The decision of a Tennessee school board to remove a graphic novel about the Holocaust from the eighth grade curriculum has many people crying censorship. But what really is censorship? Why do we not consider economic censorship, the decision not to print something in the first place, less severe than something like this Tennessee decision? Better, after all, to have been printed and sold than to have never been printed and sold.
Censorship | Not Censorship
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Poe Ballentine too ran into the buzz saw of the publishing industry but was finally published by an outlier. But sadly after his last book, went into seclusion with nary additional work to his name. Sad how the industry devours the creative types, leaving them suicidal or in exile in isolation. The geese that lay golden eggs don’t get much gold.
It’s a complex subject. As I sit here, I can think of at least half a dozen variants of censorship. Harlan Ellison mentioned at least two in his “An Edge in My Voice” columns back in the 1980s. One was a relatively obscure paperback writer whose books were praised by Ronald Reagan. Ellison went crazy because the publisher didn’t use the blurb to help elevate the author’s profile (Kennedy mentioned Ian Fleming’s obscure little spy stories in passing — and that started the whole James Bond franchise). Another was Ellison griping about a teacher in Montana who lost her job for teaching one of his stories in her English class. Maybe you could write a book about it, Ted. “The Censorship Onion.”