Ron DeSantis rejects book rating system pitch

During a campaign stop in South Carolina, Gov. Ron DeSantis rejected one proposal to catalog books and make sure they don’t fall into the wrong hands.

In response to a question in Murrells Inlet, DeSantis said that rating books like movies (G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17) have been since 1968 by the Motion Picture Association of America isn’t necessary.

“You do have this problem with these inappropriate books in the schools. You know, could there, could there be like a rating for some of them? I don’t think that’s necessary because the difference is, like, if there’s a movie advertised, you don’t know what’s in the movie just by watching a 30-second commercial,” DeSantis acknowledged. “So the rating, this is kind of a way to do it.”

However, there are differences between Hollywood movies and literary works, he noted, including the role of school systems in bringing in books he deems inappropriate.

“These books though, don’t, they don’t just show up. These are school administrators that are making the decision to put those in there and any time you do it, in fact, when these books become issues at School Board meetings, parents will come with it, they will read the book and the School Board members will say, ‘Silence. You can’t say that here,'” he said.

The Governor said that issues like this were “not really difficult calls.”

“This is just (because) some people have an agenda,” he said.

The Miami New Times contends that more than 1,400 books have been banned in Florida schools since July 2021. DeSantis, of course, has called the idea that he would ban books a “hoax.”

Book banning has actually come up during his presidential campaign as well.

In June, DeSantis told a campaign crowd in Cedar Rapids removal of work from the National Youth Poet Laureate from a Miami Lakes elementary school had nothing to do with him, but coverage of “the poem ban hoax” nonetheless illustrated “the dishonesty of legacy media outlets.”

“This had nothing to do with me. Nothing to do with the state of Florida. There was a school in Miami-Dade that had a book of poems. I guess the poet was involved with Joe Biden’s inauguration,” DeSantis said.

He was referring to the work by Amanda Gorman being removed from a Miami Lakes Elementary School after a challenge in which the author was misidentified as Oprah Winfrey.

“So I don’t know, but it was a book of poems and they decided that it was more appropriate in the middle school library than in the elementary school library,” DeSantis said regarding “The Hill We Climb,” which was read at President Biden’s inauguration.

“So they just moved the book, you know, to the next library and the media tried to say that somehow that was being banned because something like the state of Florida was doing, I mean, it was a total fabrication and a total hoax.”

The Associated Press reports the literary work is on the “restricted list.” Miami-Dade clarified the book is now part of the “middle grades collection” in a tweet that didn’t mollify critics.

“But it’s a lesson in the dishonesty of legacy media outlets. They want to create narratives to advance their agenda, but they don’t care about the facts and they’re not going to try to inform you of the facts if it conflicts with their agenda,” DeSantis said.