Tennessee vs. Spaceman Spiff

 (In which the Blob again books passage from Sportsball World to Bizarre Acid-Trip Real World. You know the drill.)

So the other day I'm reading a blog post from Charles Pierce, an H.L. Mencken of sorts for our utterly mad modern times. And he included an item from the great state of Tennessee, where Davy Crockett was born on a mountaintop and everyone else seems to have crawled fully formed from the primordial ooze.

I say this because it seems the Trumpian creatures running the show there are off on another save-our-children-from-ideas toot, in the standard not-hysterical-at-all manner. They're clearing school library shelves of harmful concepts like Very Hungry Caterpillars (brainchild of the subversive Eric Carle) and Magic Tree Houses (take a bow, Mary Pope Osborne) and Giving Trees (hello there, Shel Silverstein, nice to see you on the book-banners' dartboard again).

Also, Calvin and Hobbes, by that notorious Commie, Bill Watterson.

This is where I drop the gloves and start swingin'.

Calvin and Hobbes, see, is the Blob's all-time favorite comic strip that isn't The Far Side. Back in my sportswriter days, I papered my dumpster of a cubicle with C-and-H strips. Two in particular were my faves.

One had Calvin writing what he called a "fictional autobiography", in which the story of his life was enlivened by the non-fact that he had a flamethrower.

The other was a drawing Calvin made of Martians attacking Indianapolis.

I don't know why either would get Tennesseans so wound up. I mean, isn't Indianapolis one of the Titans' blood enemies?

I guess we can put it down to the fact that certain Tennessee politicos have either had their senses of humor surgically removed, or never had a sense of humor to begin with. Good lord, what a dour bunch of brooding nutjobs. If this were 1692, they'd no doubt be burning poor Watterson at the stake for corrupting Our Children with a mischievous 6-year-old and his stuffed tiger.

Apparently they think exposing them to the admittedly subversive Calvin would put all sorts of unapproved notions in their heads. Why, just look at the little psycho: He hates school, disobeys his parents, torments little girls and has an extremely vivid imagination that regularly gets him sent to the principal's office.

The latter, of course, is the most dangerous of Calvin's subversions. It means he has an active mind that goes where grownups can't follow. Nothing more terrifies the brooding nutjobs, and the politicos who represent them. It's why in certain extremist precincts they're death on Harry Potter, fantasy board games and the musical "Wicked" -- which, after all, is about a witch.

Calvin, on the other hand, only pretends he's A) a rampaging dinosaur; B) Captain Stupendous; and C) Spaceman Spiff.

Who's constantly fighting the hideous space aliens he imagines his teachers, principals and parents to be. In other words, authority figures.

Apparently this means if Our Children are allowed access to Spaceman Spiff, they'll grow up to be Abbie Hoffman. Seriously, that's the reasoning that's going on here.

Which of course is not reasoning at all, but its polar opposite.

Then again, that's me saying this.

Me, who thought the idea of Calvin with a flamethrower was hilarious. 

Best keep me away from your kids. Fair warning.