One of the big hub-bubs of the last week or so was around the fact that American right-wing commentator, Ann Coulter, had one of her speeches in Canada shut down by protesters. The one that was shut down was at the University of Ottawa while others at locations including my alma mater, the University of Western Ontario and my former employer, the University of Calgary (where I spent exactly one week as a page before being hired by the Writers Guild of Alberta!) went on as planned.
After the speech in Ottawa was shut down due to "safety concerns", I was a bit saddened to see the crowing on Facebook and other social media sites by people who should know better (ie. librarians) about how proud this made them.
See, I have two big insights into this whole "controversy" that I'd like to share - one comes because I worked in publishing and one comes because I was a huge fan of professional wrestling as a kid.
The first observation from the publishing angle is this - the worst thing you can do is draw attention to something you don't agree with as it only gets it more attention/more sales/more money/more notoriety. People on the left and right both seem to miss this anything they try to censor something/someone - whether it's someone like Philip Pullman (great title, eh?) from the right or someone like, well, like Ann Coulter from the left. Often the best thing to do with a book or a person you don't agree with is to ignore it/them (especially one that is so blatantly a media whore like Coulter).
Which leads to my second point. Ann Coulter is the modern equivalent of the Iron Sheik (and I'm not hte only one who noticed the similarity.) Now, for those unfamiliar with the 1980's wrestling scene, the Iron Sheik was one of the leading bad guys who had a gimmick of being an evil Iranian doing battle with the super hero American champ, Hulk Hogan. He got "heat" (or crowd response) by saying and acting in the most inflammatory fashion possible - using the American flag as a prop, belittling his enemies and generally, just carrying on like an ass. (Sound familiar?)
So yeah, if Ann Coulter happened to come to the University of Regina, I wouldn't have been there protesting - I'd have been there with a box of popcorn and a big foam finger (guess which one?) enjoying the show for what it is - a staged exhibition intended to maximize the heat for a performer who is very skilled at what they do.
Oh, and this is a bit of a tangent which has nothing to do with Ann Coulter but I recently learned that Iron Sheik has had a late life career resurgence due to appearances on Howard Stern and YouTube where he plays (?) an amped up, crack-head version of his former character - rambling drunkenly while threatening to humble people by anally raping them! Here's a clip of the Sheik in action which is somewhat NSFW (but compared to some others on YouTube, relatively tame):
And here's a photo of Ann Coulter's face that I photoshopped onto the Iron Sheik's body. (Sorry it's not my best work in this vein but I had to try it.)
I thought somebody (the CLA Committee on Intellectual Freedom?) released an annual report on book challenges during the past year. I wasn't able to find it but the official site for Freedom to Read does have a list highlighting 100 different books that have been challenged in the past decade.
One entry in particular caught my attention:
Pritchard, Jimmy. The New York City Bartender’s Joke Book. 2004—A library patron complained to the Saskatoon Public Library about this book- length collection of jokes that the author had heard while working in bars. Cause of objection—The complainant said that the jokes were in poor taste and promoted negative attitudes toward women and ethnic minorities. Update—The library’s Challenged Materials Committee later agreed that the book was “racist, sexist, and demeaning to women and citizens of many countries.” The book also failed to meet the library’s collection development standards. The committee withdrew the book from circulation.
Although this is from six years ago, seeing that a library in my home province would remove a book from their collection really bugs me. Why? Well, here's a dirty little secret - the book loving, BA - English librarian you see before you didn't always read Hemingway and Faulkner (who am I kidding? I still don't - just for a few years there as an undergrad so I'd look smart in coffee shops!)
Like many teenaged boys, there was a time in my young life when a lot of my pleasure reading consisted of things that weren't very literary in nature - the latest Calvin & Hobbes cartoon collection. Rock star biographies. And yes, occasionally, I would take out a book that would be the 1985 equivalent of "The New York Bartender's Joke Book".
But you know what? That's part of the reason I would go to the library even at a time when it wasn't "cool". I don't remember saying this exactly but if a friend called me a nerd for going to the library, I could show them the joke book. "Really? You got that? At the library? Lemme see that!"
