Tipsheet

Does 60 Minutes Know What the Word 'Banned' Actually Means?

Amy Curtis
Amy Curtis  |  November 11, 2025 8:15 AM

If you go to Amazon and search for Margaret Atwood's book, "The Handmaid's Tale," you'll find it for sale. The paperback edition will set you back about nine dollars, and a hardcover will set you back about $20.

Which means, of course, that Atwood's book is not banned in any sense of the word. There may be some libraries and bookstores that choose not to shelve or sell it, but that's not a ban. That's what we call "curation" and it should be up to the library and store what books they do and don't choose to carry.

But you can't tell that to Atwood or 60 Minutes, it seems, who both think she's the victim of some nefarious censorship campaign.

Here's more:

Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" sold more than 10 million copies and spawned an Emmy-winning Hulu series, but the Canadian author dismissed the notion that the dystopian novel is her magnum opus. 

The 85-year-old author said she believes that if not for the ongoing rollback of reproductive rights and the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, the 1985 novel would probably just "be sitting on a shelf somewhere." Instead, the scarlet costume made famous by the wildly popular book has become a uniform of real-life protest and resistance. 

"It's not due to me or the excellence of the book," she said. "It's partly in the twists and turns of history."

"The excellence of the book?"

We know several people who have read it, including this author, and it's not great. It's only popular because the Left turned it into an inaccurate meme (and most of them didn't read the book, either).

CBS is the network that let Margaret Brennan claim free speech led to the Holocaust, so no, they don't understand the meaning of the word "banned."

We'd love to hear the logic on that argument.

This is the worst ban ever.

Because the Left wants to be a victim of some fictional oppressive regime, and so they lie about Atwood being banned.

Here's where we'll note that not one Leftist has ever complained about the Bible being banned from schools, including schools prohibiting individual students from carrying and reading copies of the text, often claiming it hurts feelings or is offensive to others.

Parents have a right to choose what kids do and don't read, and because parents fund public schools, they can and should get a say in what's in that school's library, too.

Meanwhile, CBS will continue to cheer for the totalitarian thought police in Germany, who take laptops and phones away from citizens who post memes online and criticize the government. It's almost like they want to have it both ways.