Don’t Oppress My People With Your Public Libraries
Further to recent rumblings in the comments, Captain Nemo steers us to the Twitter feed of Library Journal, a “global community of more than 200,000 librarians and educators,” and which proudly directs its readers to the mental exertions of Ms Sofia Leung:
Our library collections, because they are written mostly by straight white men, are a physical manifestation of white men ideas taking up all the space in our library stacks. Pause here and think about this.
Ms Leung, an academic librarian, is unhappy that public libraries in the US, a white-majority culture with a white-majority history, tend to have, among other things, lots of books by authors with pale skin. This, we’re told, is an “interesting mini-eureka moment” that our Queen of Intersectional Rumination feels compelled to share. When Ms Leung discovers that public libraries in China and South Korea have quite a few books by Chinese and Korean authors, I’m sure she’ll be equally aghast. Every bit as offended.
Ms Leung airs her distaste for “white men ideas” – as if they had been uniform across continents and throughout history – while reminiscing about attending a “white AF conference” two years earlier. I was unsure what the “AF” might refer to and searched for some literary or scholarly explanation. It then occurred to me that a “white AF conference” is, to borrow the woke vernacular, a white as fuck conference. Which is how not-at-all-racist academic librarians convey their thoughts, apparently.
If you look at any United States library’s collection, especially those in higher education institutions, most of the collections (books, journals, archival papers, other media, etc.) are written by white dudes writing about white ideas, white things, or ideas, people, and things they stole from POC and then claimed as white property… When most of our collections filled with this so-called “knowledge,” it continues to validate only white voices and perspectives and erases the voices of people of colour.
At which point, things get a little breathless and intermittently grammatical. However, readers may wish to ponder how synthesising insights from around the world, and from cultures long gone, and preserving those insights, in libraries, is somehow a bad thing. Readers may also wish to ponder the implications of a librarian and self-styled educator, schooled at the University of Washington and Barnard College, New York, and who is offended, something close to enraged, by the existence of “white ideas” and the “so-called ‘knowledge’” of “white dudes.”
As if sensing that her thoughts aren’t sufficiently lurid and unhinged, Ms Leung then shifts into higher gear:
Library collections continue to promote and proliferate whiteness with their very existence and the fact that they are physically taking up space in our libraries. They are paid for using money that was usually ill-gotten and at the cost of black and brown lives via the prison industrial complex, the spoils of war, etc.
Amid this avalanche of conspiracy theories and rote indignation, we’re told that the prevalence of books by pale-skinned authors in a majority-white country “indicates that we… don’t think people of colour are… as important as white people.” The exact line of reasoning here is somewhat unclear and obscured by the inevitable in-group incantations, including “sites of whiteness.” A term deployed to describe public libraries, which, we’re to believe, somehow crush the very breath out of the heroically brown.
Having dismissed as tiresome the entire breadth and history of “white men ideas” – from Ptolemy to Babbage, Tesla to Solzhenitsyn, Turing to Shakespeare – these “white dudes” and their “so-called ‘knowledge’” – Ms Leung then makes clear the kinds of feedback she is willing to entertain:
I still have some thinking to do around this topic, but curious to hear what others think. I’m less interested in hearing that you don’t buy it, so don’t bother with those types of comments.
Ms Leung’s Twitter account is, alas, now in shutdown mode, thereby depriving us of further elaboration. Or at least depriving us of further racial chastisement and smug philistine posturing. We do, however, learn that our academic librarian is fond of “cats, whiskey, intersectional feminism, social justice” and “critical race theory,” the stupefying effects of which have been noted previously.
Update, via the comments:
Bgates quotes Ms Leung,
white dudes writing about white ideas
And adds,
I hadn’t thought it was possible to write six words that encapsulate the collected works of Socrates, Plato, St Paul, St Augustine, Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Aquinas, Shakespeare, Moliere, Newton…
Well, quite. But as we’ve seen many times, wokeness is a kind of rapid-onset morony.
