The list I'm talking about was compiled by the nattering nabobs of negativity over at Human Events magazine, where a committee of unreconstructed reactionaries recently selected the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. There were some real surprises:
4) The Kinsey Report. Kinsey's research merely confirmed what we all already suspected: our parents are (or at least were) freaks. His crime, according to the brain trust at Human Events, was "to give a scientific gloss to the normalization of promiscuity and deviancy." Is that what talking honestly about sex does? I personally think MTV does a much better job of normalizing promiscuity and deviancy, though I admit to lingering doubts about their scientific credentials.
7) The Feminine Mystique. Headline: Betty Friedan Nearly Upsets Karl Marx as Das Kapital Ekes Out 6th Place on Stupidest List Ever! Human Events apparently holds Friedan single-handedly responsible for tricking impressionable females into believing they might find more satisfaction in the workplace than the kitchen. Plus, she banged a communist. Why all the outrage? Communists are hot! (I base this entirely on Garbo's performance in Ninotchka.) More shocking is that Friedan opens a six-pack of whup-ass on Nietzsche, whose Beyond Good and Evil is relegated to 9th place. How can anyone take seriously a group that thinks women are scarier than Germans!
I don't know much about Human Events beyond their low opinion of human events these past 200 years (typical conservatives!) but I am generally of the opinion people should do whatever the hell they want, be it watching NASCAR, machine-gunning ripe fruit, engaging in consensual "sayex" with their cousins, or making lists - Don't Tread on Me You Can Do Whatever The Fuck You Want, that's my motto - but there is something rotten about the Human Events list...something that reeks of...what is that stink? Oh yeah! National Socialism. The Nazis too compiled lists of harmful books. Then they burned them. Remember what Heine said about book burning: "Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen." He was right, of course. Compiling lists of dangerous books is a prelude to eliminating them. Given that a book is nothing more than a collection of ideas, and ideas call the human mind home, such a list is a prelude to eliminating human beings, lest they precipitate more untoward human events. I'm not saying some of these books (Mein Kampf, for example) haven't proved harmful. No, wait, that's exactly what I'm saying: BOOKS DON'T KILL PEOPLE; PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE. If you want their bad ideas to die like a dog in the street, send them into the street, where they can be exposed to that glorious disinfectant, sunshine.
I do go on. Forgive me. This is my first entry and I was rushed. (As Goethe said, "If I had more time, I would write a shorter letter.") In the past my response to such instances of stupid shit has been to try and ignore it, fail, and then stew about it, becoming a little more aggrieved at the state of the world while doing exactly nothing about it. No more. This time my indignation actually produced a tangible result: a letter. I've never written a letter to the editor before, but the idiotarians at Human Events awakened the slumbering beast within. I started this blog to tell you about it, to encourage you to awake and scream. No more free passes for stupid shit! Fighting back is good for your mental health. Besides, it can be fun. I've reprinted my letter below in the hope that it will encourage you to compose one of your own and send it to the editors at Human Events. Be sure to copy me if you do. I'll try to post a few of the cheekier efforts right here.
To: editors@humaneventsonline.com
Subject: 'Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries'
Dear Sirs,
Thank you for providing me with a good laugh and the reassurance that, as Dick Cheney might say, your movement is in its death throes.
Harry Crocker? Fred Smith? Prof. Brad Birzer of Hillsdale College? (Isn't that where Humbert Humbert taught English to fawning bobbysoxers in Lolita?) Your panel of has-beens and intellectual bottom feeders isn't qualified to judge a Gong Show episode, much less discuss political theory or the history of Western Philosophy. We both know most of them have never read the books on this list. (Do you expect me to believe Phyllis Schlafly is actually literate?) And seeing the promoter of the Swift Boat Liars given a forum in which to decry one of the great minds the Western philosophical tradition - I mean Nietzsche, not Ralph Nader - is enough to make a stone cry.
Good luck to you on your next list, in which Ann Coulter will select the 'Ten Most Harmful Dialogues of Plato' and demand of Socrates' ghost, "Why do you hate Athens?"
-Todd Smith
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