The Media Research Center’s DeSantis Defense Brigade got to help promote the MRC’s enthusiasm for library book bans and restrictions. Curtis Houck complained in a May 24 post:
Tuesday’s CBS Mornings did its part to join into the liberal media’s latest piece of fake news about Florida meant to impale conservative policies and Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) by insisting a poem from far-left poet laureate Amanda Gorman was “bann[ed]” from a Florida school.
With a chyron reading “Florida Book Banning Controversy” (and one in a tease having read “Amanda Gorman’s Poem Banned”), featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers began:
Let’s begin with the ongoing controversy over book banning in schools, this time involving Amanda Gorman, the first national youth poet laureate. A grade school in South Florida restricted access to Gorman’s acclaimed poem, The Hill We Climb after one parent filed a complaint.
Adding the poem was written for “President Biden’s inauguration in 2021,” he then queued up an excerpt from Gorman talking about the need to “repair” America from its “past” and “victory” will be based in a “promise.”
[…]Only after he added that Gorman said “she was ‘gutted’” by the supposed ban did CBS have Duthier reveal how a ban couldn’t be any further from the truth: “The school district says, no literature has been banned or removed, but it determined that The Hill We Climb is better suited for middle school students and was shelved in the middle school section of the media center.”
Houck also complained that Duthiers repeated “spin from the far-left, pro-LGBTQ group the Florida Freedom to Read Project that framed the parent who raised concerns as a kook,” but he failed to refute the group’s claims that the parent ludicrously attacked the poem as being filed with “hate message” and falsely claimed it was written by Oprah Winfrey. It has since been revealed that the parent never bothered to read the full poem, she’s so far-right that she has attended Proud Boys rallies and promoted the virulently anti-Semitic “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” online.
Despite all that, the MRC continued to defend restrictions on the poem, now claiming it was done for “vocabulary” reasons, even though that was not in the parent’s complaint. It was Alex Christy’s turn to grouse in a May 27 post:
The latest bit of fake news to come out of Florida was that teenager Amanda Gorman’s 2020 Inauguration poem was banned from a school library when the reality was it was moved to the middle school section for “vocabulary” reasons. Not that MSNBC Deadline: White House host Nicolle Wallace cared. She teamed up with twice failed Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee and election denier Stacey Abrams and PoliticsNation host Al Sharpton on Friday to decry the fact that Republicans have not denounced a story that doesn’t exist.
During their conversation, Wallace mourned to Abrams, “But to take a poet and a poem that should be held up across partisan lines and demonize the piece itself and the creator of it, I mean understand from reporting this week it was one parent that complained, but I have not seen one Republican defend Amanda Gorman or her poem.”
[…]It is true there was a single parent that wanted the poem removed completely, but clearly that request went nowhere so talk of “tyrants” is hyperbolic. Nevertheless, Sharpton responded, “what happens is that we lose a sense of what we are really living through and evolving from and going through. You cannot deal with fruits without dealing with the roots that it came from.”
If Wallace wants to have a conversation on the vocabulary levels of elementary versus middle school students, she can, but that would be rather boring and wouldn’t allow her to demand Republicans denounce Republican-passed legislation.
Christy failed to mention the parent’s record of hate and extremism or that vocabulary was not part of her complaint.
Christy returned for a June 1 post whining that DeSantis was busted for making a dubious claim about book bans in his state, laboring hard to reframe what he said to justify attacking the fact-checker:
After launching his presidential campaign on Twitter Spaces, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was condemned by PolitiFact for his assertion that Florida has not banned any books. That summary did not give DeSantis a rating for his claims, but on Wednesday PolitiFact returned to the claim and rated it “false.” Yet, the article itself suggests that a “false” rating is overzealous and is ultimately based on a straw man.
The exact quotation authors Matthew Crowley and Amy Sherman single out is “There’s not been a single book banned in the state of Florida. You can go buy or you can use whatever book you want.”
DeSantis was clearly talking about literal book bans, not whether this book or that book is available in a school library.
Crowley and Sherman then go onto provide more DeSantis quotes about age appropriate books in schools, “Parents have flagged books in schools that, for example, teach middle school kids how to use sex apps that provide graphic depictions of sex acts and sex toys for people as young as fifth grade.”
For the authors this means “DeSantis’ claim that no book has been banned in Florida goes too far. Florida districts have removed some books entirely while restricting others to certain grades or requiring students to get parental permission to see them.”
This isn’t a fact-check of the claim PolitiFact purports to be checking. DeSantis claimed that you can go out and buy any book your heart desires, which is true. Crowley and Sherman are checking a straw man.
[…]Again, DeSantis was speaking very narrowly about a literal book ban, not just in the context of schools. Nevertheless, the authors then go on to cite the American Library Association’s definition that a ban is “the removal of a book based on a person of group’s objection” as authoritative and that “experts we spoke to” agree.
Houck returned to complain that Gorman was continued to allow to discuss how her poem was treated in Florida in a June 8 post:
Based on how the second hour of Wednesday’s CBS Mornings went, they showed they’re not interested in earning the trust of conservatives as they dedicate segments to far-left authors Amanda Gorman and Ibram X. Kendi to cry homophobia, transphobia, and racism over parents in Florida and other conservative locales wanting a role in the books and curriculum in the education system.
Co-host and Democratic donor Gayle King was ebullient with this hour of wokeness, gushing first over Gorman in a tease that she’d be speaking out after “her inaugural poem was restricted by a Florida school following a parent’s complaint,” another chapter in the “growing trend…of limiting access to books that deal with racism and other issues.”
In a second tease, King lamented Gorman’s work being “restricted,” adding the show would ask her “about the rise of book banning”. Gorman led off the second hour with King engaging in more disinformation, again referring to the rise in “banning books.”
Gorman’s case wasn’t any sort of ban, so all uses of “ban” in the segment were comical in nature given the book was assessed to be better tagged for middle schoolers and could be requested by students in the library’s media center.
Note Houck’s wildly euphemistic framing of the treatment of Gorman’s poem as having merely been “assessed to be better tagged.” Houck also failed to mention the extremism of the parent who wanted the poem banned or that she never even read the poem, and he also failed to explain how, exactly, Gorman is “far-left.”