The War on (heavy sigh) Libraries
Move over Antifa. The new enemy is Gladys at checkout
Hey, one of my tweets came true!
Five years ago, after the mass shooting at Parkland Elementary I posted this to a social network that used to be called Twitter:
Then this week, this news story came across my computer screen:
They are turning school libraries into prisons! Who says America doesn’t innovate anymore?
Houston’s school district — which was taken over by the State of Texas in its ongoing battle against Wokeness — is firing 28 librarians, closing those libraries, lighting the books on fire, and turning the ex-libraries into disciplinary compounds where problem students will be, I don’t know, whipped and beaten.
The librarians will be replaced by, I guess… wardens? Those terrifying Google robot dogs? A Proud Boy in a machine gun turret? Help me out here.
Now granted, in 2018 I thought our schools would become prisons in order to protect students from mass shootings.
After Parkland, Republicans were essentially pushing to jail-ify schools. They wanted metal detectors and security guards and barbed wire and retired Marines in fatigues roving the cafeteria with machine guns.
Senator Ted Cruz, ever the innovator, called for every single school in America to be redesigned so that it only had one heavily armed door at the front (like a prison), and for every individual classroom door to be locked and “hardened” to prevent unauthorized exit and entrance (also like a prison).
As long as kids are locked behind 20 tons of steel, with all windows removed from the walls, they would be safe and happy. This, we were told, would be the proper environment for children to learn the provinces of Canada.
I thought they were going to do this to protect kids from bullets. Turns out the more immediate threat is Toni Morrison.
I was a voracious reader growing up. I don’t think I ever got a book recommendation from my school librarian?
Our school librarians were mostly kids’ parents who sat behind the checkout desk and gossiped with one another and perfunctorily stamped your book upon checkout.
They weren’t following me around the aisles like, “Hey kid, you wanna see some fucked-up lesbian shit?”
They ate depressing sandwiches out of Ziploc bags and would occasionally say “Oh, I liked this one” when you checked something out, but nothing more.
But in the wonderful imagination of Republican parents, librarians are essentially drug dealers trying to get your children addicted to Woke and Trans.
Your kid walks into the library, he might as always be walking into the brainwashing room from A Clockwork Orange except they’ll force him to watch Ru Paul’s Drag Race.
A bunch of Red States have started to pass laws that would charge librarians with crimes for providing “obscene” material to children. The penalty would be fines or even jail time.
On Monday, a judge blocked one of those laws in Arkansas on the grounds that it is censorship. The opinion was 49 pages long, which seems like a lot of pages to write “God this is so fucking stupid” over and over but, hey, I am not a lawyer.
It is a little funny to imagine your typical librarian as a criminal. Both Ethel the librarian and Tony Soprano leaving the house every morning, wondering if this is the day they’ll be stormed by the Feds.
Imagine Ethel, in her orthopedic shoes, getting approached by a teen asking if the library has “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” She squints her eyes to see if the kid’s wearing a wire.
“Are you a fucking rat?” Ethel says.
But also:
Does Arkansas have nothing better to do than prosecute librarians?
Remember earlier this year when Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene traveled to New York City to complain that our District Attorney was prosecuting Trump for tax fraud instead on the constant gang murders plaguing the Herald Square Macy’s?
Arkansas has one of the 5 highest murder rates in America and it has for several years. It is far worse than the murder rate in New York City.
If Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) went to Little Rock and stood in front of their M&M Store and asked why Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders was focused on banning Jodi Piccoult and the rampant crime…would it be the lead story on NBC National News with Lester Holt?
I doubt it.
But also, I lost track of librarians. Which is how it should be.
Five years ago it would have been boring to write anything about librarians. It is a low-paid, unglamorous job.
Was anyone mad that their taxes were funding the library? Even a hardcore Libertarian would have to be like, “Well, as long as the kids can check out The Fountainhead…”
Well, that era is over.
The libraries must be regulated, and schools with libraries inside of them must be purged.
In Red states schools are slowly morphing into prisons. And just like prisons across the country are banning books, so too is the local school.
Every book must be approved by the warden. If discovered, staff will destroy illegal contraband (James Baldwin novels). Prepare to be strip searched upon exiting the Young Adult aisle.
And librarians: You better watch your damn back. Pretty soon Arkansas will have a $350 million Minority Report command center to identify any library worker who is even THINKING of letting a kid check out The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
I’d say these states are on the road to Fahrenheit 451 but God knows they wouldn’t get the reference.