{"id":11190,"date":"2021-01-02T14:16:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-02T21:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=11190"},"modified":"2021-01-24T14:33:58","modified_gmt":"2021-01-24T21:33:58","slug":"the-odyssey-cancelled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2021\/01\/02\/the-odyssey-cancelled\/","title":{"rendered":"THE ODYSSEY Cancelled"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">from The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Even Homer Gets Mobbed<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>A Massachusetts school has banned \u2018The Odyssey.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By\u00a0Meghan Cox Gurdon<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Odyssey 1997 - Homer\" width=\"1080\" height=\"810\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6S_l12WM_KM?feature=oembed\"  allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>A sustained effort is under way to deny children access to literature. Under the slogan #DisruptTexts, critical-theory ideologues, schoolteachers and Twitter agitators are purging and propagandizing against classic texts\u2014everything from Homer to F. Scott Fitzgerald to Dr. Seuss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Their ethos holds that children shouldn\u2019t have to read stories written in anything other than the present-day vernacular\u2014especially those \u201cin which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm,\u201d as young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman writes in School Library Journal. No author is valuable enough to spare, Ms. Venkatraman instructs: \u201cAbsolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic excellence outweighs hateful rhetoric.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The subtle complexities of literature are being reduced to the crude clanking of \u201cintersectional\u201d power struggles. Thus Seattle English teacher Evin Shinn\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/baritoneblogger\/status\/1010401852599369728?s=20\" target=\"_blank\">tweeted<\/a>\u00a0in 2018 that he\u2019d \u201crather die\u201d than teach \u201cThe Scarlet Letter,\u201d unless Nathaniel Hawthorne\u2019s novel is used to \u201cfight against misogyny and slut-shaming.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[ <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">click to continue reading at WSJ<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from The Wall Street Journal Even Homer Gets Mobbed A Massachusetts school has banned \u2018The Odyssey.\u2019 By\u00a0Meghan Cox Gurdon A sustained effort is under way to deny children access to literature. Under the slogan #DisruptTexts, critical-theory ideologues, schoolteachers and Twitter agitators are purging and propagandizing against classic texts\u2014everything from Homer to F. Scott Fitzgerald to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}