Notes from Evil Bender

Why Free Speech is important, Or nominating Family Friendly Libraries for Odious Organization of the Week October 3, 2008

Posted by Evil Bender in banned books week, censorship, constiutional issues, language and lit, wingnuts.
3 comments

Happy (nearly concluded) Banned Books Week, everyone!

Listening to Radio Times today, I nearly drove off the road while shouting at Denise Varenhorst, President of the thoroughly odious Family Friendly Libraries, an organization which exists to help parents get books they don’t like removed from their local libraries. And they do this in the name of free speech and democracy. Look at their horribly dishonest FAQ, for example:

Q. I found the most disgusting, offensive book on the shelf at my library. When I told the librarian I thought it should be removed, she told me the library does not “censor.” Does that mean that it’s illegal for the library to remove a book based on my objection?

A. No. Your library board members have the power, with a simple majority vote, to remove any material they believe the community, as a whole, does not want in the collection.

They’re absolutely right it isn’t “illegal” to do this, which is why the American Library Association fight so hard against using personal offense as a reason to remove a book from a library’s shelves. FFL dishonestly conflates “legal” with “acceptable.” Because, of course, what they really want is to be able to enforce their ideas on others. The FAQ goes on:

 It should be noted that it is perfectly legal and legitimate for books to be relocated within or removed from any library based on the wishes of that community.

Really? What makes it “legitimate,” exactly? During her interview with Radio Times, Varenhorst (who was unwilling to be on in a segment featuring someone who disagreed with her) repeatedly claimed that she just wanted democracy: for people to be able remove books their community does not approve of from the library. She argued that since libraries can’t carry everything, a library not having a particular book never amounts to censorship.

This too is incredibly dishonest, of course: that a library can’t own every book in existence does not mean that removing a book from the shelves because it offended someone is acceptable behavior. No one has a right not to be offended by a book in a public library, but a library that upholds challenges against books is implicitly accepting the premise that my access to books should be limited to only books others find acceptable.

If every book that was controversial or offensive to someone was banned from libaries, how many books would be left?

But the FFL doesn’t want us to think about that; they want us to think that “protecting children” means “removing others’ access to books because we don’t like them.” They couch it in language suggesting that it is all fair if they someone can get a library board to agree with them. But don’t let their Orwellian tactics (falsely conflating the library’s choices in purchasing with outright attempts to remove materials some people don’t like; suggesting that removing access to ideas is somehow “democratic,” as Varenhorst repeatedly did in her interview) fool you: they’re advocates of censorship, in that they want public libraries to be arbiters of what we can and cannot read.

And the worst part is that they do it under the guise of protecting “the classics,” which is, as always, code for “why aren’t people reading what we tell them, like that great book Moby Dick by Will Shakespeare?” Check out their flimsy excuse for censorship:

Q. Where has all the classic literature gone? I don’t see much at my public library anymore.

A. The quiet disappearance of classic literature from public libraries has been noted for several decades and was documented in a 1995 study titled Discarded Images. The escalation of this trend was reported in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal in early 2007. Today, many public library collections consist predominantly of “popular materials” despite taxpayer objections to this focus.

Let’s remember that many of the books we now consider classics were challenged as offensive in their time, and that many of them still are. “Classic” banned and challenged books during the last decade, as listed by the ALA, (pdf) by way of example, include Of Mice And Men, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill A Mockingbird, and Slaughterhouse Five (to stick with books by white men, since generally defenders of the “classics” don’t much care for women or people of color*).

Remember, folks, never trust someone who wants to protect you from the “wrong sort” of ideas. And definitely don’t trust those who seek to ban books “for your protection.”

The lesson here is clear. Defend free speech: it’s attackers have not let up.

*FFL doesn’t define a classic, naturally, so we don’t know which books they think are missing from libraries that should be there. It’s almost like they’re hiding an agenda of removing access to books behind a facade of claiming people just aren’t reading the “good” books. Hmm.