Wingnuts never were too bright (a blast from the past)

Americans have many reasons to be peeved at the modern (post-1980) brand of right-wing ideologues: their economic elitism, their frequent racism (which they go to great lengths to deny), their turning their backs on America's brave war vets, and so on.

But I've just found a term paper I did for college English class in 1993 that provides a reason why we should actually be having fun at the wingnuts' expense: their unchecked stupidity, which was going full throttle even then.

I'm discarding this assignment because I'm trying to reduce clutter. But not before I regale you with some of my more interesting findings. (If I start keeping printed copies of my entries here, that may defeat the purpose of throwing away my term paper though.)

My 1993 report reads (with footnotes removed):

"Books are not safe from the Moral Majority either. For example, fundamentalists condemned 'Three Little Pigs' in the eighties for encouraging witchcraft. The reason for the criticism is the depiction of pigs dancing joyously while burning a wolf to death.

"At least 900 different books have been banished from school libraries by the Moral Majority. Among them are such classics as 'The Catcher In The Rye' and 'The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn'. 'Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary' was banned because the religious right objected to some of the words listed therein. Many books have been banned without being read first. For instance, the Moral Majority banned 'Making it With Mademoiselle' without realizing it was actually a dressmaking guide.

"The women's health book 'Our Bodies, Ourselves' was banned from school libraries in Montana when the Moral Majority said it condoned 'sexual conduct.' State official Marc Racicot (who is now governor) tried to press criminal charges against anybody distributing the book to a person under 16. He also said that we have 'genuflected at the altar of free speech far too long.'"

My term paper also pointed out how conservative extremists tried to have chapters about the Holocaust removed from textbooks. These extremists claimed the Holocaust was a hoax.

For this area in 1993, my term paper was actually pretty progressive. Although the report didn't devote much space to the New Right's economic tyranny, it's important to note that these book censorship efforts had a lot of wealthy supporters bankrolling them.