And the fact that Ms Leung’s overt racial animus and eye-widening ignorance haven’t been mocked out of her or resulted in any kind of censure or career impediment – indeed, quite the opposite – suggests that she’s not entirely without the “privilege” she denounces in others, based solely on their melanin levels. I’m now trying to imagine a white librarian, employed by MIT, mouthing comparable noises about the history and literature of non-white people, and their obviously malign inclinations, and surviving the day with the approval of their employer, and their peers, and their job, intact.
Which is how not-at-all-racist academic librarians convey their thoughts, apparently.
They don’t even try to hide it now.
They don’t even try to hide it now.
Yes, there’s a boldness to it. Evidently, some kinds of overt and sweeping racial hostility are more acceptable than others and won’t jeopardise one’s employment, or one’s standing in certain academic circles.
Yes, there’s a boldness to it. Evidently, some kinds of overt and sweeping racial hostility are more acceptable than others and won’t jeopardise one’s employment, or one’s standing in certain academic circles.
Well of course; in a world of identity politics, the only thing that will hold the lefts coalition of competing groups is a uniting hatred of white people.
Which leads to the clown world scenario of “your words are violence, my violence is therefore self defence.”
I hereby resolve to be even more pro-active in acquiring books and other materials for my library written by, for, and about White authors (preferably male and Christian), while weeding from the collection any and all materials by Authors of Color.
Yes, I’m a librarian. Garbage like Miss Leung’s extrusion above inclines me more and more towards White Supremacy, or at least White Nationalism. As I’m going to be hated on anyway, I might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, right? And if all politics is trending towards the racialist, what kind of idiot would side with those who want to destroy the race of which he is a member? As I’m being…encouraged…to choose my loyalties, I’ll choose the side which doesn’t want to kill me and erase my heritage.
How amusingly vapid this person is. White men and their ideas have given us this modern world we live in. The science and technology age. The modern country of the USA where you live and the advanced Europe where I live (UK).
I don’t generally find race an interesting topic – it’s not a subject I care to fixate on, not least because those who do are reliably obnoxious. I tend to think of race (or sexuality or whatever) as one of the least interesting aspects of a person. And if it isn’t one of the least interesting aspects of your personality, then there’s probably something wrong with your personality.
But this is the Mao-lings’ favoured front, the button they can’t stop pushing. As if pushing it, repeatedly – racialising almost everything, making it fractious and tribal – could have anything but unhappy consequences for pretty much everyone, including those they pretend to care about.
[ Edited. ]
…white dudes writing about white ideas, white things,….
Hmmm….
This ‘criticism” is not new. Leung just repeats decades-old garbage from 1970s dorm-room ‘rap’ sessions. Been there, heard that.
– Yes, but that’s all because of WHITENESS. Didn’t you READ?
Even the ones in China. And Japan. I don’t know how the whites got over there – they just DID.
– Besides, the Nobel Committee – aren’t they white?
/sarc
And of course she lists her pronouns.
Here’s a summary of a panel discussion at the Joint Conference of Librarians of Color. I can’t work out if the panel featured insights from Ms Leung but she was certainly in attendance and it’s an enjoyable read anyway.
The session began with 60 seconds of silence to ‘acknowledge the land’, after which the panel talk about the work [they] do to decenter whiteness…
It’s fun to read between the lines. For example, Fobazi Ettarah tells us that she is aggressively herself at work; always outspoken but currently learning to choose her battles … “If white people aren’t uncomfortable, maybe you are not doing your job”. Very often, they don’t want your whole self at work.
Ms Ettarah happens to be the creator of this thrilling online game, which I’m sure you’ll all enjoy:
Killing Me Softly: A Game About Microaggressions
Enjoy, but remember: when the fun stops, stop.
And of course she lists her pronouns.
