Via Joan Jacobs (who found it via Bob Ballard): The New York Times, “The Elderly Man and the Sea.”

I’m far too inflamed to comment intelligently on this. But suffice it to say, should some bowdlerizing pinhead ever try this with any of my fiction, I’ll show up in his or her classroom wearing nothing but a smile and a wink and perch myself atop a desk, where I’ll river dance and shout vile limericks at the top of my soon-to-be-incarcerated lungs (let things flop where they may).

Why? Because it beats the hell out of some squishy rebuke, that’s why.

You want to know what’s wrong with our educational system? This. This story. This story is what’s wrong with our educational system. A few years back, some friends of mine had to go before a university tribunal to defend their decision to teach a Faulkner short story that contained the word “nigger” — all because some history-challenged student filed a complaint.

I was angry then. But this — well, this just makes me furious.

Newflash, kiddies: college ain’t for hugs. Don’t like to read things you don’t agree with? Stay the fuck home. And to the New York State Department of Education: Shame on you, you sniveling cowards. End of lesson.

See Also: Scott Norvell’s FOXNews column, “Squalling About Pork, Forgetting the Alamo”