{"id":30029,"date":"2019-08-25T23:24:06","date_gmt":"2019-08-26T04:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=30029"},"modified":"2019-08-25T23:24:06","modified_gmt":"2019-08-26T04:24:06","slug":"briefly-villain-of-fahrenheit-451-is-public-hooked-on-pop-culture-not-censorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=30029","title":{"rendered":"Briefly: Villain of \u2018Fahrenheit 451\u2019 is public hooked on pop culture, not censorship"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t say this often enough. Books are banned in Ray Bradbury\u2019s novel, \u201cFahrenheit 451,\u201d but government censorship isn\u2019t the point of the book. (Bradbury himself said so himself<\/a>.) Censorship is merely a plot device to talk about what newer media are doing to the desire to read and understand literature. It was television when he wrote the book, but Bradbury would say the same things about the Internet today. It\u2019s about people not being wanting the burden of having to think \u2014 and of them turning to mindless junk instead of anything worthwhile. It\u2019s about people\u2019s individual choices, not about the dangers of banning books. Bradbury said clearly that the culprit is the people, not the government. Clarisse McClellan\u2019s family were used in the book to contrast thinkers from the rest of society. They weren\u2019t out there fighting censorship. No, they were merely iconoclasts who had the good sense to talk and think about things that mattered, as opposed to almost everybody else \u2014 those who were entranced by the White Clown and his television friends. This book is more relevant than ever before, especially as social media consumes us and changes society for the worse. Please read the book<\/a>. You might need it just as badly as I needed it when I first read it years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can\u2019t say this often enough. Books are banned in Ray Bradbury\u2019s novel, \u201cFahrenheit 451,\u201d but government censorship isn\u2019t the point of the book. (Bradbury himself said so himself.) Censorship is merely a plot device to talk about what newer media are doing to the desire to read and understand literature. It was television when Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[556],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-30029","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-briefly","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-7Ol","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30029"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30030,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30029\/revisions\/30030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}