The culture wars next frontier: Public libraries

[Nevilledog]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/04/17/public-libraries-books-censorship/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/y5HL7

LLANO, Tex. — In early November, an email from a citizen dropped into the inbox of Judge Ron Cunningham, the silver-haired head chair of the governing body of Llano County in Texas’s picturesque Hill Country. The subject line read “Pornographic Filth at the Llano Public Libraries.”

“It came to my attention a few weeks ago that pornographic filth has been discovered at the Llano library,” wrote Bonnie Wallace, a 54-year-old local church volunteer. “I’m not advocating for any book to be censored but to be RELOCATED to the ADULT section. … It is the only way I can think of to prohibit censorship of books I do agree with, mainly the Bible, if more radicals come to town and want to use the fact that we censored these books against us.”

Wallace had attached an Excel spreadsheet of about 60 books she found objectionable, including those about transgender teens, sex education and race, including such notable works as “Between the World and Me,” by author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, an exploration of the country’s history written as a letter to his adolescent son. Not long after, the county’s chief librarian sent the list to Suzette Baker, head of one of the library’s three branches.

“She told me to look at pulling the books off the shelf and possibly putting them behind the counter. I told them that was censorship,” Baker said.

Wallace’s list was the opening salvo in a censorship battle that is unlikely to end well for proponents of free speech in this county of 21,000 nestled in rolling hills of mesquite trees and cactus northwest of Austin.

*snip*

[obamanut2012]

1. Nothing new, it's been happening for decades

Taylor Swift has actually quietly a lot of money to help protect public libraries..

[andym]

2. Origin of culture wars: Trouble in River City: "Chaucer! Rabelais! Balzac!"

A famous song (Trouble in River City) from the "Music Man" was about the arrival of a pool hall in River City, IA, a small town filled with narrow-minded (biased) (white) people around 110 years ago.
But the other problem the town folk were concerned with was the "filthy" books at the library and the librarian who promoted them:
in another song "Pick a little.."
"Professor, her kind of woman doesn't belong on any committee.
Of course, I shouldn't tell you this but she advocates dirty books.

Dirty books!

Chaucer!
Rabelais!
Balzac!"

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Censorship at the library should have no place in modern America. There might be guides as to what is in particular books: from conspiracy theories to alien visits to classics like "Huckleberry Finn" that use the N-word to the racy stories in Chaucer, Rabalais and Balzac.
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It's the prejudices of small-town and rural America that drive the culture wars along with another group of people who practice an extreme brand of fundamentalist Christianity most popular in the South, focused on gay rights and abortion. These small-town prejudices do include racist tendencies, but they are far more general than racism.

[RKP5637]

3. It's the SOS again, often brought on by these saints with their own share of sexual hangups/problems.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. Ha! I remember moseying into my local public library in the late Sixties

to read the saucier texts of A Sterile Cuckoo and Rosemary's Baby at age 12. Later, it was novels of Sidney Sheldon. (I wasn't expecting to find The Happy Hooker on the shelves.

[Solly Mack]

5. K&R