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You know, Hugo, perhaps you’re being under-ambitious. Why wait until they’re university age? Why not go all in and try to indoctrinate them when they’re as young as possible?
Interesting, you’re the second person to say that to me this week. Stavros Grinder also seems to think that the younger we catch them, the better. He offered a few suggestions for books that we might want to consider banning or least controlling access to more tightly so only age appropriate readers can access them. For example, I’ll definitely be banning 50 Tall Buildings Of The World To Color the second I become First-Best-Guy.
You know that’s a coloring book, Hugo? What on earth could be offensive about that?
The book has to be banned, Troy, it’s pure and utter filth.
I repeat, it’s a coloring book, Hugo. A skyscrapers themed coloring book. What possible reason could there be for banning it?
Are you some kind of devil-worshipping pervert, Troy. Here, just look at this one, it’s disgusting.
That’s the Pepino in Spot’s capital, Keynsham. That’s K-E-Y-N-S-H-A-M, Keynsham. What on earth is disgusting about that?
Carstairs, bring me my crayons. CARSTAIRS, where are you man? MY CRAYONS. NOW!
So, sorry sir, I had to gather them up from your desk and one of them fell behind your drinks cabinet and I just couldn’t reach it.
Tell me it’s not the pink one, Carstairs.
No, sir, I think it was the periwinkle or, possibly, the duck egg blue. The pink one’s here.
Good, give me. Now go.
Of course, sir.
Wait a moment, Troy, I just need to quickly do this to prove my point.
No hurry, Hugo, take your time.
Dammit, man, you’ve made me color outside of the line. Oh, nothing I can do about that now, but look, Troy, see, doesn’t this make things look very different?
Well, yes, it does, but that’s because you’ve colored in the Pepino using your pink crayon. It’s a dark, somewhat metallic blue in real life.
I don’t care what it’s like in real life, in my coloring book it’s pink and it looks just like a huge, monster-sized wang. It’s filth, Troy, the devil’s work. Would you be happy for your children to color this in?
Yes, of course I would, Hugo. They wouldn’t ever dream of coloring it pink. Even my four-year-old knows the Pepino is blue.
Are you suggesting your child is somehow smarter than me, Troy? I don’t recall your brat starring in all four seasons of Sheep Pit as one of the brilliant, successful and ever so good-looking entrepreneurs. Anyway, forget your mentally-challenged children and focus on the dangers such books present to society. We need to be strong and be prepared to ban all of the evil books that threaten to destroy our civilization.
Okay, so along with 50 Tall Buildings Of The World To Color, what other books should we be banning?
Anything and everything that is either smutty or doesn’t align with our beliefs. By controlling what people read, we can control what they think, and the younger they are when we start, the better.
So, how about the Hummock We Scale, Monty Havajack’s favorite poem? I read that was banned by some schools in Senyor Oldenburg this week. The underlying message is one of love, equality and unity, so it’s hard to understand what those banning it could have found so offensive. Other than Havajack liking it and the fact that it was written by a young plaid woman.
Surely I don’t need to repeat my views on unity and equality among the losers, Troy? But love, that’s a complex subject all in itself. Don’t educators have a responsibility to ensure that such deep and sensitive topics are introduced to our young people at a suitable age?
So how do we decide the right age, then? One of your opponents for the National Party ticket, Happenstance Blagger, wanted to raise the voting age to 25-years-old. Should people be 25-years-old before they can read a sex scene in a book, Hugo?
It depends how sexy the scene is, Troy, obviously.
How sexy? How on earth do we measure that?
That’s easy, Grinder and I have come up with a quite ingenious sexiness scale. For example, in Harry and Sally Go To Sunday School, that highly-charged scene where Mrs Oldywoldy explains how the virgin birth happened and Sally sits at her desk and crosses her legs would probably be a 68 or, perhaps a 69. So, suitable for more advanced 14-year-olds, but for safety’s sake, probably best that we restrict it to 16-year-olds and up. However, what about the scene in Harry and Sally Go To The Farm, where Sally rides a donkey? That’s clearly a 91, though Stavros argued it was more like a 92. Regardless, how can anyone argue that the complex sexual themes and questions raised by that degenerate behavior are suitable for anyone under 21 years of age? In fact, the late Father Brennan believed the book should be banned outright and the author, Batty Bargewool, burned at the stake for heresy.
That certainly sounds like the late Father Brennan.
For once, I can’t agree with him, though. To me, Batty looks like she has the perfect skillset to be Director of the Federal Bureau of Idiocracy.
I’ll take your word for it. But, regarding Sally riding the donkey. Don’t you think…oh, it’s no good, as much as I want to question your understanding of that part of the story, I just don’t think I’m emotionally equipped for that conversation. Still, haven’t you ever thought, Hugo, that maybe the problems don’t lie in the books, but rather they lie in the wonky minds of those who want to ban the books?
No, Troy, I haven’t.
And you don’t think this all seems a bit puritanical?
If the universe wanted us to be happy…no, no, no, what am I saying…I mean if God wanted us to be happy, he wouldn’t have given us the ability to cry. So no, I don’t think it’s a bit puritanical.
We can also cry tears of joy, you know? I remember seeing that video of you giving the Commencement Address to Hovel University’s class of 4160. When you sat down afterwards and accidentally released the brake of Provost Harlibean’s wheelchair, causing him to roll off the front of the stage and land head-first in the front row. You were laughing so hard, the tears were literally streaming down your face.
No, really, Troy, you misunderstood, those were tears of shame at being the cause of Harlibean’s hilarious misfortune. Honestly they were, I felt like a real-life Mr Legumbre.
So, you were expressing empathy for his situation when you dropped yourself onto the stage and then did what looked like an exaggerated impersonation of Harlibean struggling to pull himself back into his wheelchair? Rather than actually helping him back into his wheelchair.
You weren’t there, so you don’t how it happened in real time. Anyway, you should stop getting caught up in the belief that book banning is just about sexual content. Clearly it’s a source of great distress for our friends and supporters on the religious right, and we want to do all we can to make them happy. If we do that, they’ll do all they can to make us happy. However, once it becomes normal to ban books from circulation, we can concentrate on banning any kind of book that we don’t like the look of. It’s the natural expansion of taking greater control of the education of our young people.
I’m guessing that Scroteus Dribble’s newly released unofficial biography of you, Hugo Sensationist: The Story of the Scuzziest Barsteward Politician and Businessman Ever, might just be one of those books you want to ban.
Don’t you ever mention Dribble’s name under this roof, Troy. I swear, he’ll rot in prison for the rest of his days once the losers elect me First-Best-Guy. And that’s if he’s lucky.
Well, based on all of what you’ve told me and how you intend to treat the losers as a whole, he may be one of the luckier ones. At least he’ll have a roof over his head and won’t have to worry about where his next meal is coming from.