Deep Throat in the Public Library -

Curtsy: Dan Kleinman, Safelibraries

Deep Throat in the Public Library

Deep Throat in the public library?  Will Manley brings us the case of a book that quietly disappeared after a patron complained: "Dear Monday from the Unwinders Tavern – Any Advice for Deep Throat?," by Will Manley, Will Unwound, 6 February 2011, #355.

The issue is whether the facts as presented represent a case of "institutional censorship."  The question Will Manley asks his many readers is, "What should Deep Throat do?"

There is a bigger question.  Why is there a need for a library to feel the need to remove a book quietly in the first place?  Is the removal of the book a problem, or is the knee jerk reaction of the American Library Association [ALA] the problem that causes librarians to fear its reaction?

ALA mischaracterizes every single book challenge
in 2009.  Instead of "deciding for others," perhaps
460 patrons are properly seeking application of
existing book selection policies and practices.

Think about it.  Every single personin 2009 who challenged a book in a public library was vilified by the ALA.  All 460 of them.  No exceptions.  Zero.  All 460 were derided as "censors."  See my report on this here:  "The Parent Trap:  ALA Uses Banned Books Week to Ridicule Patrons Complying with ALA Materials Reconsideration Policies."

So that's how and why Banned Book Week is used by the ALA.  To ridicule patrons seeking to challenge books and cow them into silence.

Silence.  The opposite of free speech the ALA claims to promote.

MORE HERE

Libraries Dangerous for Children - Craigslist Contributes to Sexual Deviance in Restrooms

The American Library Association creed is "all materials for all ages."  The dangers of computer free-for-all in the public library is revealed HERE.  The use of Craigslist for sexual networking has increased the number of public library incidences of "bathroom sex."  Gone are the days of a clean and wholesome public library image.

"Via Trench Reynolds’ CraigsCrimeList we find 46-year-old James Michael Stewart (pictured above) who used the Internet crime facilitation network Craigslist to advertise for anonymous people to meet him in the Easley public library branch (the Captain Kimberly Hampton Memorial Library) bathroom for an anonymous rendezvous .

A library patron, who happened to be perusing the section of Craigslist where men seek anonymous gay sex, alerted the library director to Stewart’s ad. The patron apparently had already made contact with Stewart and arranged for the restroom Romeo to show up before telling director Allison Anderson."

The Library Director in Wenatchee, WA is facing the problem head on sans fear of the ALA or the ACLU.

Unfortunately, the West Bend Community Memorial Library cozies up to the same low standards of the ALA, as our library board continues to uphold:

1.  NO PORN FILTERS on ANY computers.  None.  If your kids have one of those "computer stickers" on their library card because you signed a consent form, keep in mind this means they are using computers that have NO SAFETY  NETS.  I have found that parents are often caught unaware by this information and had assumed libraries took appropriate precautions for their patrons, many of which include minor children.  Not so!  PARENTS ARE STRONGLY CAUTIONED when allowing their minor children to access the internet.  No filtering software is in place.  Guard your children's eyes and minds when considering the use of library computers.  They'll be getting a whole lot more than homework information....

2.  Library books for "young adults" that INCLUDE PORNOGRAPHIC SEX ACTS.  Read more HERE.

Looking for more information? 

Click HERE to read the full timeline of events that shows West Bend Libary Director, Michael Tyree, Young Adult librarian Kristin Pekoll, and the West Bend Library Board "stick it" to the parents of West Bend's children after they asked for assistance in identifying sexually explicit young adult materials and the placement of such materials in the adult section of the library.

Click HERE to read about other libraries who have been successful in providing the services requested by their local community, and how you can take back local control of your community library.

Click HERE to read the transcripts of an earlier Mark Belling talk radio show that lends explanation to what really happened in West Bend, Wisconsin.

Like I said in a previous post, "While the ALA continues to combat local communities, and local librarians follow in hypnotized fashion, public computers remain open and accessible to......porn.  P-O-R-N.  What better place to get your sick fantasy fix than your local public library?  It's FREE.  Since the library refuses to use filtering software for the protection of even children, the ability of the average patron to utilize the facilities (ahem!) for their "perverted personal pleasure" is a slam dunk!  Remember, though.....if you get caught, Wisconsin says that viewing child pornography online is also possession."

