Today in a tale banned by an idiot:

Sunshine State is just easier to fit on the
sign than peninsular fascist garbage fire.

Remember last year when that peninsular fascist garbage fire known as Florida passed their Don't Say Gay law? They called it the Parental Rights in Education bill, but that's objective nonsense. Anyway, the latest victim of Florida's insane lurch towards into the world of pandering to the dumbest common denominator is William Shakespeare. Ah--you say--but he's dead, what more could possibly happen to him? Ron DeSantis is happening to him, and to all of us, really, but more specifically Florida schools are now cutting Shakespeare.

The Florida GOP basically
operates under the Tarkin doctrine.

Hillsborough County schools are limiting Shakespeare taught in class to excerpts. And not because it's full of gay stuff--it is, but the people who wrote the bill aren't going to know that--but because the Don't Say Gay bill is deliberately broad and everyone is terrified of running afoul of it accidentally. Which I think was the point all along. Why write a clear, easy to understand law when you can write a vague, interpretable law and keep everyone in line through fear? 

There are dick jokes, oral sex jokes and in
A Midsummer Night's Dream, a guy named
Bottom is turned into an ass. I mean, c'mon.

Shakespeare, as you may or may not be aware, contains adult content. It was popular entertainment four hundred years ago and Tudor England was horny as hell. Shakespeare's plays, despite the stolid reputation they acquired from centuries of being forced on students, is full of sexual references and dirty jokes. Sexual references and dirty jokes any decent educator would use to get kids interested in Shakespeare, but instead, they're being cut from the curriculum because some people are afraid that they've make their kids gay. Or something. These people don't exactly have clear objectives. 

It's important we that give kids the tools
they need to look smug when they catch
 a reference to Shakespeare on TV.

Look, I'm not a parent and you couldn't pay me to live in Ron DeSantis's experiment in Orwellian overreach. And obviously I have no idea what's being taught in Florida schools, but I can guarantee you no one was reading Titus Andronicus to kindergartners. Or any Shakespeare for that matter. It's usually a middle or high school subject because they kids are old enough to understand it. And even then it's usually taught as literature, which I actually don't love because it was written to be performed, but whatever, it should be a part of the curriculum somehow. 

And I don't know, I'm just sick of hearing about educators giving in to bullies. And I can't imagine what it must be like to actually live in Florida. It's like what High school teacher Joseph Cool told the Tampa Bay Times: "I think the rest of the nation -- no, the world, is laughing at us." He's not wrong. We are laughing, but it's more of a laugh cry situation, because this hurts people.

Interestingly, Florida and Tudor England have some things in common:
they both ban books, they're both afraid of people who speak Spanish,
and they both seem to think slavery isn't all that bad.