Guess What This News Makes ME Do?

Question: if we’ve seen politicians without guts,  what’s wrong with seeing Supreme Court justices in the nude?

Stories like the this (link is above) about people deciding what YOU and ME can read inspire me: in fact, I’m so ticked off as SOON as I finish posting this I’m getting on Amazon to order this book in protest (NO JOKE). The story:

GULFPORT, Miss. – Library officials in two southern Mississippi counties have banned Jon Stewart’s best-selling "America (The Book)" over the satirical textbook’s nude depictions of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices.

"I’ve been a librarian for 40 years and this is the only book I’ve objected to so strongly that I wouldn’t allow it to circulate," said Robert Willits, director of the Jackson-George Regional Library System of eight libraries in Jackson and George counties.

REALLY? Haven’t you seen Ann Coulter’s or Michael Moore’s books? Worse: haven’t you seen Ann Coulter and Michael Moore? (WHOOPS! Here come the "How can you call yourself a moderate?" emails again…) More:

"We’re not an adult bookstore. Our entire collection is open to the entire public," Willits said. "If they had published the book without that one picture, that one page, we’d have the book."

Wal-Mart has declined to stock the book because of the page, which features the faces of the nine Supreme Court justices superimposed over naked bodies. The facing page has cutouts of the justices’ robes, complete with a caption asking readers to "restore their dignity by matching each justice with his or her respective robe."

Honestly. Who would WANT to see those men and women in the nude? So just skip the pages. No one will buy the book for THAT, unless they are working hard at being bulemic and want to purge their food. We digress:

The book by Stewart and the writers of "The Daily Show," the Comedy Central fake-news program he hosts, was released in September. It has spent 15 weeks on The New York Times best seller list for hardcover nonfiction, and was named Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, the industry trade magazine.

Former English teacher Tara Skelton of Ocean Springs said the libraries shouldn’t decide what is in poor taste.

"It just really seemed kind of silly to me," she said. "I don’t think the Supreme Court justices have filed any defamation of character or libel suits. It’s humor."

It sure is, so let’s get serious:

• People on the right and left need to lighten up. Everyone insists they are against PC but everyone embraces it. You can’t make a joke about a turkey’s birthday without getting reamed these days (I know because I had that happen in a show. "It’s SATANISM! He’s talking about signs!")
• All the talk about trying to ban a book like Stewart’s from young, innocent impressionable minds is pure pap. Perhaps the justice should visit a middle school and talk to students and see what they know. Believe me, nude doctored photos of Supreme Court justices isn’t what they want to secretly see. Girls don’t say: "Man, what a hunk that Clarence Thomas is!" Boys don’t say, "Dude, that Sandra Day is a hot babe!"
• A lot of this objection is due to the fact that the Supreme Court justices are public officials and the suggest is that it is somehow unpatriotic to hold them up to even doctored photo ridicule. I  submit that elected officials deserve to be targets of satire. Bravo to Stewart, Mad Magazine, the Mad Show, Saturday Night Live, The Capital Steps, Rush Limbaugh’s satirists, Al Franken’s satirsts, Don Imus’ satire, and Mark Russell.  Whomoever has the guts and wit to puncture the they-are-above-us-because-they-are-the-elite images deserves our applause…whether it’s a satirist on the right or on the left.

I wasn’t planning on ordering the book but now…to put my money where my bile is… I will post this…and immediately order that book on Amazon.com.

But I’ll skip the nude Supreme Court justices pictures.

PS: It could have been worse. At least Stewart didn’t run nude photos of Dick Cheney or Ted Kennedy…

UPDATE: I ordered the book.  Robert Willits made me do it.