During last Wednesday’s episode of the ABC sitcom The Conners, the family pushed for exposing neighborhood children to sexually explicit books with the false claim that parents are “banning the classics” from school libraries across the country.
In the episode “Book Bans and Guillotine Hands,” broadcast on Oct. 26, Darlene (Sara Gilbert) erected a small lending library in front of her new house to impress her new neighbors. Her activist daughter, Harris (Emma Kenney), hated the idea because a “human rights” group she follows on Instagram told her that rotten parents are “banning books” in school libraries.
After Darlene tells the family she put up her little library, Harris spoke out.
“Well, that may be the last place people can get books they actually want. I follow this human rights group on Instagram, and the moron who represents us on the school board is trying to ban a bunch of the classics at Mark’s school,” she said.
Family patriarch, Dan (John Goodman) spoke the only line that might be seen as supportive of concerned parents when he replied “I don’t like book banning, but some parents just want to have a say in what their kids are reading.”
Harris raged on about the local school board member who wants certain books banned.
“This idiot wants to ban ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ ‘Catcher in the Rye,’ ‘The Scarlet Letter.’ I spent my whole day going door-to-door to get people to sign a petition to recall this guy,” she snapped.
This is, of course, a misleading characterization of the recent trend of parental scrutiny of what books sit on the shelves at school libraries. Few parents are interested in banning “the classics,” such as “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Catcher in the Rye.” Most parents are looking to stop kids from being exposed to radical transgender and LGBTQ books that feature inappropriate and explicit sexual content.
But Harris wasn’t done pushing her radical politics on neighborhood kids. Claiming she was “saving democracy,” Harris put fliers pushing her politics inside the books in her mother’s lending library, and also stocked the library with explicit books including “Lady Chatterly’s Lover.”
This caused a neighbor to knock on the Conners’ door to ask them to stop pushing their left-wing politics on the neighborhood kids.
The neighbor at the front door complains to Darlene that “now you’re using this library to, well, push your politics on the neighborhood.”
Darlene is taken aback at first. She was unaware of what her loud-mouth daughter had done.
“It’s about you sticking these flyers in the books that you’re putting out. The books that the school board is trying to ban,” the neighbor said.
After Harris admits that she is the one that stuffed the books with the left-wing fliers, Darlene explained “Look, my daughter’s a very passionate person.”
“Look, I understand,” the neighbor replied. “Listen, if you want to make a better first impression with your new neighbors, why don’t you get her under control, get rid of all the fliers and the provocative books? Because of her aggressive, radical agenda, I had to take ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ away from my 9-year-old.”
Naturally, the neighbor’s visit is portrayed as “bigoted” and afterward, Darlene joined her radical daughter on her campaign to push sexually explicit material on the neighbor kids.
The Conner’s then indignantly create a “graveyard of banned books” as a Halloween display in their yard, and prominently in front is a faux tombstone for the graphic gay sex book from 2019, “Gender Queer: A Memoir.” It is not explained how Darlene and Harris think a radical book pushing the gay lifestyle is a “classic” that kids should be forced to see in a school library but it does explain the radical, left-wing politics the show is pushing on its viewers.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston
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