Prerequisite: Irony 101, 212, and previous demonstration of compelling use of irony

A father/daughter team are outraged, outraged!, at a high school near Houston’s choice of assigned reading.  (”It’s just all kinds of filth!”)  The duo want nothing less than the removal of the book from the school altogether.  Let’s listen in:

“If they can’t find a book that uses clean words, they shouldn’t have a book at all…” He [the father] looked through the book and found the following things wrong with the book: discussion of being drunk, smoking cigarettes, violence, “dirty talk,” references to the Bible and using God’s name in vain.

None of which will otherwise be encountered in high school.  The book in question is…wait for it…Fahrenheit 451.  Naturally, the call for the book’s removal occurred during banned books week.  Also: I’m not sure that “looked through” is the same as “read.”
I can’t be too smug about the idiocy of Texans.  Way closer to home, the mother who was denied in her efforts to remove all copies of the Harry Potter books from Gwinnett County (GA) schools had an appeal to the State Board of Education on Tuesday.  The appeal was open to the public and took place about a quarter-mile from my office.  I considered walking over to check out the circus.  I missed out on gems like this:

The stories, she said, encourage children to perform spells and promote Wicca…”When my children are at school, I’m trusting them to the teachers and that school,” Mallory said. “They are my most precious things in the entire world to me. I surely don’t want them indoctrinated into a religion whose practices are evil.”

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Ms. Mallory has not read much of the Potter books.