Ms Leung does seem to have internalised most of the tics and pretensions expected of our self-imagined betters. She conforms very well. And yet, I’m still taken aback by the arrogance of the pose, the shamelessness. For instance,
In other words, ‘I’m not interested in errors or corrections so don’t bother to point them out to me.’ Not the most obvious sign of intellectual probity or unassailable righteousness. And from the woman who elsewhere says, with a toothy smile, “Talk to me about diversity and inclusion in libraries.”
Just don’t dare to disagree, presumably.
Fobazi Ettarah tells us that she is aggressively herself at work… “If white people aren’t uncomfortable, maybe you are not doing your job”. Very often, they don’t want your whole self at work.
It occurs to me that if your “whole self” entails being gratuitously combative with colleagues based on their skin colour, such that their discomfort is a professed ideal, then there’s something fundamentally wrong with your personality. Again, it’s worth noting just how often woke posturing entails the kinds of attitudes that in almost any other context would be deemed narcissistic, detestable, even somewhat sociopathic.
[ Edited. ]
Wow. I wasn’t expecting this when I posted that link to the Twitter post last night. I think this is the first thing I’ve posted (not including a couple of Friday Ephemera oddments) that’s made its way above the line for a good old-fashioned demolition. And you’ve done a better job than I could. The paragraph which jumps out from her article, at least to me, was the following:
Yes, I am thinking about it. Specifically, what people like you with a position of power over these collections might do to them in order to remedy this. Public burnings, perhaps? Mass pulpings? Or maybe you’ll just quietly throw them out, to make sure they’re not “taking up all the space“? Some time ago on Youtube, I watched a talk by a well-known conservative writer (whose name currently escapes me – sorry), who happened to mention that he had heard from a friend that some of our leading universities were throwing valuable antiquarian books into skips. If that story is true, (the speaker himself was unsure of the veracity of it, FWIW) then I don’t hold out much hope for the long-term survival of our library collections.
Wow. I wasn’t expecting this when I posted that link to the Twitter post last night.
Oh, we’re very modern here. It’s a fully interactive joint.
She’s just another *&^%$#g drip that dribbles on and on. I’m sorry that this response contributes in a small way to the recognition she desperately craves.
As Jon Gabriel described it, “Librarians for Book Burning”.
“Our library collections, because they are written mostly by straight white men”
Yes, there’s a reason for that. Because like the Chinese, the Greeks and Romans had a written culture, while many of the other cultures that Ms Leung so adores simply do not.
throwing valuable antiquarian books into skips
Weeding a collection is always a dicey proposition. Searching for market values of old books isn’t something that most librarians are likely to do for every item being weeded, and not all institutions have a lot of alternative weeding options (like giveaway, book sales, auctions, etc). My own institution (a community college) just throws out the weeded materials. Painful, but there’s only so much shelf space available. Getting the policy changed would be nice, but that would require lobbying the Board of Regents, and no one has mustered the energy to bother. The current Board is pretty thoroughly gelded by the current Chancellor anyway.
At least if we *know* something is valuable, we don’t weed it.
And from the woman who elsewhere says, with a toothy smile,…
I find it amazing to think that she must have had multiple photos taken and yet still chose that one.
…that some of our leading universities were throwing valuable antiquarian books into skips.
I’ve heard the same thing myself and experienced it at work when our library was being extended. As they were increasing the size they obviously wanted to get rid of books, for all the computer labs, breakout rooms, and study areas. Like you do.
However, I don’t believe we pitched out an antiquarian books although I wouldn’t put it past a library staffed with Leung-clones.
Well in 2017 most of U.S revenue came from personal income tax (48%), payroll tax (35%), corporate income tax (9%), excise tax (2.5%), and other (5.6%). So I guess the “They are paid for using money that was usually ill-gotten and at the cost of black and brown lives via the prison industrial complex, the spoils of war, etc.” doesn’t actually raise that much revenue. Damn, “spoils of war” sounded so cool.
Which leads to the clown world scenario of “your words are violence, my violence is therefore self defence.”
Which then leads one to seriously wonder when that scenario is amended to be “your very existence is violence; therefore, my initiated acts of violence are merely self-defense.”
