‘It’s just all kinds of filth’

He’s gone for the irony hat trick…!

Boingboing reports on this article is about a man who has asked his daughter’s school to take Fahrenheit 451 off the curriculum because of its use of “bad language” and (for extra irony points) smoking, amongst other things. The incident is wonderful not least for the fact that he chose to lodge the complaint last week – which just happend to be the American Library’s Banned Books Week as well!

I checked to see whether Fahrenheit 451 had itself been a banned book in the past, but sadly not. Perhaps if he belonged to a religious or ethnic minority he could have claimed the Guinness Book entry for “most ironic attempt at censorship” – a record currently held by Jackson County, Florida for their attempt in 1981 to ban George Orwell’s 1984 due to it being “pro-communist.”

On second thoughts, that’s not actually ironic so much as plain stupid.