DeSantis when signing this bill into law.
All of it is disingenuous. First, DeSantis pretends it isn’t just the shittiest members of his voter base that are responsible for having to legislate a claw-back on book challenges.
In backing the idea, DeSantis said Florida wants to stamp out frivolous challenges as “activists” from “all ends of the political spectrum” are objecting to “everything under the sun.”
It’s the Trumpian “fine people on both sides” tactic but in reverse. And it’s bullshit. Let’s go back and check the data gathered by PEN:
Those who ban books often cite “obscenity law and hyperbolic rhetoric about ‘porn in schools’ to justify banning books about sexual violence and LGBTQ+ topics (and in particular, trans identities),” the report says.
That doesn’t sound like “all ends of the political spectrum.” That sounds like one very narrow end of the political spectrum — the end containing the narrowest minds.
Then there’s this bit of chastisement, which should have provoked open laughter from every journalist in attendance:
“Schools are there to serve the community,” DeSantis said Monday during an event touting the legislation. “Schools are not there for you to try to go on some ideological joyride at the expense of our kids.”
Holy fuck, Ron! Your entire state is little more than an ideological joyride, at least since you’ve taken office. Your legislature — with few exceptions — does nothing more than craft more rides for your ideological playground. You and your buddies in the legislature directly encouraged this sort of bullshit from your constituents. And now you want to pretend you’re somehow above it all?!
You created this shitstorm, Ron. I guess we can all feel thankful you at least feel bad enough about it to show up with a tarp, even though pretty much everything is already covered in feces. But you should be fine moving forward. I would assume the legislators on your side of the aisle that approved this bill have used up whatever last vestiges of shame they contained. This isn’t a sign of hope. It’s just the last plateau before everything resumes its usual downhill course.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, book bans, florida, ron desantis
Comments on “DeSantis Signs Law Limiting Book Challenges After The Shitty People He Encouraged To Be Shitty Proved To Be Even Shittier Than He Thought They’d Be”
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Awww, sorry pro-groomer degenerate!!
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You must be looking for the Catholic Church forums. Those are on a different site.
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Be fair, all conservative religions in the USA love sexually abusing kids
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He must like when Republicans do it.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/04/from-hastert-to-gaetz-lets-talk-about-republicans-and-sex-crimes.html
https://www.google.com/search?q=youth+pastor+arrested&tbm=nws
https://old.reddit.com/r/NotADragQueen/
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What’s this then?
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/07/11/us/politics/09dc-trumpspstein1/09dc-trumpspstein1-articleLarge-v2.jpg
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No worse than this:
https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/missouri-lawmaker-defends-12-year-olds-getting-married/
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This is my favorite though:
https://www.dailykos.com/history/user/CajsaLilliehook
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Republicans want kids too ignorant to report when they’re raped.
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Not ignorant by definition. You can’t ignore something that’s not available.
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No need to announce your arrival like that.
Or even arrive.
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Speak for yourself. I appreciate the heads-up to hide my kids.
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troll
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Moron.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re: Re:2
troll
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re: Re:3
are you saying it to me? cuase am not the one trying to use the groomer word cuase there butt hurt that there now seeing the consequences of what there doing
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Re: Re: Re:4
What the fuck are you even trying to say?
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Re: Re: Re:5
am saying the 3rd comment is a anti lgbtq troll whos butt hurt that he is seeing the consequences of that thinking
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Re: Re: Re:6
My very gay husband would be shocked to find out that his pansexual husband is an “anti lgbtq troll.” Especially by virtue of the fact that I want to be warned when anti-lgbtq sex pests are on the scene.
You’re like a fucking drunk swinging a broken bottle around a bar because you don’t know what’s going on.
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Re: Re: Re:7
then why are you saying that lgbtq people are groomers then?
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Re: Re: Re:8
Fucking hell. I was talking about the original anti-lgbtq poster. How are you this dense?
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Re: Re: Re:9
oh my bad apologies
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Re: Re: Re:10
Apology isn’t worth much when you’re just going to do it again and again.
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Re: Re: Re:11
it was cuase i thought you were that anti lgbtq troll
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Re: Re: Re:12
I understand that. Regardless, when you apologize, but then keep doing the thing anyway, your apology is worthless.
You’ve done it before. You’ll do it again. You don’t understand half what’s being said, but you don’t hesitate to jump in.
That is why your apology is pointless and meaningless. Because you’re going to keep doing the thing you’re apologizing for.
Re: Re: Re:13
I’d recommend using a name to keep your comments from getting confused with other ACs. You don’t have to sign in to add a name to your comments in the name field.
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Re: Re: Re:14
I’m not changing to cater to the lowest common denominator.
Re: Re: Re:15
Then you should get used to the possibility of the confusion that leads to these kinds of threads.
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Re: Re: Re:16
That’s fine. I’m always willing to make the attempt to meet people on their own ground.
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Re: Re: Re:16
No, I totally get it. I should make myself targetable because so many commenters on this site lack the reading comprehension necessary to distinguish one AC from another based on writing style.