Which then leads one to seriously wonder when that scenario is amended to be “your very existence is violence; therefore, my initiated acts of violence are merely self-defense.”
Likely sooner rather than later I suspect.
On a possibly related note: http://tennesseestar.com/2019/04/17/cincinnati-councilwoman-calls-reaction-to-notre-dame-fire-a-prime-example-of-privilege/
Why are we stopping at skin color? Shouldn’t we have a majority of the books from foreign countries? We are only a minority of the world after all. Why should they be in English? Wouldn’t it be more inclusive to include all languages? So what if no on around can read them. We would have our space properly diverse. At least according to the god who is this woman.
“…inclines me more and more towards…”
I think that’s the intent, if you consider that all these types of people prefer to have more division, chaos, friction, etc. between groups.
And you thought it was all Trump and the Russians (band name?) causing the tears in the fabric of civil society.
On a possibly related note
Presumably, we’re expected to pretend that there’s no conceivable distinction to be made between, on the one hand, the graphic destruction of a world-famous historic monument of great importance to millions of Catholics, historians, architects, art lovers, etc – and, on the other, local news. I’ve often said that woke identity politics is stupefying stuff, the moral analogue of bone cancer; but the rate at which it progresses is still quite surprising.
I think that’s the intent
Doubtless on the part of some. Most, I think, are just dupes. Followers who’ve actually bought into the whole “White Privilege” Marxist flapdoodle. Which, unfortunately, doesn’t make them any less dangerous. Possibly moreso, and there’s no one so zealous as a True Believer.
I found an image recently which I think sums up the reasons for escalating white consciousness nowadays.
Which is how not-at-all-racist academic librarians…
Point of order: Only Wypipo Can Be Racist™.
Just thought I’d clear that up. Regardless, it is interesting that someone with a Chinese name and doesn’t appear very pigmented chooses to have a very brown cartoon of herself on the twitters, and has a Wypipo first name. Both are highly problematic and she should be sent for regrooving. On the “Medium” site it lists “Claps from Sofia Leung”. In the old days we would just administer penicillin for that, not advertise on the internet.
However, I digress. All this SJW arglebargle is rather like romance novels, two or three plots, change the names of the players, publish.
Only Wypipo Can Be Racist™.
And it’s remarkable how much bile spills out if you give people free hits.
i chuckled at “sent for regrooving”… is that a firesign theater reference?
… is that a firesign theater reference?
Only after curfew in sectors R or N.
Meanwhile, in related Wypipo Bad news, Rolling Stone (once a popular music magazine) weighs in.
What could possibly go wrong ?
For newcomers, some earlier Don’t Oppress My People posts can be found here, here and here.
From the Joint Conference of Mentalists of Color report:
I’d be more prepared to like these people if they were just shameless Sharpton-style grifters, but they so often disappoint…
And there’s more:
I bet that old white dude has learned his lesson.
I thought that a white “fuck conference” was the thing that happened in Eyes Wide Shut.
In other words, ‘I’m not interested in errors or corrections so don’t bother to point them out to me.’
Of course she isn’t – she’s RIGHT, and she KNOWS IT, and even implying that there MIGHT be another viewpoint in the country much less the room, makes you somebody she dismissively has no time for. Perfect echo-chamber-fodder; and her wanting to “hear what others think” is merely an interest in increasing the comforting white noise in hers.
Hmmm, “white” noise… – Wonder how bad that’d trigger her?
Garbage like Miss Leung’s extrusion above inclines me more and more towards White Supremacy, or at least White Nationalism.
As the dysfunctional define the functional, you mean. Fortunately, as your image at April 17, 2019 at 14:33 reveals, that era has passed.
Instalanche.
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/327909/
Leung likes whiskey, does she. That’s straight up appropriating my white, Tennessee/Kentucky culture. I am open to repatriations, say in the form of Maker’s.
