vanilla wrote:
Well, sure. There was a lot of pornography – hard and soft – floating around during the late 19th century. But it was never in plain sight. One of the hallmarks of Victorian “morality” was that pornography, sex, titillation, etc., were “dirty” things that had to be sequestered away in dark alleys with the lights out, and never ever talked about. The notion that arousing pictures “don’t belong” in a public library is, in all likelihood, a hold-over from that.
The main branch of the Salt Lake public library includes in its collection such works as Fanny Hill, Justine, and The Story of O, as well as Anne Rampling, Jean Auel, and Jackie Collins. It contained Madonna’s abysmal Sex until too many copies were stolen. It contains Salinger, Vonnegut, Heinlein; it contains Jackie Collins and a plethora of schlock romance. It contains both pro- and anti-LDS literature and fiction, all sorts of various cult and occult works, including at one point books by Frazer, Crowley, and LaVey. It contains books by Al Gore, Rush Limbaugh, and various Dharma bums. And (horrors!) is contians books by that well-known subversive Cecil Adams.
IOw, there are lots of books in that library that will offend people. There are lots of books that could offend a majority of people–remember, we’re talking Salt Lake City here, deep in the heart of Zion.
And yet, it’s a library.
Allow the majority of patrons to determine what the library holds? I’d rather eat glass, thankewverramuch.
One more thing. From Spider Woman’s graciously provided link above, we find this:
That about makes me want to pull my hair out. I find this to be on a par with President Bush’s unthinking “there ought to be limits on freedom” line.
Ms. Sbrocco–find yourself a nice quiet police state, willya? The rest of us are trying to be responsible adults.
Unfortunately, this is the kind of battle libraries must continually engage in with purity activists (you wonder if this clerk took her job with the express purpose of making a “moral stand”) and opportunistic politicians.
If a major issue is illicit bathroom use of titillating images, the censors had better purge revealing ads from all the magazines. And don’t forget those naughty anatomy texts.
I find it hard to believe that people get upset about Cosmopolitan cover photos. The mag has unparalleled talent when it comes to de-sexing attractive women in favor of airbrushed mannikins.
"I could tell you things about Peter Pan
And the Wizard of Oz…there’s a dirty old man!!!
(from Smut by Tom Lehrer)
Lehrer again. Nice call, Jack.
http://www.talkmagazine.com/talkmedia/feb2001/index.html
Here is the issue in question. Heather is showing a large amount of cleavage but she isn’t any less clothed than most fashion or fitness magazine models. (although the pose is a little naughty)
I don’t see how it could be considered pornographic if she could walk in public in those clothes without getting arrested.
I think the woman objecting to Talk went about it the wrong way. This isn’t a library selection issue, it’s a personnel issue. If she is offended by particular magazines that her coworkers are reading around her, she should bring it up to her supervisor and frame it as a sexual harassment issue.
If male staffers are taking magazines that belong to the library and jerking off on top of them, that’s also a personnel issue. You can’t do that if you’re a library employee. You don’t own the magazine and you are entitled to ruin them.
Every public library has established procedures for people who wish to object to materials. If the woman in question here wished to make a formal objection, it shoud be handled as any other.
Wow… She’s HOT! After seeing that cover, I can only assume that Cleveland is also working to close off all public swimming pools and beaches, due to the much more graphic examples of pornographic sights to be seen there compared to that magazine?
People can be amazing at times.
JFTR, we weren’t talking about Cleveland, we were talking about Willowick. It’s about 15 minutes east of Cleveland, and in another county altogether. It’s nominally considered a suburb along with Wickliffe and Willoughby Hills, two other cities at the far west end of Lake County (Cleveland is in Cuyahoga County.)
The Cleveland Public Library, and the Cuyahoga County Public Library branches, are very well stocked, and I can assure you they contain a great deal of explicit material.
Thank you Renton_lvr for providing the link, I couldn’t get February to come up when I tried earlier.
Ummm… now I see why I wouldn’t have picked up this issue. That pose just doesn’t do a thing for me. Sort of frog like don’t you think?
-Doug
If there were more porn and less guns it would be a better world ? no ?
I suppose the library is fulla war books and gore so what is wrong with some breasts, ok , it was a mag with a rude shot ( cos they wanna sell more ).
Big deal.
She should get over it…
She sure looks great! And it’s effective, too. I certainly wanna buy the issue now!
My thing is this: the clerk was right if she was acting on her own behalf, taking a personal stand. That’s a big if, because she did ask her supervisor to remove the issue, didn’t she? If she simply said, “I can’t work here with this filth,” and then quit because of it, that would have been ok with me, because then she wouldn’t be pushing her morals on anyone else - just herself. But if she was taking a moral stance To Clean Up The Library, then she’s wrong - you can’t make other people moral, no matter what you do. It’s just not right, dammit!
