That is what we used to say back in high school when we were assigned reading material. “Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ was banned at our high school, so of course we went out and bought paperback copies to see what all the fuss was about. ‘The Godfather‘ wasn’t on any English Class reading lists, but we all knew what was on the bottom of page 27 and the top of page 28. Really good parts!
Stoker has a master’s degree in Library Science, although she achieved it before the Internet, which means it is more like a sheepskin in Ancient History. Over the years we have had a running debate about who gets to decide which books to purchase and make available with taxpayer dollars.
Her opinion is that librarians are trained to decide which books are important or useful or significant, and that they rarely eliminate a book because of its content. Freedom of the press runs deep in the librarian community, and the idea of non-librarians objecting to their choices offends them. They believe they are the defenders of freedom and know what is good and appropriate for the public.
Risking marital censure, I asked her if the library where she worked had copies of ‘Story of O‘. She said no and I asked why not? It is a significant book that was published in French in 1955 and won a prestigious prize. But the material was quite controversial and it wasn’t published in English until 1965. Stoker made some lame excuse that if the library purchased it people would just steal it. My point in asking is that librarians do their own censoring.
My own view is that private funds can be used to publish anything, no matter how salacious and seditious. Of course if it is libelous you risk getting sued, but other than that Freedom of the Press is pretty much absolute IMHO. But when taxpayers are footing the bill then which books libraries choose is a public matter and should be determined via representative democracy rather than librarian autocracy.
With that as back round, it’s Story Time in the U.S. Senate:
Senator John Kennedy, R-La., made Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias uncomfortable while reading aloud from several LGBTQ and sexually-themed children’s books during a recent Senate hearing.
Senator Kennedy has a delightful Southern/Cajun drawl that makes him sound like a redneck and conceals a very sharp legal and political mind. I’m pretty sure he was uncomfortable reading the material out loud. It probably made him ‘cringey’. If you are a regular reader you will recall that term. Need help? https://freehtt.org/2022/12/12/their-up-to-no-good/
Addressing the Secretary of State, the senator said, “Let’s take two books that have been much discussed. The first one is called ‘All Boys Aren’t Blue.’ And I will quote from it.”
Kennedy then read from “Gender Queer”:
What he read from these books discussed activities that have never reached our Brumby Road backwater. Those activities are completely inappropriate as a topic for the Rich Freggiaro Cycling Blog. We have standards here. I did read what the Senator said and listened to a brief part of it on video, and it was painful. The Illinois Secretary of State, who was there to argue that parents shouldn’t be able to restrict literary choices, was squirming in his chair when confronted with was in the books out loud. In a Senate Committee chamber, no less!
I got a little queasy trying to imagine what I would have thought of this as a 12 year old. I’m sure glad I don’t have kids and have to explain the material to them when they brought these books home from the school library.
Rich Freggiaro Cycling Blog 