The Second Lady has announced her second annual summer reading challenge, and I think that's wonderful. Reading is fundamental. Knowledge is power. The pen is mightier than the sword. We have a lot of swords right now, so let's hope the pens are keeping up.
The administration she represents has, in the same calendar year, worked to remove books from school libraries, defund programs that put books into the hands of children, and generally treated the local library as a suspicious character in need of federal supervision. So naturally the next move is to ask the children to read more. It's the logical sequence: first you thin the herd, then you hold a race.
I want to be generous here. Maybe the reading challenge and the book bans simply haven't been introduced to each other. Washington is a big town. You could go months without bumping into the policy you're contradicting. The left hand bans the book; the right hand assigns it for summer. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, but one of them is definitely getting a gold star sticker.
Or perhaps the challenge is more specific than it appears. “Summer Reading Challenge” — notice the word challenge. They may mean it literally. Finding a book the administration hasn't flagged, defunded, or relocated to a restricted shelf is, in fact, a challenge. In which case: well designed. The obstacle course is the event.
The really elegant part is the timing. Summer. When schools are closed. When the school libraries where books were removed are locked. When the public libraries that lost federal grants are cutting hours. You have to admire the commitment to degree of difficulty. They didn't just set the bar — they also quietly removed the bar, and now they'd like to see you jump.