Seriously, Sex With Animals? W h a t ?

Under the condescending headline of “Good grief, Charlie Brown: Family stunned by adult comics at library,” here’s an article about a book about manga driving a child into madness in the desert town of Barstow.

A sample:

Parent Tamara Innis, who visited the Victorville library on Tuesday, considered the images deserving of a restrictive rating.

“They do it with music, why not with a book with pornographic content?” she wondered.

Barret said that since the book was purchased about a year ago, it has been correctly placed in the adult collection.

“Library policy affirms the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights, Freedom to Read and Freedom to View statements,” she said.

And even though the book was placed in the adult section, so were other cartoon books such as The Hulk, Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts, Jones said.

“That represents a wide variety in the full spectrum of comics,” Barret explained.

(Emphasis mine.)

I get the eerie feeling that we’re going to see manga under widespread assault very, very soon in this election year, as “moral values” is the only thing the Republican Party is going to be able to use in their campaigns outside of “immigration reform,” which looks to be going over like a lead balloon in many places.

(A note outside of my “expertise:” is it just me or is the whole “work in the country and earn your citizenship, maybe” thing that Bush has proposed smell like “slave class” to anyone else?)

Addendum: The Victorville Daily Press is running the same article under the headline “Good grief, Charlie Brown! Family stunned by porn comics at library”.