Is Mississippi anti-America?
CENSORSHIP DOESN’T sit well with a lot of people. That’s what the Jackson-George Regional Library System board of trustees in Mississippi found out when it banned Daily Show host Jon Stewart’s best-selling satirical book, America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction. Released in September, the book has spent 15 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and was named Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly. But the library board objected to one specific page–with images of naked Supreme Court justices. The facing page has cutouts of the justices’ robes, with a caption asking readers to “restore their dignity by matching each justice with his or her respective robe.” In response to the announcement that the book would be pulled from the shelves of eight libraries, the board was inundated with critical e-mails and phone calls, from both local and out-of-state residents. So, in a hasty decision, the board voted last week to restore America to the library system’s shelves.
