I thought it would be fun to write about Utah's Davis School District banning the King James Bible from elementary and middle school libraries for "violence and vulgarity," but...nah, our long national orgy of anti-intellectualism is gettin' me down, man. (Intellectuals read everything; non-readers are obsessed with the power of books to "corrupt" weaker, more impressionable minds than their own. Yipes.)

"Question authority" doesn't mean "reject every idea or argument you don't understand." (And just because the people in your media bubble agree with you is no guarantee that you've understood anything.) Of course it's hard to take advice like this seriously -- who wants to admit that they just don't get it? No, complex questions surely have simple answers, right? (Not to mention that setting up a false choice between merit and morality means that whichever side you pick, you lose.)

Honestly, it'd be more fun to just go on writing literary criticism -- to reflect on how, say, Philip Larkin's 1949 sonnet, "Neurotics" is so shockingly out of step with our times, and how much more strongly an impression it makes because of it:

The mind, it's said, is free:
But not your minds. They, rusted stiff, admit
Only what will accuse or horrify,
Like slot-machines only bent pennies fit.

What could be more gratingly arrogant than a healthy person upbraiding his sick neighbors?