Foolish anti-gay and trans behaviors hide tragedy underneath

Chris Hedges thinks we're horrible

A few months ago, I wrote a column saying Florida and other politically puritanical states would soon be banning Shakespeare’s plays, with their bawdy jokes, cross-dressing, blood-soaked plots and occasional sex between young teens.

Enter stage right, the Hillsborough County (Florida) School District, where administrators have interpreted a state law dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill as a prohibition on reading the full text of “Romeo and Juliet.”

Students will be assigned to read excerpts, they say, but skip the sex parts.

This effort at censorship, like most, is likely to backfire. Students will search out those scenes they’ve been told not to read, and more will end up reading them than if they’d been assigned the whole play. Is this is a clever effort to get kids reading Shakespeare?

In response to the school’s decision, Florida Education Department officials are taking the Captain Renault route, saying they’re “shocked” to discover that a law banning certain material from classrooms has resulted in schools banning certain material from classrooms.

Thinking about “Casablanca’s” creepy Captain Renault and the way he preyed on vulnerable young female refugees makes me wonder whether that classic movie is also banned in Florida schools — or would that only happen if Renault’s victims were men?

The real target of Ron DeSantis’ Parental Rights in Education Act is not Shakespeare and not, as he claims, “pornography,” which the school libraries do not contain, but books that affirm the humanity of gay, lesbian and transgender kids. 

The silly anti-Shakespeare reaction in Hillsborough shows DeSantis is succeeding. School officials are so eager to demonstrate compliance, they are censoring the writer generally acknowledged as the greatest in the English language. But it’s not funny. If they’re willing to censor him, they will have no trouble censoring children — especially those who, because of their sexuality and gender identity, are the most vulnerable — and that is a tragedy.

Readings

I read “Death of the Liberal Class” by Chris Hedges, a polemic against what he sees as the liberal sell-out to the corporate elite. It’s a fun book, published in 2010 but prescient in its prediction of a rise in populist anger. I’m curious what he has to say about Donald Trump (probably, “I told you so!”) His assertion is that the exploitation of the working class and the neglect of their concerns by the liberal class — as demonstrated by NAFTA, for example, and other manifestations of globalization — had led to the disillusionment of the working class and would lead to outbreaks of anger and, perhaps, violence. Like I said, prescient.

Hedges states everything in extremes, which can be a bit much if you see things as more nuanced. I can’t help wondering when he became so empathetic with the working class — when he went to prep school in Connecticut? At Colgate University? At Harvard’s Divinity School? During his 15 years with the New York Times? I keep thinking the same thing when I read anyone with a privileged background and a privileged present who rails against every selfish choice every privileged person has ever made. Where were these words written, I keep thinking — at their summer house in Vermont? Their family’s place on Cape Cod?

Also, Hedges talks a lot about the awfulness of the U.S. role in World War I and the Vietnam War and modern wars in the Middle East but skips over World War II like it never happened. Why is that? Does he prefer to stick with wars it’s easier to make his argument against?