After all, isn't this one of the single biggest hand-wringers in public libraries today? "How do we get teenaged boys to come to the library?" Offensive joke books aren't the full answer. But they're part of it if you're truly committed to serving *all* of your users - which most public libraries claim to be. Even though I read such a "harmful" book in my formative years, I'm glad no one at Regina Public Library or Indian Head Public Library had to decide whether this book was appropriate for me or not and that decision was mine to make alone. I
like to think that I don't have negative attitudes towards women or
minorities because I read books like this, just like I don't want to start a war because I read "Rambo: First Blood". (I will cop to having bad taste on occasion - that's nothing to do with my reading choices though!)
The other reason this bugs me is that it hits a lot closer to home than it did, even a few years ago. Under the new province-wide SILS consortium, every library system has worked very hard to come up with a common set of policies. Each system
still retains the right to develop its own internal policies in regards
to things like collection development, intellectual freedom and so on so the common policies are mostly in regards to how items circulate, fine tables, patron registration and things like that.
So if it doesn't directly affect me at RPL or in my day-to-day work, why get so worked up? Well, for one thing, there's always a danger that this could be the start of the proverbial slippery slope. The next time a book gets challenged in Saskatoon, it'll be harder for someone there to say "no". And it might be harder in Regina too - especially if we're partners in SILS. "My sister, Alice Tinhat Jones, got a joke book with the 'n' word in it removed from Saskatoon Public Library. I'd like this one removed as well." Uhm, madame, that's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. "I don't care. You're partners with SPL aren't you?")
To be frank, I also don't like that this decision has both tinges of both imposed morality AND political correctness - both extremes of the censorship spectrum. As I point out in one of my all-time favourite posts, "What Freedom To Read Is *Not*":
6.
Freedom to Read is not a "left" or a "right" issue (I think people
often believe that only people holding the opposite opinion of their
own want to ban books.) Challenges come from both ends of the
political spectrum and are just as likely to come on grounds of
political correctness from someone on the left as on they are on
morality grounds from someone on the right.
It's not book related but nothing says Freedom of Expression like the newest buzz site of the Internet, ChatRoulette. The site is exactly what it says - you hit the site and you see a chat window for yourself and one for a random person somewhere in the world. As soon as you get bored (which is usually fairly quickly - basically as soon as you see the other person's face...or they see yours), you click a button and see someone else. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
(I did it just now and got hung up on about five times in a row, had a brief chat with two guys who were watching the Canada-Russia game and saw one set of fingers making hand puppets. Contrary to my previous experience with web cams way back in the late 1990's - and frankly what I was expecting here - every second person wasn't trying to show me their penis which was nice. Perhaps if I was female?)
So it's not all people freely exposingexpressing themselves as you might expect - there's humour, love and even puppets! Oh, and you might see the occasional vagina as well.
German copyright law grants an author copyright for 70 years after their death. Hitler died in 1945 so that means "Mein Kampf" will enter the public domain in that country in 2015. Or will it?
There is a well-known German law banning the dissemination of Nazi ideologies which was put in place after the fall of the Third Reich. Germans (including many Jewish groups) claim that this law trumps any right the infamous work has to freely enter the public domain. Opponents counter that the diaries of Goebbels and Himmler are easily available in Germany already (as is Mein Kampf for anyone with an Internet connection).
German scholars want the work to enter the public domain so they can prepare an annotated version of "Mein Kampf" for 2015 while the government fears that Neo-Nazi groups would prepare their own propagandized version.
Libraries get a mention in the linked article as well.
"Stephan J. Kramer, secretary general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany
in Berlin, said the publication of “Mein Kampf” continued to split the
Jewish community in Germany, with many Holocaust survivors opposing its
publication. “I have the highest respect for this opinion, but on the
other hand I’m saying very openly: The copyright is going to be waived
anyway. It’s a matter of time before the book is available in shops and
libraries,” Mr. Kramer said." I've already discussed my own early exposure to Mein Kampf on this blog and I'm pretty sure it's clear what side of the debate I'm on - it is Freedom to Read Week after all! (I should do a post and try to list which books I think *should* be banned, if any. That'd be a fun challenge.)
