DeSantis Signs Law Limiting Book Challenges After The Shitty People He Encouraged To Be Shitty Proved To Be Even Shittier Than He Thought They’d Be

Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, and Florida’s legislature have combined forces to craft and pass some of the most unconstitutional laws ever written in the United States. A series of bad laws has led to series of injunctions from federal courts, including one that traveled all the way to the Supreme Court just to have the First Amendment reaffirmed by the top court in the land.

It’s a campaign of hate. The laws, without exception, target either people the governor and his legislative fanbois don’t like (a lot of this targets LGBTQ+ people) or people who don’t like DeSantis or his legislative fanbois (hence all the legislation targeting social media services which don’t find it all that profitable to host hateful content).

Like other states with the same set of bad ideas and worse legislators, Florida has turned libraries into battlefields where the First Amendment matters less than the petty outrage of people who can’t stand to have any ideas they don’t agree with given shelf space. Book challenges are the new normal in far too many places in the United States.

But Florida leads the way by a large margin. According to stats gathered by PEN America, Florida has served up more than three-quarters of the nation’s book bans over the last six months of 2023.

The vast majority of school book bans occurred in Florida, with 3,135 bans across 11 of the state’s school districts. A spokesperson with Florida’s Department of Education declined NPR’s request for comment.

Across the nation, 4,349 book bans were reported over that same period. And that six month period produced more book bans than the entirety of 2022.

Apparently, that’s beginning to be a bit of a problem for the state that leads the nation in book challenges. Realizing that most challenges are filed by just a handful of extremely petty people with far too much time and ideology on their hands (the NPR report notes a single Wisconsin parent was responsible for 444 book challenges), DeSantis is now trying to unreap at least part of the harvest he has sown.

Florida residents who don’t have children attending school will have significantly fewer chances to challenge books in local K-12 libraries under a new law signed Tuesday by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Meant to curb what lawmakers described as a “logistical nightmare” facing school districts flooded with requests to remove books, the policy marks an admission from Republican leaders that last year’s expansions to book challenge laws may have gone too far after national backlash from free speech groups and even some conservatives.

We’ll see if this actually deters the book ban overachievers from filing challenges as quickly as they can change the To: field in their form letters. Somehow, I think this will just encourage a lot of “straw” challenges from people who either don’t exist or don’t realize some shitty sociopath is using their name to engage in ideological warfare with ideas and content they don’t like.

This would all be stupid enough if it weren’t for the statements made by DeSantis when signing this bill into law.

All of it is disingenuous. First, DeSantis pretends it isn’t just the shittiest members of his voter base that are responsible for having to legislate a claw-back on book challenges.

In backing the idea, DeSantis said Florida wants to stamp out frivolous challenges as “activists” from “all ends of the political spectrum” are objecting to “everything under the sun.”

It’s the Trumpian “fine people on both sides” tactic but in reverse. And it’s bullshit. Let’s go back and check the data gathered by PEN:

Those who ban books often cite “obscenity law and hyperbolic rhetoric about ‘porn in schools’ to justify banning books about sexual violence and LGBTQ+ topics (and in particular, trans identities),” the report says.

That doesn’t sound like “all ends of the political spectrum.” That sounds like one very narrow end of the political spectrum — the end containing the narrowest minds.

Then there’s this bit of chastisement, which should have provoked open laughter from every journalist in attendance:

“Schools are there to serve the community,” DeSantis said Monday during an event touting the legislation. “Schools are not there for you to try to go on some ideological joyride at the expense of our kids.”

Holy fuck, Ron! Your entire state is little more than an ideological joyride, at least since you’ve taken office. Your legislature — with few exceptions — does nothing more than craft more rides for your ideological playground. You and your buddies in the legislature directly encouraged this sort of bullshit from your constituents. And now you want to pretend you’re somehow above it all?!

You created this shitstorm, Ron. I guess we can all feel thankful you at least feel bad enough about it to show up with a tarp, even though pretty much everything is already covered in feces. But you should be fine moving forward. I would assume the legislators on your side of the aisle that approved this bill have used up whatever last vestiges of shame they contained. This isn’t a sign of hope. It’s just the last plateau before everything resumes its usual downhill course.