I think it’s safe to assume at this point that if you read or hear in the news that a book or a subject has been “banned” from a Florida school or school system, the story is either misleading or downright false.
There have been numerous instances of these falsehoods or distorted news stories cropping up over the last six months or so, with one of the more recent ones being the media lie that The Diary of Anne Frank had been “banned” from one Florida high school.
The real story was that an illustrated version of the book was removed from the school because of a complaint by Moms For Liberty about how it sexualized the teenage Frank and turned her into a lesbian who dreamed about seeing adult naked women and who fantasized about seeing her female friend’s breasts and kissing her.
The latest example comes from multiple media outlets including the Associated Press and Politico, who reported that the poem “The Hill We Climb,” which was written and read by woke poet Amanda Gorman during Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration, was “banned” from one South Florida elementary school.
Politico’s original write-up, for example, contained the headline “Florida school bans Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem after parental complaint” and read in part as follows:
A Miami-Dade elementary school has removed Amanda Gorman’s presidential inauguration poem, The Hill We Climb, from circulation after a parent complained that it contained indirect “hate messages.”Gorman, 25, who gained national prominence after she recited her poem at President Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration, took to Twitter Tuesday to denounce the book banning.“I’m gutted,” the poet wrote in a lengthy Twitter statement, before saying that censored books are often authored by people “who have struggled for generations to get on bookshelves,” most of whom are “queer and non-white.”
The problem here is that the poem, which is also in book form, was not banned at all, as even CNN of all places reported:
The same parent made similar complaints about “Love to Langston,” a poetry-based biography of Black poet Langston Hughes; “The ABCs of Black History” and two books about Cuba, complaints obtained by the nonprofit group show.A materials-review panel at the school declined to remove the books from the school entirely but did decide to move the Gorman poem and two other disputed items to the library’s middle school section, which is for grades six through eight, according to minutes of an April meeting of the committee that were obtained by the nonprofit.[…]In a statement to CNN Tuesday evening, Miami-Dade County Public Schools spokesperson Elmo Lugo said, “No literature (books or poem) has been banned or removed.”“It was determined at the school that ‘The Hill We Climb’ is better suited for middle school students and, it was shelved in the middle school section of the media center. The book remains available in the media center,” he said.
And not only “available in the media center” but also “accessible to all students”:
I should note that the AP has changed its story, but it still misses the mark:
But the facts didn’t matter to some so-called reporters, who went right on ahead and shared the fake news anyway:
I should also note that a viral video that was shared by far-left Twitter accounts like Meidas Touch and others that showed a Florida public school employee alleging a mass purge of books from her school has been been fact-checked, surprisingly enough, by the AP and USA Today, both of which found out that what was alleged to be happening in the video wasn’t happening at all:
The claim stems from a since-deleted TikTok video posted by a staff member at McNicol Middle School in Hollywood, Florida.But the books were not removed by the state after being deemed “inappropriate” as the employee claimed, according to John Sullivan, chief communications and legislative affairs officer for Broward County Public Schools.“The books at McNicol Middle School were removed because the vast majority – 89% – were more than 15 years old,” Sullivan said in an email. “It is the national standard that school library specialists review and ‘weed’ books from their collections to ensure the material is current and up-to-date.”Sullivan noted the weeding was done in compliance with American Library Association collection maintenance standards and a 2000 legal settlement regarding educational equity.
So that makes two fake news stories about “book bannings” in Florida in one week. Now that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has officially entered the 2024 presidential race, expect more of this in the weeks and months to come as the woke left and the MSM work in concert to tear his candidacy down by any means necessary.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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