Re: Re: Re:17
Targetable? You’re afraid people will target some random anonymous username you might pick? Heck, you could use a different name for each article.
With short enough comments, there’s little distinction between the writing styles of different people, so confusion is understandable and inevitable.
And in long enough threads on multiple articles, you’re likely to lose track of your own comments since you have to reread everything without a distinctive name to search for.
Re: Re: Re:18
How short is too short. I’ve seen AC comments of two or three paragraphs long get flagged on the basis that Bratty Matty or davec or Jhon Smith wrote them, even though the length should give even those with the least reading comprehension ability more than enough content to detect that the AC is indeed an AC and not a regular troll posing as one.
Re: Re: Re:19
E.g. some of the comments in this thread are a single sentence or a single word.
Re: Re: Re:20
Which doesn’t address the issue raised by the AC(s); nobody should have to make themselves targetable or put themselves through the mental gymnastics of different user names just because some individuals refuse to have the reading comprehension level of the average kindergartener.
Re: Re: Re:21
Inversely, nobody should have to have the reading comprehension of an omniscient deity to know who actually wrote a comment when people write comments that a PHD linguistics expert wouldn’t have enough information to differentiate. Most comments can only be distinguished based on patterns of vocabulary usage or chronic misspellings which may not actually come up in every comment a person makes.
FYI, most kindergartners in the US don’t have reading comprehension skills.
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That would be a hilarious comeback if the Bible wasn’t the book most used by actual groomers.
That claim does have a grain of truth to it, though. Activist Chaz Stevens filed multiple challenges to dictionaries, thesauruses, and the Bible in multiple Florida counties—all using similar reasonings, and the same legal processes, as the challenges aimed at books by/about LGBTQ people. Stevens’s challenges do affirm the notion that at least one person who isn’t conservative is using the system to (try to) ban books. That said: He is nowhere near being the actual problem, and DeSantis using Stevens as an implicit scapegoat for Florida’s Fuck Around and Find Out moment is absolutely a bullshit move.
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… making a point about the law, rather than having animus against dictionaries, thesari, and bibles.
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Actually, the result here is what Chaz was going for. Watch Stevens’ challenges stop now he’s got what we all needed.
Damn, almost sounds like the researchers looked through the TD comments section for their report.
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They’re all getting their talking points from the same sources. These people aren’t big on thinking for themselves.
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Russian shitposters?
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Russian shitposters suffer from the same malady.
'How dare you try to hold me to my own standards?!
In backing the idea, DeSantis said Florida wants to stamp out frivolous challenges as “activists” from “all ends of the political spectrum” are objecting to “everything under the sun.”
I guarantee what this translates to is that people keep applying his own law to books(specifically the bible) that he and his supporters want to give a pass to despite being glaring violations.
Says the man who approved PragerU videos to be part of the curriculum. The same PragerU whose leader openly admits his goal is to indoctrinate children.
That means religious schools and religious homeschoolers would be illegal, but we know he wouldn’t go after his conservative Christian voter base like that. The hypocrisy is on purpose!
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The argument there is that parents choose to enrol their children in such schools fully aware of what the curriculum’s likely to contain.
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That sounds like an “ideological joyride” to me. Why would religious parents have the right to choose that but secular parents don’t? Of course the answer is right wing hypocrisy…
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I wasn’t aware that there are no secular public schools in the US. 🤦♂️
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That wasn’t the claim. The point is that religious people are pushing their ideology on public schools through book bans and taking over the school boards, while already having private schools or homeschooling where they can also push their own ideology. It’s hypocrisy, but that’s not surprising, sadly.
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Switching your claim after it’s been addressed only makes for a less sturdy strawman, troll.
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Someone else misinterpreting my claim doesn’t involve my claim switching.
You also don’t know what a troll is.
DeSantis’s karma is to wake up one day back at Gitmo, but on the other side of those bars. I hope to live to see it.
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Anyone trying to ban any book anywhere anytime should be immediately executed. They are an enemy of the people and so of course they deserve instant death.
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There are better ways, dude. No need to go all Jan. 6th over it.
So it wasn’t because someone challenged a book De Santis personally loved?
He wrote a law only a Karen could love, and it shocked just shocked that Karen’s took advantage of it.
It is as shocking as the school boards who had people elected to seats when they refuse to allow their own children to attend public school.
Forget it, Jake. It's Floridatown.
In a state bursting with nuts, passiung nutcase enabling legislation is probably a bad idea.
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1st amendment applies to ALL! except...
So…the 1st amendment is absolute, even for sexualized publications presented to gradeschoolers, but not – NOT! – speech that is even opinion when it comes to the veracity of claims about safety and effectiveness of certain shall-not-be-named (but only ONE particular one) drug therapy product. Got it. Good to see in the intervening years, Techdirt has remained steadfast in its resolve to go completely fascist and support far left extremism in any of its forms.
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… Truly the fictional reality you seem to live in is a terrible place, have you tried reality for a change?
