by Joe Foster

My fictional Uncle John asked that I print an open letter to readers of the Telegraph concerning Banned Books Week:

To the blasphemous heathens of Durango,

As the leaves begin to change and folks begin sharpening their rakes, (for leaves and mob justice, one can only hope!) I smile in anticipation, knowing that soon people will begin burning leaves, that seductive scent that reminds me of my own favorite smell: burned books. Of course, in my neighborhood the two are often the same, since my hobby is to slip various and sundry repugnant tomes into my morally rotting neighbors’ leaf piles before they set them ablaze. Oh, the blessed irony of watching my hell-bound neighbors unwittingly burn that devil Shakespeare! And for them to burn Fahrenheit 451 just feels so good it could almost be a sin. My neighbor Bob wonders so stupidly why I laugh so hard when I ask him how hot his fire is.

Sept. 29 - Oct. 6, the entire country celebrates my achievements for the 25th year in a row. Those liberal commie librarians and booksellers (filth-pushers and Nazis, more like) forcing their commie homosexual pagan agenda on the righteous and helpless masses make me spit brimstone! We have to fight with fire and the legalities of the righteous. When I enter the tempestuous halls of libraries or bookstores looking for my daily ration of righteous indignation, I cringe for the souls of those poor children force-fed that pagan Harry Potter trash. Bully for those saints in New Mexico, South Carolina and Iowa that burned it and did it all public-like whilst singing hymns! Burn it or ban it if you don’t like it. And Walter the (cover your eyes) Farting Dog! That book contains the word “fart” or “farting” 24 times! I counted, and it’s true. Well, I actually hired a person that was already going to hell to do it, on account of the tenderness of my soul. Filth, I say! Have you seen this horror A Light in the Attic? As vile and depraved as any book I’ve almost seen. Can you believe it encourages children to break dishes rather than wash them? Ah yes, Mr. Silverstein has been banned in multiple bastions of good taste and American family values across the country … Burn it! And don’t get me started on those poor women, forced to choke down Our Bodies Our Selves… If god wanted you to understand your body he would have made it more understandable! I doubt this Tome of Satan even mentions the real reasons for menstruation … APPLES! Just an excuse to slime bookshelves with more pornography, like that book that was challenged so much last year, more than any other, And Tango Makes Three. A kids’ book about two penguins, two male penguins, raising an innocent baby penguin in some liberal commie zoo? Horrible! A true story, they say, but I say that baby penguin would be better off with no parents at all! It’s anti-family, I say, and I’d know, ’cause I got two.

Please, trust me, America, my morals and taste come directly from other people that have been pointing fingers and frowning for millennia. You really do need my help. Your moral fiber has been so compromised since childhood by the likes of Dr. Seuss and Judy Blume that you truly need my guidance. You think your children should be reading Snow White or Hansel and Gretel? Do you want them to be cannibals? You want them eating apples? The only possible outcome for exposure to such vile filth is that children follow and imitate the behavior of these devilish characters. My dog needed six stitches after I accidentally read the part in Little Red Riding Hood about the woodsman and the wolf when I was a tender 20 years old! Critical thinking is a myth, and you know it.

Please Durango, please America, think before you read, and then just say no. We all know that the world really needs but one book, and the pages and pages of so-called

violence, polygamy, incest and heavenly descriptions of “begetting” are to be considered instructional and metaphorically literal. You don’t get it, but I do, so please, just listen. Thoughts are devils, and obedience is saintly.

– Righteously yours, The Rev. John C. Soulhammer