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There is no joy in Mudville
2 years ago
General
Llano County, Texas has a three-branch public library system that's come to the nation's attention lately. That's due to a federal District Court judge's order to the library board -- consisting of elected officials strongly opposed to "LGBTQ views," "critical race theory," and "pornographic filth" among the children's books -- giving them 24 hours to return the books they'd tried to ban to circulation.
Among the books that county officials had found particularly upsetting were Isabel Wilkerson's Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents; Susan Campbell Bartoletti's They Called Themselves the KKK: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group; Jazz Jennings's Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen; Jonathan Evison's Lawn Boy; and Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer. (Those last two titles were only available as e-books, not physical copies; the board terminated access to thousands of e-books in a ham-fisted attempt to ban those two titles alone.) The library board (or Library Advisory Board, as it's been renamed) obviously hadn't bothered to READ any of these books; the point is, they didn't want anyone else in Llano County to read them, either.
Now, it's hard to imagine a scenario in which banning books from a public library system because of their contents -- or because of what you ASSUME their contents to be -- doesn't trample all over the First and Fourteenth Amendments (freedom of the press and freedom of choice, y'all), but those county officials went ahead and did it anyway because they just didn't care. That's a perfect example of overreach -- or shall we call it hubris?
In Judge Pitman's temporary injunction of March 30th (the case is ongoing), he noted that "The First Amendment prohibits the removal of books from libraries based on either viewpoint or content discrimination." Sanity may yet prevail. And I remember a day a decade ago when a woman with a baby stroller walked into the bookstore where I was a manager. Aaron James's philosophical essay Assholes: a Theory was then one of our hottest sellers, and this person demanded that I remove it from our window display because the title was "inappropriate."
"So," I said, "you want me to stop displaying one of my bestselling books because you don't like the title?"
"Yes."
"That isn't going to happen."
"Well, I guess there's no shortage of assholes here," she huffed.
People really are amazing. And the so-called culture wars, such as they are -- the best culture is, what, none to speak of? -- rage on, to no real benefit. (This week's score: Disney 1, DeSantis 0.)
For god's sake, read more, not less.
Among the books that county officials had found particularly upsetting were Isabel Wilkerson's Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents; Susan Campbell Bartoletti's They Called Themselves the KKK: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group; Jazz Jennings's Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen; Jonathan Evison's Lawn Boy; and Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer. (Those last two titles were only available as e-books, not physical copies; the board terminated access to thousands of e-books in a ham-fisted attempt to ban those two titles alone.) The library board (or Library Advisory Board, as it's been renamed) obviously hadn't bothered to READ any of these books; the point is, they didn't want anyone else in Llano County to read them, either.
Now, it's hard to imagine a scenario in which banning books from a public library system because of their contents -- or because of what you ASSUME their contents to be -- doesn't trample all over the First and Fourteenth Amendments (freedom of the press and freedom of choice, y'all), but those county officials went ahead and did it anyway because they just didn't care. That's a perfect example of overreach -- or shall we call it hubris?
In Judge Pitman's temporary injunction of March 30th (the case is ongoing), he noted that "The First Amendment prohibits the removal of books from libraries based on either viewpoint or content discrimination." Sanity may yet prevail. And I remember a day a decade ago when a woman with a baby stroller walked into the bookstore where I was a manager. Aaron James's philosophical essay Assholes: a Theory was then one of our hottest sellers, and this person demanded that I remove it from our window display because the title was "inappropriate."
"So," I said, "you want me to stop displaying one of my bestselling books because you don't like the title?"
"Yes."
"That isn't going to happen."
"Well, I guess there's no shortage of assholes here," she huffed.
People really are amazing. And the so-called culture wars, such as they are -- the best culture is, what, none to speak of? -- rage on, to no real benefit. (This week's score: Disney 1, DeSantis 0.)
For god's sake, read more, not less.
It's fun watching them backpedal and claim that THEIR book is special and deserves deferential treatment for 'reasons.'
run, don't walk, to the nearest bookstore, buy it, and read about
what they don't want you to know.
But when it comes to a public library, I cuck hard for the first ammendment. The only limit is space, and I know of several libraries that will actually sell off or donate to other locations materials that simply don't get used or read often in favor of having room for highly requested materials.
I have been in favor of quite a few unpopular decisions of late, all over this country, but this one I cannot get behind, those books belong in the library, and I am all for the decision to get them back in .