Having said that… Well, while a library is supposed to be for all of the people, someone has to decide what goes in there. So how do they decide? Usually they - I would think - base their decisions on what their community allows. I mean, I know that the libraries in a county library system don’t have the power to pick their own books, but the Lords of the County do, and my impression was that they selected the books for each library based on what that particular community would allow. Am I wrong in this thinking?
If you go to libraries in the cities, where folks tend to be more tolerant (since you have so many different people living in such a constricted area anyway), you’ll find more diversity, right?
If you take my smalltown library, I’m sure they’d be reluctant to put Talk in there, and they’d resist until and unless patrons started asking for it.
(And you know, it occurs to me that maybe the libraries do pick the mags but not the books? Anyone know?)
[Aside: I probably contradicted myself somewhere along the line. That’s one great thing about an actual debate; if you learn things along the way, your outlook can be changed.]
A librarian signs in!
This is really a non issue. If the woman that quit is a clerk, she has no say in the library collection. She probably low paid and is stuck doing things like picking up the men’s room. I’d quit too under those circumstances. Ick! And if she wants to make a big stink about the dirty magazine in the library, that’s her business, too.
But, although there’ll be a little fuss in that community, I doubt it will change the library budget or the collection policy. The library might keep Talk behind the counter for a while, but this will be for the own magazine’s safety, as much as for community PR. They paid good money for it and somebody snuck into the bathroom and whacked off and now it’s ruined. If it gets a more controlled check-out procedure, i.e. looking the librarian in the eye and signing it out at the desk, there’ll be fewer people in the bathroom. Or the person in question will get a bill from the library for ruining the magazine.
And, don’t worry. Porn in the library is safe. Most librarians are into freedom of speech. If people want to read it, libraries tend to buy it. So Madonna’s Sex makes the cut, but Joe Shmoe’s self-published stroke mag does not. No demand.
Kai the librarian,
who knows where all the dirty books are
Spider Woman: thank you for the link.
Sua: Dick Cheney? you pervert!
pl: Unfortunately, I live in Euclid right now, not Lakewood anymore.
Its very close to Willowick.
I don’t see how someone could find the photo of Heather shocking, but this lady seemed very “square” when they interviewed her on tv.
BTW, a guy came into the local (Euclid) library and asked why they didn’t carry The Advocate, and must’ve bought them a subscription becasue its here now on the shelf. Cool eh?
cough
Er, my library is paid for by my tax dollars. Ergo, they work for me. They’re spending my money to purchase books and magazines, and I ought to have a say in how they’re spending it.
A librarian is hired by the city council, who are elected by the taxpayers. The taxpayers entrust the librarian with the day-to-day operation of the library, much as the taxpayers entrust the day-to-day operation of the Street Department to the guys in the steel-toed work boots down at the City Garage. So no, we don’t peer over the Street Department’s shoulder and supervise the asphalt-mixing. Nor do we peer over the head librarian’s shoulder and supervise the purchase orders for books and magazines. But if we find out that the Street Department has screwed up the asphalt-mixing, and that the whole length of Main Street that they just tore up and repaired all last summer now has to be torn up again and re-done, then yes, we do have a right to complain, and to see that Steps Are Taken.
cough
Er, my public schools are paid for by my tax dollars. Ergo, they work for me. They’re spending my money, and I ought to have a say in how they’re spending it.
…and er, you probably mean the 1st Amendment, right? 
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.table.html#amendments
cough
Disagree. Sorry. If I found out my public library had spent my money on Debbie Does Dallas and its many sequels, I’d be upset. And I’d have a right to be.
What the Supreme Court may or may not have ruled don’t mean diddly when the library’s annual budget review comes up before the City Council.
What the Supreme Court may or may not have ruled don’t mean diddly when the City Council comes up for re-election. And that’s the Bottom Line when it comes to public libraries–the Will of the People. Public libraries don’t have some kind of Holy Mandate from God to disseminate information to the world. They’re just big overgrown book collections, paid for by Your Tax Dollars, for the Good of the Community. And the community in question is entitled to a say in what’s on the shelves.
Okay. From Spider Woman’s link.
And, Maeglin? LIke I said, here’s the bottom line. Sad but true.
This is a very small library, without much clout.
So, the story is: A clerk has a conniption fit over what she perceives as smut, she manages to make enough noise to get other people upset, and the media picks up on it. Business As Usual in America.
I’m with Kaiju–IMO it’s a non-issue. Also, the link didn’t mention anything about the magazine being “stained”. Do you suppose cleveland.com removed that part as being not substantiated enough to post on the Web for posterity?
Duck Duck Goose, what exactly is your point?
Wrong again. When the government collects your tax dollars, they are no longer yours. This is a major sticking point for many people who believe that they should have more say in the day-to-day workings of their municipality because “they pay the taxes.”
It is not your money.