Doors Open Wide to Confirm Unsafe West Bend Library

Curtsy to Dan Kleinman, Safelibraries:

Ginny v. Maria: Hijacked Library or Safe Library in West Bend, WI

Ginny v. Maria.  Is their local public library hijacked or is it safe?  We report and add hyperlinks, you decide and add comments below.

• "Guest View: Timeline Outlines Hijacking of Library," by Ginny Maziarka, West Bend Daily News, 19 August 2010, p.A6, reprinted below for educational purposes.

• "Guest View: Libraries Remain Free, Safe Places for Families," by Maria Hanrahan, West Bend Daily News, 26 August 2010, p.A6, reprinted below for educational purposes.

............

Since my guest editorial has already been published on this blog, I'll just add Hanrahan's op ed piece with Kleinman's links.

In her recent Guestview in the Daily News, Ginny Maziarka suggests "covert" activities concerning the anti-censorship response to her March 2009 book challenge.  In case anyone is unclear about the details of the book challenge, Maziarka objected to lists of novels with homosexual characters and situations in the young adult section at West Bend Community Memorial Library.  Over time, she rephrased her complaint to concern material she believed was sexually explicit or inappropriate for the age group.  While she first called to ban or remove books, she later called for moving the books to the adult section of the library and labeling them as explicit. 

Maziarka suggests that I was influenced by a "bribe," since the group that I formed to oppose her library complaint, West Bend Parents for Free Speech, was designated as the recipient of a grant from the Freedom to Read Foundation.  What she failed to disclose regarding this startling bombshell was the timing of this grant.  I began my involvement in the library challenge in late March of 2009, was notified of the grant about a week into May, and the public Library Board meeting in which Maziarka's complaint was addressed was held on June 2.  If you do the math, you’ll note that this would have given my group maybe three weeks to go hog wild with our $1,000 "payoff."  In actuality, WBPFFS supporters used their own resources to pay for expenses incurred during the challenge.  Unlike Maziarka's group, West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries or their supporters, we did not choose to participate in paid newspaper or radio advertising to promote our viewpoint.  Other than a reimbursement request for approximately $180 for the cost of an open records request made by another WBPFFS member, we did not utilize the FTRF grant.  This ORR concerned email and other communication to and from members of theCommon Council regarding the library controversy and the pending appointments of replacement members to the Library Board. 

I became involved in the library challenge because I am committed to the belief that, as a parent, I have the right to decide what reading material is appropriate for me and for my children.  To suggest that I did it for remuneration or that I am a tool of the ALA is as preposterous as it is insulting.  Maziarka suggests that the Library Board did not work in the best interest of families by way of their unanimous vote to keep the young adult materials unlabeled and where they are.  In fact, parents retain the power they have always had:  to determine if and when their children should have library cards, to decide how, when and with how much supervision those library cards should be used, and to provide guidance and ground rules for what materials are acceptable in their households. 

Maziarka says the library has been "hijacked" by the ALA, as if it is a subversive organization bent on taking power away from library patrons.  In fact, the American Library Association has always protected the rights of library patrons, including the Freedom to Read.  The FTRF was established to promote and defend freedom of expression and the right to read and listen to the ideas of others.  I believe that reading is among our greatest freedoms, and will continue to be vocal and vigilant about protecting that freedom.  I appreciate the work of the Freedom to Read Foundation, which helps to protect my right to read freely.  I hope Maziarka appreciates that this "hijacking" group works every day to protect her right to read freely as well. 

Maria Hanrahan is a resident of the city of West Bend, founder of West Bend Parents for Free Speech and co-president of Friends of the West Bend Library.

Library Parking Lot looks like.....books!

"Novel" idea!  Curtsy to Safelibraries!

Censorship - a bunch of "Non Cense"

I read this interesting court case today about censorship called Ginzburg v. United States.  It supports what I have been saying all along about protecting children from inappropriate materials.  Someone who claims to be against censorship tried using this court case to support his viewpoint.  If one didn't do the research, he would almost be believable!  


Censorship-Free Libraries seems to be confused about the usage of this case to lend credibility to his cause.  Or is he?  

He posts this much of the case HERE:

"Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. Long ago those who wrote our First Amendment charted a different course. They believed a society can be truly strong only when it is truly free. In the realm of expression they put their faith, for better or for worse, in the enlightened choice of the people, free from the interference of a policeman's intrusive thumb or a judge's heavy hand. So it is that the Constitution protects coarse expression as well as refined, and vulgarity no less than elegance. A book worthless to me may convey something of value to my neighbor. In the free society to which our Constitution has committed us, it is for each to choose for himself."

