In a 4–3 vote taken July 10, the Muskego-Norway (Wis.) School Board affirmed the recommendation of a materials-review committee to retain Whoopi Goldberg: Her Journey from Poverty to Mega-Stardom in the Muskego High School library.
Characterizing the book’s contents as “obscene literature” at the board meeting, complainants Richard and Beth Kania, who are the parents of a MHS student, objected to passages that repeat the racial epithets and sexually graphic language Goldberg’s former boyfriend, actor Ted Danson, used during his blackface tribute to her in 1993 at a New York Friars Club roast. James Robert Parish’s 1997 book also details several attempts Goldberg made as a teen to perform abortions on herself.
“These events happened, and they were a part of [Goldberg’s] life,” Parish said in the July 11 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Objecting to the book is objecting to parts of a person.”
Claiming that the book’s language violates the district’s anti-harassment policy, board member Kathy Anderson has convinced other members to schedule a review of book-selection policy for September.
Posted July 17, 2000.