“Welcome To The Monkey House”

Here's one of the moms who filed criminal charges against school librarians in Granbury, Texas, speaking at a school board meeting this week.

She calls on the district to repent, and then proposes appointing a local pastor to vet all school library books moving forward. pic.twitter.com/NaxeZMly4h

— Mike Hixenbaugh (@Mike_Hixenbaugh) May 20, 2022

1) Just let go of some books (what's the harm?)

2) Choose moral people to be on committees addressing this issue, rather than librarians. (This is not how you win friends and favorably influence people.)

3) Tell us what you are doing, and why.  Which means tell the "right" people what they want to hear, because the other people in the district don't matter.  And when you do tell us what you are doing, tell us when you are going to do it our way.  Because, again, the other people in the district don't matter. Back to the parenthetical in 2, above.

“Slaughterhouse Five” is on this list. https://t.co/zGXgE4RoD7

— Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) May 20, 2022

Slaughterhouse-Five is "rated" "NC-17” on this list. I can't imagine why. It's certainly not for violence, although the entire town of Dresden is firebombed in the course of the novel, and Billy Pilgrim comes out of Schlachthof Funf to be set to work as a POW clearing away burned bodies.  Violence doesn’t bother these people as much as sex does. There is no "one-click report" to read excerpts from it, so I don’t know what the complaint is, unless it’s the character of Montana Wildhack, the porn star. There are certainly no sex scenes in the novel.

 I did read an excerpt from The Bluest Eye, which does have a "one-click report." I've read racier scenes in the Nora Roberts' novels we carried in the bookstore and sold to bored housewives (they seemed to be the target market).

Nobody has ever accused that store of marketing pornography, though I understand there are some grumblings about the books the local school district has purchased through that store.  In all cases, the books are part of a list ordered by the libraries.  It's never a matter of the librarian coming in and plucking "porn" off the shelves.

I have to note the title of this webpage is a Texas school district/city, but the title that pops up on my browser is "Texas/Stop Utah Porn."  So this is clearly part of a national effort, not just a local group of crazies.  (Nope, no idea what “Utah porn” is.) Although I do think all of them have too much time on their hands.

As for the "criminal charges," well, not quite:

Hood County Constables stopped by Granbury High School on May 6 to follow up on a complaint about eight books under review for sexual content still being in the school library, Granbury ISD Superintendent Dr. Jeremy Glenn said.

Five of those books were removed following a review of the school library in January. The other three remained on the shelves.

Students like ninth-grader Caylynn Price said they don't want these books removed. "It has angered a lot of students. I think it's really wrong that they took out books on sexual education because Texas doesn't offer sexual education in schools."

"Right before the book ban, I was going to check out this book about trans lives because I'm non-binary and I would've loved to have read something personally about myself, or something that I would relate to," she said. 

In a statement to CBS 11, Superintendent Glenn said: 

"Granbury ISD was made aware of an investigation into district library books from a Hood County Constable, Pct. 4 officer... resulting from a complaint outside of the district raised by a community member. Granbury ISD has not sought or requested an investigation from any law enforcement agency. Granbury ISD continues to consult with our legal counsel and cooperate with law enforcement."

Some parents feel like things have gone too far.  

That was May 6, or two weeks ago as I type.  There is still the small matter of the 1st Amendment and how criminal law defines "pornography."  And it's not defined by the excerpt I glanced at from The Bluest Eye.  Or anything in Slaughterhouse-Five.

Although we have been down this road once or twice before.  I remember the high school librarian (this would have been in the early '70's) reportedly removing Cat's Cradle from the shelves because the narrator, early in the book, is researching Bokononism at a bar, where he strikes up a conversation with a hooker.  He introduces her with the laconic description that neither of them were interested in the work of her profession, but by the end of the evening they found they'd both underestimated their lack of interest.  Or something no more explicit than that, since I can't remember the details lo these 50 years gone.  Same as it ever was, in other words.

Hood County constables may have "investigated" looking for pornography.  But I'm quite sure the Hood County DA said "Are you fucking kidding me?"

This whole issue is going to roil some school districts, but I don’t think the crazies are going to take control. More likely they are going to expose themselves and get their communities to toss them back to the fringes they came from.

I'll bet she hasn't finished a book since her last year of school, if she really read the ones she was supposed to then. I'll bet easily almost all of them aren't readers.

The website for this group claims all the books they list are on the shelves of the ISD’s libraries. I’d be a little surprised if Slaughterhouse Five was still there. It’s 50 years old or so, and shelf space in libraries is at a premium.

My point being even the list is inaccurate. It’s generic, not specific. But these people don’t care. They are “moral,” and you are not. To them, that’s all that matters.