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Ok, groomer.
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I love it when the fascists call other people fascists. It’s just tacit admission that they know they’re the bad guys and they think other people don’t know what words mean because they’re convinced they’re the smartest guys in the room when they’re not fooling anyone.
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Apparently, you haven’t been paying attention the past 3 years (or 40 for that matter). We’re at least halfway there right now.
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First, that’s a very general definition. An important detail is that fascism is a right wing ideology. By definition, “far left extremism,” which doesn’t really exist in the US short of a small number of tankies, cannot be fascist.
Second, they you point to the last three years rather than the previous four to the last three years is telling. Trump is farther right and closer to fascism than the Biden Administration, unless maybe you were pointing to all the conservative officials persecuting trans people and applying religious bias to laws in places like Florida and Texas…? Trump is basically a fascist too stupid to do fascism well, but he did try. He talks about being “president for life.” The conservatives perpetuate racist theories like white replacement and talk about discrimination against white people. The conservatives persecute minorities. The conservatives are jingoist “patriots” who tried to stage a coup. They persecute gay and trans people and ethnic minorities and Muslims and atheists.
So even when you whip out a definition, you still don’t understand what it means.
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“First, that’s a very general definition. An important detail is that fascism is a right wing ideology. By definition, “far left extremism,” which doesn’t really exist in the US short of a small number of tankies, cannot be fascist.”
It’s literally, literally, the dictionary definition. So take it up with the official “authorized” sources you love so much.
“Trump is farther right and closer to fascism than the Biden Administration,”
Uh huh.
As long as you ignore:
Censorship of speech by the government, even the attempt at it, suppression, etc.
“But our patience is WEARING THIN” and other outright threats to those who don’t fall in line
Illegal, unconstitutional “mandates”
The outright persecution of anyone who thinks differently than the “approved” narratives by the left/gov.
Absolute unequal justice applied to the populace based on race, political affiliation and other “Social” factors (and you can throw “in hiring practices” to boot, a violation of EE laws)
ALL coming from the Left and this administration.
Denial that any of this has and is happening under this administration would prove you are actively subverting the truth to blindly support your ideological position in ignorance of objective reality.
Oh wait, right. Liberal. So the above is a redundant statement.
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No, it’s literally a dictionary definition. There are multiple dictionaries with different variations on a definition of the word. You chose one. That’s a decision you made, so it’s relevant to criticize your choice. That you rely on a general definition shows you don’t have an academic understanding of how the term is used.
Definitions are also not prescriptive, but rather descriptive. It’s how the dictionary entry writer chose to describe how the word has been used by some people.
There’s no official “authorized” source for a definition. You also don’t know anything about what I love.
Trump wanted to control the media. He just failed at doing so. He wants to violate the 1st Amendment and open up libel laws so you can sue people for speaking verifiable facts that aren’t flattering. You’re ignoring his machinations. Most of the “censorship” claims about the Biden Administration is conservatives pretending the government just communicating with a media company is a form of censorship.
Conservatives arguing that they should be free to infect others with a deadly virus isn’t the hill I’d recommend dying on. It’s not an example of fascism. An actual threat to public safety can warrant restrictions on freedoms. Constitutional rights aren’t unlimited. We literally hundreds of years of case law on the topic. Your right to free speech doesn’t cover fraud, libel, slander, threats of violence, and some other examples.
Fascist governments have used manufactured crises like “The Jews caused us to lose the Great War” to restrict the freedoms and reduce the rights of people.
That’s just a propaganda take. You’re literally on a website expressing how you disagree. Your comment undermines your own argument. Nobody from the government is coming after you for saying stupid things.
Ah, yes, the “white people are the most persecuted Americans” racist rant. Totally real. Not a bullshit privileged take for people who need a persecution complex to make it about them.
The administration isn’t “the Left.” You’re just repeating bullshit from conservative media propaganda.
Your entire rant was very general and uneducated. You didn’t actually prove any of your assertions. Just saying “if you disagree, then you’re blindly ideological” doesn’t actually make it true. The irony is that the accusation is a confession. You’re just admitting with your talking points that you consume very biased conservative media and you don’t analyze the news for the actual truth. I’m not a democrat. I don’t blindly support this administration. I’d have voted for someone other than Biden. I did vote for someone else in the primary. I do disagree with many stances of this government.
I’m not a liberal. Try again.
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Actual historical nitpicking notwithstanding… (assuming you actually will siddown and listen to the experts in this particular field of history isntead of murdering them all)
First of all, where are the Marxist countries powerful enough to train saboteurs and provocateurs? Russia is a capitalist dictatorship, China is a capitalist one-party dystopia, and India is authcap.
Secondly, the 70s are already long gone, and the Soviet-trained agents left are too old to do anything significant.
Lastly, we have been paying attention. We’re frankly shocked that it was the Republicans who became the patsies of Russia.
You make it sound like they are banning books.
What books are banned?
Not having pornography in public schools is not the same thing as banning pornography.
You people need to get a grip on something other than your cocks