Just because it was once your money does not entitle you to force a government institution to break the law or violate the Constitution.
When I mentioned the 14th Amendment, I meant it.
Section 1 of the 14th Amendment demonstrates that the States, and all municipal governments therein, are still bound by the Constitution, regardless of how many of its individuals may feel. Cross-apply this to Article X of the First Amendment and you will see how you, or members of your community, wouldn’t have a toe to stand on.
Fair enough. But when you find an article in the Constitution that says that Steps Must be Taken to correct Big Mistakes in freedom of expression, let me know, m’kay?
Negative, speed racer. First they obey the law. When there is room left over, you can plan stamp club and children’s reading hour to make the library work for you. You, of course, in a general sense.
But the content of the library is off limits.
Of course. No one ever needs a right to be angry. Would you have a right to demand that it be removed from the shelf? Nope.
Which doesn’t mean diddly when several progressive civil liberties organizations are poised to file a major lawsuit for First Amendment infringement. Lately this has been a powerful deterrence from content regulation in libraries.
How can you say this given the tone and content of the rest of your post? On one hand you think that you have some claim to tax money that’s no longer yours, on the other you think it’s a non-issue?
The councilman is certainly posturing, as small-town politicians have to do. $50 says it’s all forgotten by the time the actual budget negotiations start. Typical feel-good malarky. No one wants a national headline lawsuit from the ACLU.
IMHO, Ms. Sbrocco needs to grow thicker skin. Sex is pervasive in this country, and if every magazine or book with a sexual article, advertisement, or photo were taken from the library, the shelves would be bare indeed.
That said, I don’t think it’s the role of the public library to be the arbiter of what is “acceptable” reading material for the community. I concede that some provisions must be made for keeping obviously adult books from children, but that’s easily accomplished by having two kinds of library cards (as my library does): one “all-access” and the other “kids section only”. And I also concede that citizens do have the right to make requests of the library, and the obligation of the library in following those requests. I just don’t think the library (or an employee of same) has the right to decide what is and what is not acceptable. Let the citizens do that for themselves.
Robin
Because libraries have finite resourses, they have to make decisions about what to put on the shelves and what not to. And in making those decicion, using the community’s wishes as a guideline is really the only acceptable standard.
To move away from the porn issue, I can see that a community might object if a library opted to spend 50% of the annual periodical budget on bird-watching magazines. I don’t think anyone would look at this as a constitutional issue, but a utilitarian one–if only a small percentage of the town has any interest in birds, and a large persentage of the town has interests reflected in other periodicals that are not being ordered because all the money is earmarked for the bird magazines, well then, the community ought to have the right to override the library’s plans.
Now, it is important that a vocal minority not be the only group considered when the library makes buying decisions, but certainly the needs and desires of the community as a whole ought to be taken into account.
The issue is much more problematic when you start talking about removing material the library has already purchased. (Although the concept of finite resourses still applies to a certain degree–shelf space is precious, and our University library is forced to shit can journals and books periodically to make way for new aquisitions.) I would say that if a library already owns a book or magazine it ought not bow down to ocmmunity pressure to get rid of it. However, memebers of the community are well within thier rights to argue that the subscription ought not be renewed because the magazine contributes little to the collection and that more valuble aquizitions are not being made in order to pay for it. (That is, of course, a subjective judgement, which is why I said that they could make an arguement to that effect, not that they could make a good arguement)
that the lovely heather is promoting? I wonder if that has anything to do with it? I wonder if the citizens and or city councilmember that are opposing this are catholic?
If so, is the city council creating a SOCAS issue if they succeed at getting the book removed?
MAEGLIN – Not to wade into this, but this really isn’t a Privileges and Immunities issue – it’s a freedom of speech/right to receive information issue – i.e., a First Amendment issue, as are 99% of cases dealing with the propriety of censorship. You could make a due process argument, but that would still IMO be a First Amendment issue in the main. The Fourteenth Amendment provides the mechanism whereby federal rights apply to the states, but it very often does not provide an independent basis of recovery. In this instance, IMO, it does not.
At the heart of the issue is the conflict between the desire of a minority to censor certain works versus the constitutional right of all of us to receive information. (The “right to receive information” is a relatively new ideation of the First Amendment, by the way; see Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844, 117 S.Ct. 2329, 138 L.Ed.2d 874 (1997); Board of Education v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 73 L.Ed. 2d 435, 102 S.Ct. 2799 (1982).) This right to receive information means a library must be given broad discretion to choose the materials it feels best fulfill its mission (which is usually something along the lines of “to provide information to the public, and a forum for learning, entertainment, and the free exchange of ideas” – I just made that up but you get the gist). But that broad discretion is not absolute; it can be curtailed by a showing of a compelling state interest in censoring the materials. Under such a rationale, excessive pornography or books on how to build bombs might well be legally excluded. I doubt it applies to Talk magazine, though.