Why Ban Books?

This is part of an e-mail I sent to an English professor I had in the Spring of 2010. It's still applicable to this month so I suppose I'll post it here:

"...while visiting the school library, I noticed that they had a kind of "exhibit" (if you can call it that) of banned books. Some of them were kind of surprising, such as:

The Diary of Anne Frank (for being "Pornographic and Sexually Offensive," read this as a kid)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Ronald Dahl
Charlotte's Web by E.B. White (which I also read as a kid)
Little Red Riding Hood
and
Winnie the Pooh (yeah, I know. Wow.)

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised considering they took Wiley Coyote and Roadrunner off the air for being "too violent" (yeah, and I'm allergic to BS). I vaguely remember Anne Frank including early pubescent experiences, and War of the Worlds (another banned book) containing some violence that kids might find a little disturbing. But why the heck would these books be banned in the US of all places? It's almost as if the "Freedom of Speech" mantra is illusory.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they should let us say "bomb" in an airport, but that doesn't really have as much historical significance or importance as Anne Frank's diary. *sigh*

I guess there will still be unfair censorship wherever you go in the US, even on the internet, but in this case it doesn't seem right.

Anyways, those are my thoughts."

I may post a longer list up later. But, that will probably be much later, as the list goes well over 100 books.

Thanks for reading, for now, though.