Banned in Boston
The first book to be banned in Boston was The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption, written in 1650 by William Pynchon (1590-1662), a distant ancestor of Thomas Pynchon and the first European settler of Springfield, MA. In the book, Pynchon argued that the price of atonement was obedience, rather than punishment and suffering. This scandalized the Puritan establishment. The book was burned on the Common. Finding himself unwelcome in the colony, Pynchon returned to England in 1652, where he died some ten years later.
In the late 19th century, Anthony Comstock began a campaign to suppress vice that found fertile ground in Boston.[1] A group of private Bostonians formed the New England Watch and Ward Society that took an active role in censoring books, plays, movies and other media that it deemed obscene. A list of things banned in Boston includes the following:
Gargantua et Pantagruel, by Francois Rabelais;
Leaves of Grass, by Walt Witman;
All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque;
Point Counter Point, by Aldous Huxley;
Oil! By Upton Sinclair;
Manhattan Transfer, by John Dos Passos;[2]
Wake Up Little Susie, by The Everly Brothers;
Jews without Money, by Michael Gold;
Waiting for Lefty, by Clifford Odets; and,
A five-dollar bill issued by the U.S. Treasury in its 1896 ‘Educational’ series.
The New England Watch and Ward Society no longer exists. In 1957, its name was changed to the New England Citizens Crime Commission, and in 1967 to the Massachusetts Council on Crime and Correction. In 1975, it merged with another entity to form Community Resources for Justice, a group that promotes prison reform and rights for formerly incarcerated people.
But its spirit lives on in the Massachusetts legislature and the Massachusetts District Attorney’s office.
As in New York, the Massachusetts DA issues guidance regarding the rights of residents of manufactured housing communities. The applicable guidance was recently updated. It made this reader glad that he owns parks in New York. Inter alia, the new document clarifies the following about applicable law. These are in addition to provisions that track burdensome aspects of New York law already familiar to Dirtlease readership:
- Every park owner must offer every park resident a five-year lease;
- Although there is no state-wide rent control, several municipalities have rent control statutes. Park owners are prohibited from charging new residents more than existing residents;
- Park owners may not deny applicants for residence due to their credit score;
- Park owners may not prohibit residents’ keeping unregistered cars in their lots;
- If residents decline to exercise their right to purchase a park, their right of first refusal is retained with respect to subsequent third-party offers to buy, subject to certain de minimis carve-outs;
- When a park owner informs government agencies of their intent to sell their park, they must include a copy of the notice sent to each resident with this disclosure;
- After a resident has been evicted, he or she retains the right to sell his or her home in place for 120 days post eviction. During this time, the park owner may not move the home or interfere with utility hookups. The resident is liable for lot rent during this period. If lot rent is not paid, the park owner may place a lien on the home. However, if a park owner purchases a resident’s home during the 120-day period at a price substantially below the fair market value thereof, the sale creates a rebuttable presumption that the transaction was unfair or deceptive and in violation of applicable state consumer protection statutes;
- If a park owner chooses to change the use of his or her park, he or she must give residents two years’ notice. The park owner must take a survey of all parks within a 100 mile radius to determine whether any of these parks have empty lots. The park owner then must either pay park residents’ relocation costs or, if the resident chooses, buy their homes from them at the homes’ appraised value; and,
- If residents feel that the owner of their park is not providing adequate services, they can bring a dispute to, inter alios, the local rent control board, the local Council on Aging and State Office of Elder Affairs, the Department of Environmental Protection, the Attorney General’s Office, the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, the Manufactured Homes Commission, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, or the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. If none of those governmental agencies provide an adequate remedy, residents are entitled under state law to use self-help by withholding a portion of their rent equal to the value of the services they deem, at their discretion, to be lacking.
There is more, but after I read the self-help remedy, my head began to hurt and my vision blurred. ‘Thank G-d I own parks in New York’, I thought. ‘I only have to deal with the fallout from the Nakba law and the idiots at HCR’.[3]
In 1926, the New England Watch and Ward Society banned a story in H.L. Mencken’s magazine, The American Mercury. Mencken travelled to Boston and sold a copy of the magazine to an officer of the society on the Common. Mencken was arrested and put on trial. The obscenity charges were dismissed, and Mencken then sued the society successfully for restraint of trade. Some of Mencken’s views have not aged gracefully. He was an isolationist in both world wars and he was not shy about voicing unpopular views, but he was usually, well, right. He defined Puritanism as ‘the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy’. The Massachusetts legislature and AG have extended that. They are haunted by the fear that someone, somewhere, might be running a mobile home park where the potholes are filled, lot rent is paid on time, kids are safe, and old ladies can sit on their porch and zap bugs without being assaulted by pitbulls, loud music and junkies driving unregistered cars through the streets at fifty miles per hour.
[1] Comstock was the driving force behind the passage of the so-called Comstock Act, codified in Title 18 of the United States Code, that criminalizes the shipment of certain items considered obscene in interstate commerce. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, there is a risk that it could be used by the federal government to restrict the shipment of drugs used in abortion procedures through the mail.
[2] Hemingway called Dos Passos ‘A one-eyed bastard’. Dos Passos had one eye and his parents were not married to each other.
[3] In this regard, Massachusetts is like the Westies. The Westies were an Irish-American organized crime group that operated out of Hell’s Kitchen during the second half of the Twentieth Century. During this time, they clashed with the Italian Mafia. The Italians disliked the Westies because they thought that they were too violent.