The Daily Show‘s Michael Kosta interviewed Bruce Friedman, Florida’s “No. 1 Book Banner,” and effectively highlighted how absurd the book-banning movement and its serial banners have become.
Friedman has made the news before with his crusade to ban every book in Florida. Despite admitting to being moved by The Diary of Anne Frank when he read it at age 9, as an adult, he successfully filed a challenge to have Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation and other books about the Holocaust removed from his local Florida school district. He has filed challenges against hundreds of books, including wanting to ban a biography of Harriet Tubman because he claimed it was a “lie” that the Civil War “was all about slavery.” He also wanted to ban a children’s book about Arthur the Aardvark because it discussed the game “Spin the Bottle.” Now, Kosta has set out to further expose the absurdity of Friedman’s book-banning crusade.
Michael Kosta interviews book banner Bruce Friedman
Kosta is a stand-up comedian, which made him the perfect person to interview Friedman. The country needs to understand that book banners like Friedman are not serious people and shouldn’t be reported on as if their “work” is legitimate. Hence, Kosta’s interview on The Daily Show offered the perfect format for him to poke fun at and troll Friedman while also highlighting the ridiculousness of his antics. He starts off the interview by asking how many books Friedman has challenged, to which Friedman responds, “900.”
Kosta responds, “So, let me ask what your qualifications are for determining this.” He goes on to ask if Friedman, perhaps, has a doctorate in literature or a degree in children’s education. However, Friedman does not. When asked why he gets to be the “arbiter,” Friedman goes off on a tangent about books with “blatant sexual activity” and “over-the-top, grotesque, excessive profanity.” In response, Kosta quips, “I [expletive] hate profanity!” Later, Friedman confirms he has a child in the school system. However, he says his child is banned from the public school library. He openly admits that “it doesn’t matter” what books are in the library because his child is banned from it anyway. Kosta questions, “So, you’re doing all this work for all the other kids?”
Later in the interview, Kosta confronts Friedman with some books he has tried to ban. At one point, he hilariously offers a heavily censored description of what a “pornographic book” is. However, none of that content is present in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, despite Friedman’s insistence that she wrote porn. The challenged books get more ridiculous when Kosta gets to a Star Wars children’s book that Friedman wants to ban because a green blob of an alien creature isn’t male or female. During the interview, Kosta tries to keep up the light, comedic tone, but at this point, seemingly breaks character, admitting frustratedly, “I don’t even know what the [expletive] you’re talking about by challenging this.”
Kosta also speaks to parents and librarians about their thoughts on “a random guy named Bruce” dictating what their children can read. They point out the obvious problem: they should be allowed to parent their own children. Librarians also pointed out the steep cost of Friedman’s antics, admitting they’ve spent more “time and resources on Bruce Friedman than any other person in the history of Clay County.” When Kosta tells Friedman that he may be costing the school district $100 per challenge, he responds, “Nothing’s going to stop me.”
The interview perfectly highlights the ridiculousness of serial book banners’ actions. Watching the interview, it’s almost hard to tell if it’s legit or an SNL skit. It doesn’t seem real that a grown man could sit there with a straight face describing his distress over “color blobs” and “Star Wars aliens” in children’s picture books. Yet, it is people like him who conservative politicians like Gov. Ron DeSantis continue empowering with their book-banning legislation. Politicians need to understand that if they pass legislation making book bans and challenges easier, people like Friedman are going to crop up and literally drain their entire school district’s budget on their whopping 900 book complaints each. It’s quite absurd conservatives don’t see the problem of a handful of random people destroying the education system over color blobs, spin the bottle, and aliens.
Published: Dec 9, 2024 12:45 pm