US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart

In his dissenting opinion, Ginzburg v. United States

383 US 463 (1965)

HTTP://CENSORFREELIB.BLOGSPOT.COM

Here is the interesting thing about this post on a blog that opposes "censorship."  (I oppose censorship, too, by the way!  When it comes to protecting children from inappropriate materials, we know that even the Supreme Court has lent it's support in acknowledging it to be "legitimate and even compelling" to do so.)


Non Censor (the blog owner) fails to provide the footnotes to the quote!  Why?  Because the footnote indicates and affirms that the quote does not support the opposition of censorship! 


Read the footnote for yourself:

[ Footnote 1 ] Different constitutional questions would arise in a case involving an assault upon individual privacy by publication in a manner so blatant or obtrusive as to make it difficult or impossible for an unwilling individual to avoid exposure to it. Cf. e. g., Breard v. Alexandria, 341 U.S. 622 ; Public Utilities Commission of the District of Columbia v. Pollak, 343 U.S. 451 ; Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 . Still other considerations might come into play with respect to laws limited in their effect to those deemed insufficiently adult to make an informed choice. No such issues were tendered in this case.



Look at the last two sentences:  "Still other considerations might come into play with respect to laws limited in their effect to those deemed insufficiently adult to make an informed choice. No such issues were tendered in this case."

Non Censor makes the point again and again that keeping inappropriate material from children is censorship.  In this blog post he says nothing, but presents a quote.  The quote makes it appear, indirectly, that keeping inappropriate material from children is censorship and Non Censor is correct.  But he leaves out the footnote.  That footnote specifically exempts the case of "those deemed insufficiently adult to make an informed choice."  Non Censor deliberately left that part out.  If Non Censor were a real lawyer, this kind of thing might be called malpractice, and worse.

What a disgrace.  What a fraud.


Now let's turn the tables a little and take a look at the American Library Association's (ALA's) own Deborah Caldwell-Stone.


The tactics appear, well, similar if not identical.  Misleading, fraudulent, false misrepresentation.  Caldwell-Stone practiced her stratagem on the citizens, parents and taxpayers of WEST BEND, WISCONSIN.  We will not forget.


Here's a tidbit from Dan Kleinman at SafeLibraries.org discussing that issue:

"Lest anyone think it is always censorship to move or remove books in a public library, and if Caldwell-Stone's own comments aren't convincing enough in the context of moving books, consider what the former de factoALA leader said in the context of removing books: "On rare occasion, we have situations where a piece of material is not what it appears to be on the surface and the material is totally inappropriate for a school library. In that case, yes, it is appropriate to remove materials. If it doesn't fit your material selection policy, get it out of there." Get it out of there! If it doesn't fit your material selection policy, get it out of there! Censorship! The ALA believes in censorship!

So the ALA president wrote a totally misleading and propagandistic piece in an effort to fool the West Bend government into doing what the ALA wanted, not what the community wanted."


Kleinman goes on to state "You know what is really outrageous about this? The ALA continues to push its policies on local communities despite having lost on this very issue in the US Supreme Court in 2003. What once used to be a theory that might have been legitimate lost its legitimacy when the ALA lost on the issue six years ago. Yet the ALA continues to insist that anything goes.

In US v. ALA, the US Supreme Court said, "The interest in protecting young library users from material inappropriate for minors is legitimate, and even compelling, as all Members of the Court appear to agree."

Contrast that with the ALA and Deborah Caldwell-Stone. They say the exact opposite. They say protecting young library users from material inappropriate for minors is not legitimate and not compelling. They say it is actually censorship.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, though, does it?  Just take a look at how Caldwell-Stone's, and Non Censor's, activities mimic the battle cry of the former (now deceased) leader of the ALA, Judith Krug, who once stated ""Parents who would tell their children not to read Playboy'don't really care about their kids growing up and learning to think and explore.'"

Kewaskum Librarian turns back on ALA, “censors” books? Movies?

It seems the West Bend Library Board was wrong. The ALA was wrong, too. Unless, of course, Kewaskum Public Library’s director, Steev Baker, is the one who is wrong.

According to a recent open records request, Baker posted (July 30, 2009) to the Midwest Federated Library Share message board these quotes from a recently rewritten American Library Association (ALA) Bill of Rights:

“The adoption, enforcement, or endorsement of any of these rating systems by a library violates the Library Bill of Rights."

