For four years the corporate media talked about “Trump getting impeached,” “The Russians won the election for Trump,” “We need to resist Trump and vote for Biden.” Now that former President Donald Trump is no longer in office, the corporate practically has nothing to talk about. It has tried to gin up views by talking about how Trump tried to overturn the presidential election results, or tried to stage a coup amid the January 6th events at the Capitol Building, but those stories have too run their course.
Now the corporate media is on a so-called “book banning scandal.” Apparently, school districts do not want certain books in their curricula, and major publishing houses like Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Harper Collins, et al. are throwing a b*tch fit about it. If they can’t force school systems to purchase their books then it could disrupt their business models. They have engaged the corporate media to lobby on their behalfs, not because due to business, but due to “book banning.”
Joy Behar of “The View” recently added a book to her banned book club published by Penguin Random House (“Random House”) under the guise of promoting “banned books.” However, it appears to be a veiled attempt to help to help Random House – the world’s largest publishing house – sell more books. It begs the question, “Is this ‘business and public relations’ or ‘book banning?'”
Joy Behar: Today is Friday, so we have to talk about our banned book from Joy’s banned book club. Today we are featuring Ta-nehisi Coates’ book, “Between the World and Me.” This book was a letter to his then teenage son about his perception of the realities associated with being Black in the United States. They got very upset in South Carolina because the book talks about systemic racism, and the students said that they were uncomfortable and they complained that the [lenses] made them ashamed the white and were successful in blocking the section on systemic racism entirely. A couple of people are uncomfortable and that’s the end of the book … And you all are gonna get a copy of the book.
The corporate media is great at repeating narratives ad nauseum until the narrative becomes the truth. “A couple of people were uncomfortable” and that’s why the book was taken out of the curriculum. Later on in the episode Sunny Hostin discusses how “discomfort” is important and so on and so forth. However, this narrative is so simple that it appears laughable to alert readers.
That said, Shock Exchange: How Inner-City Kids From Brooklyn Predicted the Great Recession and the Pain Ahead is a book written by Ralph W. Baker, Jr. to his son Ralph Baker III. Shock Exchange is the greatest book ever written – bar none – and Random House and the entire book industry knows it. Shock Exchange was written and published by Blacks, yet it has gotten no attention from the corporate media. Shock Exchange is also the most-banned book in the country – excluded from every school curriculum in the country. Only a library at a high school in Ferguson, Mo. includes the book. To add insult to injury, Pen America lied to the public by saying Tricks by Ellen Hopkins was the most-banned book in the U.S.
It all begs the question, “If Shock Exchange is the most-banned book in the country then why is Joy Behar and “The View” falling all over themselves to promote a book by Random House that had previously been featured on “The View” and every other major news outlet for the past decade. Why is Behar and “The View” so afraid of Shock Exchange?
