Todd Cox

Blindly supporting someone simply because they're the President (elected by a minority of people, by the way) is not only dangerous, it's downright idiotic. Blind support, without questioning their leaders, is what has led all sorts of otherwise intelligent people into various vile and reprehensible wormholes. If you cut your elected officials slack, and give them the benefit of the doubt, you become a sheep at their mercy. As for ALA: why would an organization dedicated to the open pursuit of knowledge ever support a man who stands in opposition to such knowledge? Libraries are free and open places of intellectual exploration and discovery; the current "President" is the enemy of these things. Cows don't stand up and cheer the butcher. Rethink your attitude, Mary Ann, and realize, before it's too late, the danger such men are to you and your noble profession.

Posted : Mar 15, 2017 12:18

Todd Cox

The idea of a group dedicated to the free and open pursuit of knowledge inviting a "conservative" speaker is ludicrous. One cannot be a conservative and be for such open and free pursuit of knowledge; the two ideas are quite simply in opposition to each other. Conservative, of course, means "tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions" (Webster's). The real pursuit, and dissemination, of knowledge requires one to be open to change, as well as to the input of diverse viewpoints. One cannot imagine a conservative speaker having much to say in regards to this topic which wouldn't be met with, at best, laughter, and at worst... well, a few custard pies to the face. A conservative speaking at a library convention would be like Bill Clinton speaking to an abstinence-only group.

Posted : Mar 11, 2017 12:03

spencer

I wrote this recently vis-a-vis activism: Why Neutrality IS the Mission I would like to point out this study from PEW that might shed some light on this issue. http://www.people-press.org/2016/06/22/partisanship-and-political-animosity-in-2016/ Tie these results with the bromide that recently circled the library echo chamber of "Neutrality in the face of evil (read: something we disagree with) is not actually neutrality, but supporting of said evil" and it's easy to predict the loud library contingency that screamed bloody murder at the very thought that the ALA would offer its expertise to the incoming administration. Interestingly, I also find this with calling from these same (similar?) librarians that libraries need to do a better job educating people- as if they only reason there is disagreement and the election turned out the way it did was due to a big lack of education and understanding. "If only we had done a better job educating those 60+ million voters as to the truth they never would have disagreed with us." This thinking is not only fallacious, it allows us to forego introspection because, obviously, the problem isn't us. This is similar to the wrong thinking of Marxist theory of false consciousness. It's adding insult to injury and reinforcing the view that half of our stakeholders might have that the library itself, as an institution, is partisan. Follow that up with information such as this: "When David Brooks did some research into political donations by profession for his September 11, 2004, column in The New York Times, he found that for librarians "the ratio of Kerry to Bush donations was a whopping 223 to 1." By contrast, the corresponding ratio for academics was 11 to 1." http://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Loneliness-of-a/33191 And it's really easy to see how we can be viewed that way. If these numbers hold true and librarians are 223 to 1 democrat to republican (pretending, as all polls do, that we are all team players) and pew shows that a vast majority of partisans have pretty scathing views of other party members- would it not follow that libraries are staffed with people hostile to republicans? As a profession do we work to fight this potentially innate bias by showing how we take our political bias hats off at the door? NO! We make sure people know exactly where the profession lies by getting up in arms at the very insinuation that we, maybe, as a profession, will continue to do our jobs for everyone, equally, regardless of political affiliation. It is for shame that these self-appointed "leaders" paint us with such a terrible brush. So, now we become protectors of truth in opinion- of trying to further quiet dissention by not allowing it a seat at the table, as if this will solve the problem. We pretend that even offering a copy of an Ann Coulter book is tantamount to raising our hands in salute to racism. Why not filter the internet to block access to Infowars.com while we’re at it? Does one really need to point out the ridiculously obvious fact that, if we had already ventured down this path, libraries would only ever make available materials that support the status quo? There would have been volumes of the benefits of eugenics in the 1910’s and no other works (since these works WERE supported by scientific experts of the time) challenging those views would have been offered space on the shelf. So, we make ourselves a partisan group that is viewed as such by half of the people we are tasked with serving and instead of realizing this as a horror of a reality, we have calls to double down and make sure our position is cemented by disallowing dissent we deem inappropriate? We have calls to openly divest ourselves of a responsibility to serve those members of our communities who aren’t ones we deem in need of overrepresentation and bold and brave institutional protection. We must fight treating everyone equally without bias because “Neutrality favors the powerful, and further marginalizes the marginalized”? That is absolutely not true. Neutrality is the opposite of favoring the powerful and marginalizing the marginalized. It is the, still, bold idea that your power or level of marginalization has no bearing on the service, treatment, and access to resources you receive at your library. Neutrality means you collect resources and materials to meet the desires and needs of your community members, regardless of their station or views. Does that mean we order a flat earth documentary? Yes. Does that mean we do actually have books proposing eugenics as a policy? Yes. Then, when they aren’t used anymore, we get rid of them. We treat them the same way we treat a celebrity biography, homeopathic remedy books, feng shui instructionals, study bibles, climate change explanatories, climate change denials, etc. We do not take a paternalistic approach that our users are too stupid to understand what is true and what is not. We do not crusade against “wrong thinking” in the name of our own bias. We are objective, we serve, we are neutral. That is bold. That is brave. That is right.

Posted : Mar 09, 2017 08:57