"In English, children are also required to read a book called ‘Slaughterhouse Five.’ This is a book that contains so much profane language, it would make a sailor blush with shame. The ‘f word’ is plastered on almost every other page. The content ranges from naked men and women in cages together so that others can watch them having sex to God telling people that they better not mess with his loser, bum of a son, named Jesus Christ." – Wesley Scroggins, an associate management professor at Missouri State University

The Scandals take: Scroggins wrote a newspaper column that led to the banning of Slaughterhouse-Five and some other evil books in a rural Missouri school district. Um, does this mean that young people there can’t watch cable TV? Or read bestsellers? Or go to high school locker rooms without stuffing wax in their ears—and maybe gagging their mouths? Hmm. I thought Missouri was the “Show Me State.” Great way to celebrate the forthcoming Banned Books Week (September 26-October 3), eh?

The Solomon Scandals itself is decidedly not porn (regardless of a bedroom scene starring Donna Stackelbaum. a D.C. lobbyist who, in satanic pulchritude, is the nearest character to Slaughterhouse-Five’s Montana Wildhack). But just by reproducing dialogue of the kind found in certain newsrooms on deadline, my own novel would make Scroggins’ list. Frighteningly, Scandals was required reading for some freshmen this past spring at George Washington University.