Amanda Gorman, the over-adored poet who became an overnight star of the Left following President Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration, has inserted herself as part of the latest legacy media propaganda effort against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and the entire state of Florida.

After complaining that her book was being banned in one Florida school, while falsely accusing the complainant of confusing her with Oprah Winfrey (the book’s publisher), the legacy media went into overdrive to decry the latest act of supposedly racist censorship .

“Florida school bans Amanda Gorman poem over one parent’s CRT fears,” reported MSNBC . Rolling Stone went with “Florida School Bans Amanda Gorman’s Inaugural ‘The Hill We Climb’ Poem.” The Los Angeles Times framed “Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem” as “the latest in book bans.”

There’s just one problem: Gorman’s book is not banned. In reality, it was simply moved to a different bookshelf in the middle school section of the same media center.

The horror …

But setting Gorman’s mediocre poetry and shameless opportunistic self-promotion, as well as the trademark inaccuracies of the legacy media, aside, we should dig deeper and acknowledge this is part of a broader narrative that relies upon a false respect for free speech itself.

Responding to the news that DeSantis would be announcing his presidential run on Twitter with Elon Musk, MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan wrote that “it’ll be fascinating to hear Musk, the free speech absolutist, grill DeSantis on the latter’s well-documented crackdowns in Florida on free speech, the free press, and books in their Twitter Spaces conversation.”

“He’ll grill DeSantis on free speech, right? Right? Ri …,” he added.

But as is often the case, this has nothing to do with free speech, and everything to do with their free speech.

And yes, there is a difference.

It’s important to remember there are rare exceptions to the First Amendment, including “obscenity, child pornography, defamation, incitement to violence and true threats of violence.”

And while it’s important to remember that the cry of “free speech” in opposition to Republicans such as DeSantis might seem principled in nature, we must also remember that these critics presumably have standards of their own when it comes to school libraries.

Would Hasan support elementary school children reading explicit pornography, violent anti-Islam genocidal material, or Mein Kampf?

This isn’t to say that Gorman’s poetry is comparable to Mein Kampf, but it does prove that we are all in agreement on the existence of some standard — a line between what is and isn’t appropriate for children of various ages.

If we agree that children should not be reading Mein Kampf in kindergarten, are we engaging in an assault on free speech? No, of course, we’re not because there is a clear difference between banning a book and filtering content based on age.

The question simply becomes where we draw this line.

We all agree that this line must be drawn. It just so happens that the Left wants to maintain its monopoly on this line — including the promotion of pornography and propaganda in our schools.

Ian Haworth ( @ighaworth ) is the host of Off Limits with Ian Haworth .