The former host of ‘Reading Rainbow’ used to encourage kids to read books. Now he’s telling adults not to ban them

Salamendacious@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 1113 points – The former host of ‘Reading Rainbow’ used to encourage kids to read books. Now he’s telling adults not to ban them | CNN
cnn.com

CNN —

As the National Book Awards came to a close on Wednesday, finalists for the prestigious literary prizes took the stage in New York to speak about the Israel-Hamas war, with others at the ceremony also choosing to address banned books.

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Interesting article organisation. Tease LeVar Burton, but don't introduce him until the second section.

Also, his name is LeVar Burton, and the man has done a lot of things.

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lol at not even a sly reference to his most famous role. it was amazing to watch LeVar Burton go from kid's show reading advocate to sci-fi hero. dude's a national treasure.

And can I just add... DAMN he's aged well. That beard is on point.

Ngl how fabulous he looks is the first thing I noticed about the post.

Who does CNN think their target demographic is with that headline? If you're reading CNN, you remember Reading Rainbow, and if you remember Reading Rainbow, YOU PUT SOME RESPEK ON LEVAR BURTON'S GATDAMN NAME.

People who don't read books want them banned!

Pages 11-12

LeVar Burton is a national treasure, his podcast is amazing.

https://www.levarburtonpodcast.com/

Basically Reading Rainbow for adults.

Nice to see short fiction making a bit of a comeback. Shame all this MAGA stuff didn't bring back the best thing about the 50s: short format and serial fiction periodicals.

Some of the short fiction magazines that still exist have had to stop accepting submissions from unknown authors. The month chat gpt was released they saw a 10x increase in submissions.

Amazon only accepts 500 book submissions per author now. Per day.

That's just bonkers. I'm sure the 99 cent shovelware ebook market is absolutely flooded.

I just can't believe there's that many people who can read that many books in the world.

Like, I can read a few books a year. Not 500 a day! If everybody wrote 500 books a day we would have like billions of books written per year.

They literally cost nothing to produce and the authors get pennies on the dollar, they didn't have to sell very many copies to make money.

I use SCP writings to replace the short form horror texts

Some of those are really good!

Yeah there's some really great and really terrible one lol. I like to listen to The Exploring Series on YouTube, he covers them really well.

How sad that it's come to this. On the other hand, maybe if Mr. Rogers was still around, we'd have someone to talk to Republicans about kindness.

Republicans have tried demonizing him as woke trying to indoctrinate our children. So unfortunately unlikely.

Demonizing probably the nicest man in history is a good indicator that you're the villain.

The irony is, he is woke. Dude was literally Kunta Kinte.

Fred Rogers is the guy this particular thread of the post is referring to. He would have made an interesting casting choice for Kunta Kinte.

Though it could be argued Mr. Rogers was woke. That would, however, make it hard to argue woke is a bad thing.

that’s because “wokeism” has become a right wing dogwhistle for basically ‘anything that forces us to confront our shitty and outdated ideas’.

They did the same thing with "social justice" before that and "political correctness" before that. Words don't mean the same thing to conservatives.

Whether woke is good or bad depends entirely on how it's defined. I generally see it as an antithesis to ignorance. So a combination of both educated and rational thinking.

Sometimes it describes things that are educated and irrational thinking, which is ironically what the right does a lot. Basically fear mongering.

Then you just use the two interchangeably to make it sound like rational observations are radical.

Well, your first definition is the original one. The second one is the disingenuous one conservatives use. They did the same thing with "social justice" and "political correctness". Conservatives never come up with anything or good, they just ruin shit.

Oh I know. But even then they're intentionally inconsistent so the good and bad gets mixed in together.

"some people suck". That is the unfortunate truth of any society. But all my examples started as good things. Shitty people stirred shit into them. It has to be said that people who actively fight progressive movements are assholes. Any history book can tell you that, if they don't burn it first.

They would call him too woke.

They wouldn't listen to him, and would call Mr. Rogers woke trash. The current Republican Party and its supporters are a hot mess.

Depending on how you define “modern” Fox News did call him evil in 2007.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fox-fred-rogers-evil/

There is also that whacko on Newsmax that calls the Muppets Sesame Street a bunch of evil communists.

This is him when he was on Fox but he has ranted about wanting to debate that well known commie Big Bird a couple times while on Newsmax.

https://youtu.be/LWFCja7MTPI?si=SstDGuWFht9N4fLn

To be clear: this man wants to debate a fictional character on a beloved children's TV show and Fox and Newsmax continued to employ him.

I did not know about this one.

How far gone does one have to be that saying this on TV is not only okay, but encouraged?

Anyone else feel like the country would be better off if more adults read books too? Only half joking...

I think it would depend on the books.

I think it would depend on the books.

Isn't that the whole argument for banning some books and not others?

All I'm saying is I don't think we'd be better off if more people started reading books like the Turner diaries. I'm not making a censorship argument here

Aye, didn't want to accuse you of advocating for censorship. Just a friendly reminder that even the most "dangerous" texts are that way because of context, not content.

Also I was today years old when I learned about The Turner Diaries. Yikes.

There's a book called the collector that had inspired a couple serial rapist/killers. I consider myself a curious person and I truly love learning but there are some books that I would love to see only in libraries and very dusty because I don't know how they add constructively to society.

That's why people need to read a LOT of books. The only thing worse than someone who doesn't read at all is the person that reads like one book a year and let's it define their whole personality.

Who else has a copy of "Mein Kampf" or "My New Order: A Collection of Speeches" on their nightstand.

Right guys?

Like, I get the joke, but yeah, uniroically people should read those and just about everything else they can. That's what being well rounded is, taking in all of the information you can, from all sides, interpreting it, and determining how it fits, or doesn't, with all of the other knowledge you've learned.

I read manga, does that count? lol

Double yes. more people need to believe in the power of friendship and of falling face down into breasts

Oppai ga daisuki desu 😀

edit: damn, tough crowd, guess my joke didn't land lol

I'm gonna hope you mean stuff like Ghost in the Shell and 20th Century Boys and not .... the other kind of manga.

I mean, there’s like dozens of types of mangas (or comics, for that matter), reducing them to two camps isn’t that efficient.

Moms of Liberty: Reading "Rainbow", omg we HAVE to ban that from schools as it has a gay agenda!

Qwack jobs like those need to read the Constitution more instead of reinterpreting their Bible to fit their own agenda.

Shout out to LeVar, a true National Treasure.

If only adults realised the value of actually reading books instead of merely gouging on TV and Internet talking points.

More and more people are reading every year. The latest generation are devouring books.

The old grumpy TV glued generation are dying off and being replaced by book reading activists that care about the future.

More and more people are reading every year. The latest generation are devouring books.

Can you cite a source for this? I say this not to challenge you, but because I really hope it's objectively true.

Oh man

I couldve sworn Levar Burton had died recently.

It was Lance Reddick i was thinking of

Now he has another reason to wish he was Lavar Burton

He also promoted violence against women, but OK.

I imagine you're talking about this and every single member of "Mom's for Liberty" absolutely deserves it.

Gender is irrelevant, it's more the being an absolute shit stain on humanity by being bigoted and wanting to ban books part.

Edit: Here is an article linking to the books banned by Florida since OP is lying saying Florida hasn't banned books.

Agreed. Punching fascists is a noble pursuit. Klanned Karenhood is a fascist group. The math isn't that hard.

The fun part about looking at Breitbart's headlines is you can tell what the free thinkers are thinking about that day.