Virginia GOP gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin put out a 60-second ad yesterday of a Very Concerned Mother who somberly recounts how her son showed her his school reading material, and how her “heart sunk” because the reading was “some of the most explicit material you can imagine.”Lawmakers’ “faces turned bright red” upon reading the material when the mother, Laura Murphy, brought it to them, she claims.
Curiously enough, the ad never mentions which book it was or how old Murphy’s son was at the time.
It turns out the book was Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel “Beloved,” according to the Washington Post’s 2013 report on Murphy’s plight. It was assigned to her son in his AP English class when he was a high school senior, and Murphy attempted to get the book banned.
The student told the Post at the time that the book had given him nightmares because it was “disgusting and gross” and “hard for me to handle.” He is now an associate general counsel for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
When I took AP English we read “Crime and Punishment”, “Darkness at Noon”, “Catch-22” “Brave New World” among others that were pretty” hard to handle.” But we were college bound high school students taking a college level course so we didn’t go crying to mommy that it was all gross and upsetting.
My parents were arch conservatives. But they weren’t ignorant cretins so they would have told me to read the books and learn something. Which I did.
These right wing parents are out there screaming “fuck Joe Biden” and worshipping a man who brags that he grabs women by the pussy but they are worried about dear little Johnnie having to read great literature that they find “gross and upsetting.” Jesus H. Christ.