My Letter to the Book Banner here in Mississippi

[Tamyrlin79]

This is my e-mail letter to the head guy at the library system here in Mississippi that is banning America: The Book because of an "offensive" picture of the naked Supreme Court. Send letters of your own if you wish to. His name is Robert Willits and his e-mail is: [e-mail]

Link to related article:
Some Miss. Libraries Ban Jon Stewart Book
Sun Jan 9,10:26 PM ET U.S. National - AP
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&e=1&u=/ap/banned_book

GULFPORT, Miss. - Library officials in two southern Mississippi counties
have banned Jon Stewart's best-selling "America (The Book)" over the
satirical textbook's nude depictions of the nine U.S. Supreme Court (news -
web sites) justices.


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Dear Sir,

As a citizen of Gulfport, I was appalled to learn that you have decided to ban "America: The Book" by Jon Stewart because of one page that you find offensive. Your are not there to decide what the public can and cannot read. You are there to make sure that the public has access to the materials and information that it desires to read. If the public of Gulfport desires to read America: The Book, offensive picture or no, then it is not your place to deny it to them.

Back in my old library system in another part of this state, anything that was not suitable for children was not available to be checked out by children under age 12. Children underneath that age had to have an adult present to check books in this category out. However, the books were still available to be checked out. If this was your concern, then why was not such a system used in this instance? It would certainly have been less invasive and yet respects the rights of the public to access information.

That you would simply outright ban a book of political humor from your library system because of one page is just mindboggling. It is unAmerican, it is censorship, and as a librarian, you should know better. Or has your library system also managed to ban Fahrenheit 451 from its shelves for one objectionable word or paragraph? If not, I recommend that you check a copy out for yourself sometime in the near future and read it.

After flipping through its pages at local bookstores (which just demonstrates how truly pointless your ban really is), I had previously considered buying America: The Book. Because of this outrage, you may be sure that now I most certainly will. And, since your library system won't do its job, I suppose that now I will have to lend it out to any of my friends who want to read it.


Sincerely,
XXXX ME XXXX
Gulfport, MS

[XanaDUer]

1. Good letter

I believe the director is also an alumnus of the University of Illinois LIS grad school. What is he thinking of?

As a former librarian, I am ashamed of him for doing this.

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. Good letter. But one thing scares me.

By pointing out Fahrenheit 451, a good wonderful book, you might spur the asshole to realize that it, too, needs to be banned, and then he might feel the need to start looking at the rest of that "anarchic, unamerican science-fiction crap" and send it all out.

:-)

But good letter, really. You nailed him in just the right spot - as a librarian who is supposed to getting books into the hands of people. Nicely said.

[Maddy McCall]

3. Excellent letter.

:thumbsup:

[noamnety]

4. question about the ban

Can people still order it up through interlibrary loan? I've gotten materials from out of state through my library before when it wasn't available locally.

[XanaDUer]

5. They should be able to

and, rule of thumb is, if an item is requested enough and still available for purchase, then the library should get its own copy.

[MountainLaurel]

6. Perhaps

I believe the MS public libraries are all part of a consortium that allows for easier ILL.

On a different note, I found the following on the Jackson-George web page:

http://www.jgrl.lib.ms.us/Poise/poisetoc.htm

Snork!

[noamnety]

7. The ban's been lifted!

Due to outside pressure! Jon Stewart reported that tonight. :)