Art Spiegelman is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus, which tells the story of his family's experiences during the Holocaust. He found himself catapulted into the news cycle decades after Maus was first released when a school board in Tennessee decided to remove the book from their 8th grade curriculum. 

The school board's decision drew widespread condemnation. Spiegelman himself was asked to weigh in, and his thoughtful discussion with New Day hosts John Berman and Brianna Keilar is worth watching in its entirety. 

Spiegelman expressed his "total bafflement" when he first heard the news, and was unsparing in his criticism. However, he also drew a very clear line in that he did not accuse the school board members of being Nazis or antisemitic. Instead, he assessed them as being "daffily myopic" and misguided. Other online commentators were far less measured in their reactions.

It should be noted that Spiegelman read the transcript of the school board meeting minutes himself before commenting on what had happened, and he declined to make unwarranted assumptions about the school board members' intentions. What a fascinatingly unique strategy in our social media-driven era of outrage!

The renewed interest in Maus from the controversy propelled it to the top of the Amazon best seller lists this weekend -- not just for graphic novels, but all books. Setting a good example for fair debate, selling a lot of books, and exposing a new generation of Americans to this important literary work? That's winning all around.

The flip side of Spiegelman's fair and measured critique of the school board that rejected his book is the rant that MSNBC's Joy Reid dropped on her show Friday. 

In her opening monologue on The ReidOut, Reid ominously warned that book burning reminiscent of 1930s Germany or Maoist China is making a “comeback” in the U.S.

As examples, Reid cited censorship efforts during the 20th century like those against J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and complained about conservative members of the "Moral Majority" for seeking to have certain books removed from libraries during the 1980s.

Reid continued, railing against efforts to ban unnamed books as being "bankrolled by conservative organizations and think tanks" and "shaped by political operatives, who are controlling the puppet strings," all with the goal of "riling up White voters" by "selling White grievance and rage" and distracting them from problems like the pandemic.

What she did not do, as Mediaite's Kipp Jones pointed out, is identify "any instances of book-banning in this century." (To be clear, Maus was not banned, just removed from the curriculum as required reading).

Reid's had no trouble bringing the receipts before on other topics, so why not cite some specific examples? Is it because Maus' removal from one curriculum isn't as dramatic of an image as Nazis burning a pile of books? Or because it's easier to just exaggerate and "rile up" the "grievance and rage" of her viewers?

The boy who cried wolf had trouble when a real wolf showed up. The MSNBC host who's now crying Nazi would be wise to heed that lesson.