Author Judy Blume calls Ron DeSantis "drunk with power"

On Tuesday in New York City, some crybaby was indicted for falsifying business records to hide his short-lasting adultery with a pornstar. And Judy Blume — revered by millions of girls for her 1970 book, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret — gave a speech at Variety‘s Power of Women luncheon. Her subject was censorship. Her target? Florida’s high-heeled authoritarian, Ron DeSantis.

She started vividly.

“I live in Key West — even though we like to pretend it’s not in Florida — we have the same governor. A governor who wants to control everything, starting with what kids can think, what they can know, what they can question, what they can learn, and now even what they can talk about. We have a legislator who’s trying to put through a bill preventing girls in elementary school from talking about periods… Good luck there.”

Good luck there, indeed. Politicians refuse to understand — through stupidity or political cynicism — that while the law makes things illegal, it often does not stop behaviors. Women who want an abortion will get an abortion. And tweens and teens will talk about sex, periods, and everything else their changing bodies and budding attractions bring to mind.

This is not a mystery. Every politician was once a child who went through puberty. Do they not remember their youthful conversations with their peers — and for the lucky ones, with their parents and other caring adults?

Blume points out a reason for their memory loss and the ever-increasing scope of these nasty people’s venom.

“Lawmakers, drunk with power, with a need to control everything. Sure it’s still sexuality, but it’s gender, it’s LGBTQ+, it’s racism, it’s history itself that’s under fire.”

Blume is all too aware of censorship. Her seminal book — with its frank discussion of menstruation, breasts, boyfriends, and religious questioning — caused outrage among the thin-skinned religious zealots and sanctimonious moralists. As she explained,

“Let me take you back to the 1980s when the censors crawled out of the woodwork overnight, following the presidential election. And what a time that was —  with parents rushing into [their] children’s schools waving a book saying, ‘I demand that you get rid of this book!’

Most of the time these parents had never even read the book (maybe they had pages turned down). But because in many places schools and libraries didn’t have their policies in place, the books were removed, sometimes quietly, sometimes not.”

Her point that parental protests sprang from ignorance is still relevant. Worse, conservative politicians have now adopted that ignorance. They want to ban books they have never read. Even if you do read the dirty bits (my copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover, The Tropic of Cancer, and Fanny Hill had their spines broken in specific places), you will not get the full flavor of the complete work.

Imagine judging the Bible based solely on reading Lot’s rape by his daughters, resulting in their pregnancies — or Judah having sex with his daughter-in-law, Tamar for the price of a goat because he mistook her for a prostitute?

Blume points out that the 1980s peckinsniffs had the same unrealistic view of the world as they do now.

“With me, it was sexuality, and specifically puberty – which to some people was a very dirty word. It wasn’t something the censors wanted to talk about with their kids. You know — if they don’t read about it, they won’t know about it, and if they don’t know about it, it will never happen to them… guess what.

There are things you cannot sweep under the rug. Kids grow up. They can do so ignorant and suffer all the hardships that ignorance engenders. Or they can read to find the information enabling them to make good decisions. Equally importantly, they can understand they are not alone, which lightens what can be a crushing load. It takes sadism to commit a confused child to misery because you are squeamish or religiously addled.

Blume understood the burden of thinking you are alone. And the joy of discovering you are not. She went on to say,

“So when I first came under attack, I felt alone. I felt scared. I mean this was America, right? I thought we were a country who celebrated our intellectual freedom. So after a while, I was absolutely thrilled to find NCAC [National Coalition Against Censorship], or maybe they found me. I can’t remember but either way, it was a life changer. And it turned out that I was not alone.”

Politics is often cloaked in generalities — for instance, “Parental Rights.” It has to be because conservatives cannot risk people considering the effects of their policies on actual kids. If the average citizen did, they would demand prosecutors charge these power-mad monsters with child abuse.

This is another reason red state governments want to hamstring DAs. But that’s a subject for another time.