Our view: Steamy books test Duluth’s enlightenment
June 10, 2012 at 7:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
In Wisconsin, Georgia, Florida and elsewhere, libraries are ripping the “Fifty Shades” trilogy of books from shelves or aren’t ordering them at all.
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You are “enlightened” if you love these books. I guess if you morally disapprove, you’re…what?…an archiac prude? It sounds like Duluth has at least 115 enlightened individuals.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Yea, I am not understanding the enlightenment reference either.
Maybe it is a reference to the fact that we do not get all riled up over a book and its contents. There are way worse things on the internet and if parents are worried about their kids reading it, perhaps they should do more “Parenting” and less complaining.
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My wife is reading these books. I have read parts of them, too. The writing is at a junior high level; as if the writer has just experienced heavy petting for the first time, and doesn’t know how to describe it. It is incredibly superficial, the character development is non-existant, and I consider literary ‘works’ of this kind to be further evidence of the dumbing down of America. Don’t waste your time getting all worked up about this stuff. It’s crap. And the buzz will disappear faster than a pet rock, mood ring or Rubik’s cube.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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I’m not arguing about whether ‘Fifty Shades’ is crap — haven’t read it, don’t intend to — but if you think popular literature used to be any more sophisticated you’ve got it wrong. Checkers have always sold better than chess.
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-And Jack Daniels tests American’s fortitude.
The DNT view is clear: We’ll be winking at those who would lead our readers to moral corruption.
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I’ve read the entirety of this really scandalous book that probably makes ’50 Shades’ (which I haven’t read) pale in comparison — it had slavery, adultery, alcoholism, polygamy, women who could be stoned for not isolating themselves during and on either end of their period, and a whole group of dudes tricked into being circumcised so that it’d be easier to kill them that same night. I don’t remember, but I’m sure their widows and children were enslaved. You know, unless the Jews murdered them as well.
And there’re a bunch of people, 99.9% of whom only read it in often poor translations, who think that everything that’s in there is the Word of God although even cursory familiarity with its history demonstrates that everyone who could get their pen in the ink edited it. These same people sometimes kill people because they lack the intellectual rigor to investigate their own convictions, and sometimes think that “Land of the Free” implies “free to make other people live by our own beliefs”.
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It’s nothing but softcore erotica based off “Twilight”. It appeals to the lowest common denominator of reader, which in this case is usually middle-aged, sexually repressed women. If a fella was smart, he would have invested in Energizer before these became a hit.
With that said, they’re books. This is America. Last time I recall a government pulling books due to an “offensive nature”, those particular authors tended to have last named ending in “-berg”. That didn’t work out so well now did it?
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Funny stuff Spock! It was a joke, right?
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So, you’ve read it then?
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So am I unenlightened if I think the book is trash or only if I object to it being in the library? Does the library have other forms of porn on its shelves available? I mean for real, if we’re really enlightened should we allow all forms of “literature” to be available for public consumption? I am of course being sarcastic.
But a genuine question: does the library have a restriction on what kids can check out? Like a ratings system? Because I would hate to think that if I had a teenage daughter that she could go check this out and all the good parenting in the world would not stop a kid determined to sneak around. I would just hope this would not be available to them. But then I also agree that the bigger deal we make about this, the more attention it draws when if people (and by “people” I mostly mean the bored writers at the DNT) would stop giving his trash undue publicity.
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Because a teenage girl couldn’t read this at Barnes & Noble?
And quit worrying about this book in libraries and go to a big-city library where you can find scores of people looking at actual porn, and sometimes “taking care of the business”.
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You’ve got it spot- on when you write “all the good parenting in the world would not stop a kid determined to sneak around”.
This is why a parent is supposed to teach values and crud like that to kids. Unless you plan on keeping them locked under the stairs.
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Check out the Renaissance Art section for your ‘porn’.
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Or photography books.
Plenty of nudes there, I should know… they got me through junior high.
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Interesting how “enlightenment” has evolved to the point where it is represented by stories of women who like to be dominated by men.
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Interesting how some people confuse their own sexual mores with the peccadilloes of (fictional) people.
It does explain the republicants, though.
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LMAO!!
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“We like to leave that responsibility to the parents, to monitor what their kids check out from the library and what they read while they’re here,” Powers said. “Different families have different values. We encourage parents to come with their kids and to monitor what they check out.”
Amen…….perfect! It is apparent WI, GA, and FL don’t expect much from their parents out there. I am not much for pop-literature but banning books??? What is this, 1955? I hope those who want to sheild their kids eyes and minds from said, ‘porn’, don’t let them watch TV
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You know, if I didn’t know better I’d think that Wisconsin, Georgia, and Florida were chock full of people who like to pretend that they think the government should stay out of people’s lives. I suppose they believe that reading a book that has sex (!) as a central concern will ruin marriage, just like everything else that is outside of their circumscribed little world.
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