Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Targeted in New Jersey Challenge

I am so SICK of people ripping on Obama!  What would you do with a trillion dollar deficit, a crash economy, a war you don’t believe in, and a country in shambles?  The answer is the BEST YOU CAN.  I wish people could be more patient and wait to see how it all pans out.  I guess that’s what we get for being a “fast food nation”.

Sarah Marshall

How long are we going to cocoon our children? If there was picture of the boy scouts seeing what they were seeing isn’t it possible that the children are going to see it sooner or later. Isn’t it better that we make them aware of what the world around them is made of rather than pretending to give them a rosy picture? I definitely will tell my daughter about what is around us and how God created us. Awareness is paramount!

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I see a double standard here:

Dee Venuto, media specialist at Rancocas Valley Regional High School, told American Libraries that after she reviewed a copy of the packet given to the board, she found reason to believe “this wasn’t just a parent who was upset but was much more organized.” She bases that claim on the documentation Marinelli provided, which included an October 15, 2009, article in the congressional daily The Hill about a GOP effort to discredit Jennings and a link (7:56) to the Coral Ridge Ministries’ February 8 Obama’s Radical Appointees video production. A subsequent internet search turned up the message board of the Burlington County chapter of Fox-TV personality Glenn Beck’s 912 Project, on which Marinelli and colleagues strategized about the books challenge. “I could see that they were systematically planning to target school libraries in the county,” Venuto said, “and that if this is happening in New Jersey, there is probably a good chance it could happen in other places.”

The double standard is this.  Here is a "media specialist" remarking on and decrying people "strategizing about book challenges." "’I could see that they were systematically planning to target school libraries in the county,’ Venuto said, ‘and that if this is happening in New Jersey, there is probably a good chance it could happen in other places.’"  And gosh forbid Glenn Beck is involved.

Yet, on the other hand, there is no mention on how the ALA leads its acolytes in "strategizing" on how to "target school libraries in the county" to ensure children retain access to inappropriate material.  There is no mention that the ALA has been doing this for nearly half a century, that there is a specialized "Office for Intellectual Freedom" designed for this very purpose, or that, far better than Glenn Beck, the ALA has the support of The Playboy Foundation, George Soros, etc., to ensure its "anything goes" policy is spread far and far with well-funded precision.

No, the parents are bad for "strategizing" to protect their children.  The ALA?  Shhhhhhhhhhh.

To me, there should be no confusion: A librarian’s job is to challenge me to think about new ideas. I will not accept for a split second that a librarian is somehow intolerant in their unyielding tolerance. The intolerant ones here want to close doors. Librarians want to open them. Ask yourself: what are you trying to do?

At Rancocas Valley HS there is a system in place to deal with challenges. As long as the Reconsideration Committee is fairly representative of the community’s mores, the system should work. One of the commenters suggested that librarians are entitled to their opinions just like Glenn Beck. That may be so, but a wise librarian keeps his/her opinions below the surface. Otherwise they will alienate half of their constituents.

In reply to the 3/11/10 comment made at 14:00 you are mistaken.  One of the wonderful things about good public libraries is that they strive to reflect ALL the people in their community not just the majority.  A library may collect deeper in areas of community interests or beliefs but will always work to reflect the opinions and tastes of all its citizens.

I really commend Dee Venuto for her quick and objective work.  It was a great teaching moment for her students.  This time is was against Glen Beck but the same techniques of information literacy could be used against liberals as well.  Good teaching moment.

Argumentum ad hominem  (viz., the second comment) does nothing to advance this debate.  If we really mean to reflect our patrons’ interests, we would not have so many of these debates. Nothing about libraries mandates that every idea, whatever its merit, will be reflected on the shelves, but each community’s weltanschauung governs what a given library provides.  That will differ widely if that library is in Left Coast, CA or Bible Belt, TN.  It’s when well-intentioned librarians want to "illuminate" (as they define it) the unwashed masses (as they see it) that the fur begins to fly.  If I happen to live in a city that does not welcome my views, nothing about freedom requires the local library, whatever its stripe, purchase those materials for me.  I can, however, buy them on my own, or move a to city that does welcome them.  In a democratic republic, this is what one must come to understand.

I find much of what Gken Beck says to be on target, although he is bombastic in his delivery. Does that make me the kind of person you characterize Beck to be? On frustration of mine with professional librarianship is the intolerant bent of so many in leadership, although not, I believe, of those of us in the trenches. Do we, like Beck, not have the right to make our views known, and practice librarianship in a context informed by those views, as those who criticize Beck so obviously do?

Glen Beck, colloquially speaking, is an asshole, and anyone who alines themselves with his farcical derivation of reality should be labeled the same.