Criticism of Trump Was Removed From Documentary on Public Television; The New York Times, May 23, 2025

 Marc Tracy, The New York Times; Criticism of Trump Was Removed From Documentary on Public Television

[Kip Currier: Another example of anticipatory obedience]

[Excerpt]

"The executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning “American Masters” series insisted on removing a scene critical of President Trump from a documentary about the comic artist Art Spiegelman two weeks before it was set to air nationwide on public television stations.

The filmmakers say it is another example of public media organizations bowing to pressure as the Trump administration tries to defund the sector, while the programmers say their decision was a matter of taste.

Alicia Sams, a producer of “Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse,” said in an interview that approximately two weeks before the movie’s April 15 airdate, she received a call from Michael Kantor, the executive producer of “American Masters,” informing her that roughly 90 seconds featuring a cartoon critical of Trump would need to be excised from the film. The series is produced by the WNET Group, the parent company of several New York public television channels."

As more schools target ‘Maus,’ Art Spiegelman’s fears are deepening; The Washington Post, June 14, 2023

Greg Sargent , The Washington Post; As more schools target ‘Maus,’ Art Spiegelman’s fears are deepening

"What alarms Spiegelman about the targeting of “Maus” on specious grounds, he told me, is that its “fable” form was able to reach a broad audience with a story “about dehumanizing people” and “othering.” Spiegelman suggested those looking to restrict books are seeking to limit school curriculums with their own acts of othering.

“Those others can include Asians, Indigenous Americans, Black people, Muslims — not to mention LGBTQ and beyond,” Spiegelman said. The book-removal frenzy, he noted, is “about squelching what’s supposed to happen in school, which is an education that allows people to become one country that can talk to each other with a base of knowledge.”"

War of words: The fight over banning books; CBS News, Sunday Morning, April 23, 2023

MARTHA TEICHNER, CBS News, Sunday Morning; War of words: The fight over banning books

""Stop it!" said cartoonist Art Spiegelman. "I mean, talk about Orwellian, you know? Calling this organization Moms for Liberty, when it's actually for suppression, is about as basic as you could find in '1984,' which I think is listed as a young adult novel still, and probably has been banned in lots of places."

Spiegelman has been speaking out ever since the McMinn County, Tennessee school board voted unanimously last year to ban "Maus," his Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, citing violence, profanity, and (because of the below, right image) nudity. 

Spiegelman said, "I think it's possible for an adult to say, 'I don't want my kid reading that book in class.' But to forbid the other kids from reading it or taking it out of the library? That's not liberty; that's suppression and authoritarianism."

Spiegelman says: fight back. "Kick out the damn school boards," he said, "and get school boards in that are more nuanced in what they're doing; getting involved in local politics as necessary to try to protect libraries' funding and schools' needs, instead of making it such a low priority.""

PRH, Internet Archive Clash Over ‘Maus’; Publishers Weekly, February 15, 2022

Calvin Reid, Publishers Weekly; PRH, Internet Archive Clash Over ‘Maus’

"However, Lisa Lucas, senior v-p and publisher of Pantheon Schocken, the PRH division which publishes Maus, denies the allegation. In response, Lucas emphatically denied the claim. “That is not true,” she said, framing the issue around copyright concerns rather than consumer demand. “Art Spiegelman has never consented to an e-book of Maus," Lucas said. "Therefore, PRH asked the Internet Archive to remove the PDF and stop pirating Maus because it violates Art Spiegelman’s copyright.”

Although best known for its collection of public domain titles, the Internet Archive also offers a lending library of more than 2 million modern titles “not in the public domain,” Freeland said. IA offers digital lending of these titles under a controversial policy called Controlled Digital Lending, or CDL, in which IA scans the book and lends out a PDF of the title, one copy per lender at a time, much like a physical book.

In June 2020, four publishers, including PRH, filed a lawsuit against the IA charging it with copyright infringement. The case is still working its way through the courts."

Art Spiegelman sees the new ban of his book ‘Maus’ as a ‘red alert’; The Washington Post, January 28, 2022

 Michael Cavna , The Washington Post; Art Spiegelman sees the new ban of his book ‘Maus’ as a ‘red alert’

"Now, though, given the latest roiling debates over which books can be banned from schools and libraries, the author of the seminal graphic memoir “Maus”appreciates his work’s long cultural tail: “I’m grateful the book has a second life as an anti-fascist tool.”

Spiegelman is speaking shortly after learning that a Tennessee school board voted unanimously this month to ban “Maus,” which in 1992 became the first graphic novel to win the Pulitzer Prize. The two-volume comic biography chronicles his family’s Holocaust history through a frame-tale of ‘70s conversations between Spiegelman and his estranged father, all told with anthropomorphic imagery: The Jewish characters are rendered as mice, for instance, and the Nazis are cats...

In the current sociopolitical climate, he views the Tennessee vote as no anomaly. “It’s part of a continuum, and just a harbinger of things to come,” Spiegelman says, adding that “the control of people’s thoughts is essential to all of this.”

As such school votes strategically aim to limit “what people can learn, what they can understand and think about,” he says, there is “at least one part of our political spectrum that seems to be very enthusiastic about” banning books.

“This is a red alert. It’s not just: ‘How dare they deny the Holocaust?’ ” he says with a mock gasp. “They’ll deny anything.”.

Spiegelman, 73, knows well the ways and whims of educational decision-makers. He cites how often “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” has been challenged and banned ever since its 1885 publication. And in 1986 — just a few weeks after book one of “Maus” was published — William Faulkner’s 1930 Southern Gothic novel “As I Lay Dying” enjoyed a regional spike in sales when it was banned by a Kentucky school district."

Art Spiegelman's Maus Banned by Tennessee School Board; CBR, January 26, 2022

NOAH DOMINGUEZ, CBR; Art Spiegelman's Maus Banned by Tennessee School Board

"The McMinn County School board in Tennessee has voted to ban cartoonist Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus from its curriculum.

Originally serialized in Raw from 1980 to 1991, Spiegelman's Maus depicts the cartoonist -- who was born in 1948, shortly after the end of World War II -- interviewing his father, a Polish Jew, about his experiences as a Holocaust survivor. The acclaimed postmodernist graphic novel famously depicts Jews as mice and Germans as cats.

According to The Tennessee Holler, the McMinn County School board voted 10-0 to ban Maus from all of its schools, citing the book's inclusion of words like "God damn" and "naked pictures" of women. Apparently, the school board discussed the possibility of simply redacting words and images it found inappropriate, though ultimately opted to ban the book outright. When reached for comment by The Tennessee Holler, the board claimed that the book being about the Holocaust had nothing to do with why it was banned."

‘Maus’ Author Art Spiegelman: ‘We Are on the Brink of Fascism’; The Daily Beast, November 28, 2021

Sarah Moroz, The Daily Beast; ‘Maus’ Author Art Spiegelman: ‘We Are on the Brink of Fascism’

"“Comics are an art of communication,” Spiegelman said, standing firmly in contrast to so-called “high art.” In the past, “communicating too easily was considered commercial,” he noted, but countered simply: “I think art is anything that gives shape to your thoughts or feelings.”...

“Cartoonists are gone,” Spiegelman said. “Humor has become more and more dangerous… Pictures are dangerous.” Editors fear “different interpretations,” he lamented: “Newspapers want to keep every reader they have—so it’s better to talk to the stupid ones.” He concluded: “Every time someone says something satirical, they get cancelled.”"