And

“In addition, the inclusion of ratings on bibliographic records in library catalogs is a violation of the Library Bill of Rights."

_______________

Baker goes on to comment, “The above quotes are from a recently released ALA “interpretation” of the Library Bill of Rights. How seriously do we, as institutions, take this “Library Bill of Rights?” During the famous West Bend Fiasco of ’09, local media and bloggers made much of the power of the ALA and its Library Bill of Rights. The Fiasco was framed as a fight between community standards and the standards of a national, liberal-biased group; David vs. Goliath (in more ways than one). With these new interpretations by the ALA about game and film ratings, it appears that the bloggers weren’t far off. Who is the ALA to tell us how our local policies should address media content ratings? What is the power of this “Library Bill of Rights” that it can control even our bibliographic records? What does it mean to “violate” this bill of rights and who enforces it?"


Dwight Foster Public reference librarian Amy Lutzke responds:
“Excellent questions. Doesn’t the omission of information about a particular item in the library’s holdings constitute censorship or, at the very least, crappy cataloging? Why would a library want to censor the ratings listed on their visual materials? Wouldn’t identifying an audio book as “abridged” be a violation of the ALA’s Bill of Rights? After all, some of us have very strong feelings about abridgement!”
Amy

The day before this posting, Baker warned other librarians about purchasing the HBO series “True Blood.” He states,“Before you go rushing out to purchase it, however, you should know that it is “not rated.” Despite what the bib record says (“TV-MA”), since it is a cable show it does not fall under the same ratings as network shows. There is a lot of very explicit sex and very, very strong language. Not a ton of violence….but what killings there are are very gory…….it is definitely for mature audiences only.”

Baker’s solution?

He tells West Bend Library’s assistant director, Sue Cantrell, “I actually made “TV-MA” stickers to put on the spine and also a description of what “TV-MA” means on the back cover. Just so people know. Most “R” rated films list what the rating is for, but since True Blood is not rated, there is not any indication that parents of teenagers will contact the local newspaper about the content if they see their kids watching it…. Steev

Steev Baker is doing what library directors can, and SHOULD do – meeting his community’s standards, without bowing to the pressure of the almighty ALA. Baker is right.

Added note:
If one takes a wander through the Kewaskum Public Library, they would notice that YA graphic novels are stored on the highest shelf in the YA section, accessible with a step stool. One librarian, and subsequently Baker himself, confirmed that, indeed, this is being done to keep them out of the hands of younger children.


Perhaps like THIS community, and THIS ONE, and THIS ONE, Baker actually is doing the RIGHT THING.

Thanks to organizations such as SafeLibraries, PABBIS and Family Friendly Libraries, we have resources that empower parents to see through the ALA propaganda on a local level, whether in the public library OR in the public school system.

From PABBIS:
The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) recognizes that parents have a right to choose what their children will read. The NCTE also states, on their web site, that a book rationale should be done prior to book selection and that special emphasis should be placed on controversial material so that parents know when to select an alternate book. PABBIS favors this and believes the information should be objective and quantitative so parents may decide for themselves and their child.

We do agree, indeed.

American Family News covers West Bend Library

LISTEN to the interview by clicking on "Hear Report" at the upper right-hand side of the page.


"....many community members are outraged over the situation. "We all have always thought the library is this wonderful safe place and, unfortunately, the American Library Association has instilled in the librarians today that the policy of all materials for all ages is the right thing to do, and we don't agree with that," she adds."

The American Library Association and the West Bend Community Memorial Library have opened the doors to sexualizing YOUR children and grandchildren.

Is YOUR library a SAFE PLACE?


?

Library upset about giving over public records

As we continue to see and hear from the media that parents asking for assistance from their local library are:

• book burners
• book banners
• censors
• bigots
• giving the city a black eye

...we should also take note that the library board brought the attention to the City of West Bend on their own volition by:

• refusing to respond to it's own policies
• putting off public meetings
• ignoring citizen requests to dialogue

Interesting how:

• The library board loves the city attorney's advice when it can be used as an excuse to get rid of citizens, but...
• hate the city attorney's advice when a citizen calls for compliance with open records requests, then...
• calling an emergency meeting on short notice (Where is the public notification? On a city hall or library bulletin board? Nice.) and stating they will hire (taxpayer dollars flying out the window) outside counsel to....what?

1. Try to hide open public records from the public?
2. Keep the public from learning something?

This is the same public library that follows the standard of "all things for all people."

Think about it.