I was trying to think of a good clip to feature for Music Monday now that it's Freedom to Read Week. I thought about posting Elvis' infamous early Milton Berle appearance which led to him only being filmed from the waist up when he later appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. But that's pretty tame by today's standards - sort of like how people still want to challenge "Catcher in the Rye" because the words "heck" and "gosh-darn" are in there.
Then I remembered a song I heard when I first moved into college dorms - pretty much fresh off the farm at 17 - when the most rebellious music I knew was Def Leppard.
I actually didn't even hear the song from the shock rock outfit, the Mentors (and until about five minutes ago, had never heard it.) Instead, a a floormate quoted some of the lyrics to me and they have been seared into my brain ever since.
Still, that famous line about "I may not agree with what you say but I'll defend to the death, your right to say it" applies here. It has to because if it doesn't, freedom of expression is absolutely meaningless.
I'm actually nervous about hitting the "Submit" button this post because this is some pretty disturbing stuff and people always confuse the defense of something with an endorsement. But ultimately, that's what Freedom of Expression is about. I am not going to run out and buy a Mentors CD (probably - unless I need to shock some other sheltered small town kid!) but some people do and did. Some people went to their shows. As long as there's nothing illegal happening, that's completely within their rights - the band's rights, the fans' rights and according to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that's within anyone's rights (as is your right *not* to click through to any lyrics or music I link to in this post. And trust me, the lines I quoted in the title of this post are pretty much the only two lines in the song that I felt comfortable doing so!)
I'll save you the pain and link to a clip of the live version of the song where the lyrics are hard to understand (here's a link to the album version of the song for the braver souls among you - I won't censor but I will warn you that you can't un-hear this song once you hear it!)
[Edit: I forgot to bring it back to Elvis the Pelvis like I originally wanted to. One of the strongest anti-censorship arguments that I know is to compare the comments made by people who were disgusted by Elvis with those who were/are disgusted with Eldon Hoke below - "filthy", "depraved", "sick", "demonic", etc. Notice something? They're the exact same words! To me, that shows that the people who hated Elvis in the 1950's are the exact same type of people who hated Eldon Hoke in the 1990's - even though those same anti-Hoke people in the 1990's probably liked Elvis, took family vacations to Graceland and will shell out for the new Cirque du Soleil Elvis show the next time they're in Vegas. So to me, it's *really* important to keep in mind that it's all very relative. Something that offends me today (and Eldon Hoke definitely comes really close!) will probably be a Broadway show that Pace goes to see with his family in thirty years.]
It's extremely rare that you'll hear me advocating for a book to be challenged. But as my former classmate (and published author) Corey Redekop asks in his post on this year's Freedom to Read Week celebrations: "could you challenge me? Call a
library and demand that I be taken off the shelves? Nothing sells a
person on a book like a little controversy."
So if you want to help out a fellow librarian, go to your local library this week and put in a challenge against "Shelf Monkey". It could actually be fun - like a banned book flash mob - and since Corey's book has censorship as one of its central themes - it'd be a perfect fit.
Hmmm, I started this post with my tongue firmly in cheek but I'm talking myself into this...I think it'd make a really good statement about censorship if a book that is firmly against censorship had a bunch of challenges during Freedom to Read Week, especially if they all used the same reason. Something like "This book is wrong with its theme that censorship is wrong."
It's a bit of a conflict of interest (or at least potentially awkward) for us public librarians to do this at our home libraries. So hopefully you academic librarians out there pick up the torch (or we in public libraries could put in a challenge of Corey's book at a neighbouring town - that would work too!)
The BC Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee has an unofficial blog with lots of good reading.
(I was going to title this post "The only BC-related post you'll read on a blog this week that doesn't mention the Olympics." But then I realised that this would be like the Hawthorne Effect of blogs. )
I know I could get my entire month's worth of Freedom to Read Week Month "Music Monday" clips out of this list but I'll post them as a group since that's how I found them.
