MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Shopping the 'vicious compliance section': Stores see sales after Alberta book ban

issybird · 09-07-2025, 11:58 AM

I have to call a certain amount of FUD here. Two days before the OP, Alberta paused the order as reported in the New York Times as well as other highly reputable news media.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/w...smid=url-share

Gift link; click freely.

So. While I have no objection to discussing potential/putative/temporarily halted book bans, I can help feeling that linking to dated news materially altered by subsequent events is a scooch intended to direct the discussion.

And then, I also can but deplore letting a post obviously also intended to stir the pot define the discourse, as in the use of the word “filth”, which was picked up by many subsequent posters and ought, in my opinion, to have been eschewed.

I’m glad the point was made upthread that the Edmonton list of books was poking the bear, apparently successfully. No, the school system didn’t really think 1984 should be banned. I see the Alberta premier has retreated to using the Justice Potter Stewart definition of pornography of knowing it when she sees it, which is good enough for gross distinctions but will still leave plenty of room for argument at the muddled middle.

09-07-2025, 11:58 AM	#26
issybird o saeclum infacetum Posts: 21,391 Karma: 235678911 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: New England Device: Mini, H2O, Glo HD, Aura One, PW4, PW5	I have to call a certain amount of FUD here. Two days before the OP, Alberta paused the order as reported in the New York Times as well as other highly reputable news media. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/w...smid=url-share Gift link; click freely. So. While I have no objection to discussing potential/putative/temporarily halted book bans, I can help feeling that linking to dated news materially altered by subsequent events is a scooch intended to direct the discussion. And then, I also can but deplore letting a post obviously also intended to stir the pot define the discourse, as in the use of the word “filth”, which was picked up by many subsequent posters and ought, in my opinion, to have been eschewed. I’m glad the point was made upthread that the Edmonton list of books was poking the bear, apparently successfully. No, the school system didn’t really think *1984* should be banned. I see the Alberta premier has retreated to using the Justice Potter Stewart definition of pornography of knowing it when she sees it, which is good enough for gross distinctions but will still leave plenty of room for argument at the muddled middle.