Meanwhile, in related Wypipo Bad news, Rolling Stone (once a popular music magazine) weighs in [on Notre Dame].
“The building was so overburdened with meaning that its burning feels like an act of liberation.”
Can’t say I technically disagree, although any further analysis by the Rolling Stone of Christendom would surely disappoint.
As an emblem of what culture has devolved into, the cathedral probably is overburdened with, er, meaning. Popular churchiness and loud, advertised virtue certainly is. As western religious participation plummets – more or less as the inverse of Ashley Madison’s subscriber base – religion has instead been given the nice comfortable mantle of national secularism that, a few times in a lifetime, this being one, somehow hearken back to reclaim the fixtures of classic spirituality. Then a few days later it’s back to our national anthems and Hollywood critiques and damn the vegans and electric cars and yelling online at the next unseemly cultural outlier. You know, Christian Americanism.
Just because Rolling Stone is all but utterly unequipped to opine meaningfully on anything spiritual or ascendant doesn’t mean it can’t be a broken clock.
Instalanche.
[ Sounds of document shredder kicking into overdrive. ]
Ms. Leung is free to open her own library and fill it with whatever books she chooses.
In the meantime, Ms. Leung, Ms. Leung. STFU! This is a library. You’ve got three carts of books to re-shelve before your shift is over.
Exhibit A of why I left academic librarianship after 2 years of work at the University of California at….
Library School was worse – the nimrods going through those programs now are evil.
They are all batshit crazy.
Don’t public libraries stock the books people *ask* for?
[ Sounds of document shredder kicking into overdrive. ]
Also Mentioned In Despatches at Ace’s, so you might want to issue bear spray to the henchlesbians.
This is how a certain type of librarian makes friends and keeps her job – she tries to impress other librarians with her cool, ultra-hip “publication.” (Look at me, I got published and I have streaks of unnatural highlights!)
“Library School was worse – the nimrods going through those programs now are evil.”
Anyone who goes for the post-grad. level of librarianship, is not quite right in the head. However, to stay in the college library that’s what they have to do – pretend that they are actual academics.
Fookle me, these books are even printed on white paper! Outraged!
(In other news, I like the books written by Murakami, aka that very white man from that very white country, Japan.)
Illiterates are, as a rule, unproductive authors.
It is likely that Ms Leung considers any money that is not hers ‘ill-gotten’.
Weeding a collection is always a dicey proposition.
True, and I understand that there will be books which will, at some point, be surplus to requirements. It’s inevitable. I also understand that not every institution will have the time or inclination to research the value of each tome. But to dump antiquarian books (which in and of themselves are important historical artifacts) into a skip without inviting book dealers or other institutions to take them off their hands in exchange for either a nominal fee or for nothing, is, I think, a scandal. Add to that the proclivities of the delightful individual above and those in academia of a similar bent, then I think there is a real danger that many of our library collections are, long-term, under threat of destruction from a newly fashionable and societally acceptable philistinism.
Also: Instalanche.
My day just keeps getting better.
Her opinion piece, a Twitterer pointed out, looked and read a lot like an old livejournal post, complete with bullets and numbered random ideas instead of a normal introduction to a well-thought-out essay.
You highlighted one of the worst parts of her rant: “most of the collections (books, journals, archival papers, other media, etc.) are written by white dudes writing about white ideas, white things, or ideas, people, and things they stole from POC and then claimed as white property…”
Alfonso X (called “The Wise) created the first state library and funded the first paid librarian. He was interested in a lot of ideas, including getting Jewish and Muslims to contribute. He paid translators – and closely supervised them – to translate religious, philosophical, and historical texts. He hosted French troubadours. He studied astronomy.
He did all these things in the 1200s. He was innovative in many ways, but most of what he did; e.g. the translation, was a carry-over from the 12th century, particularly Christians who thought that some old dead white men from Greece had ideas worth conserving. That WAS and IS Western culture, and it led to the library systems we have now.
So she’s complaining that relative newcomers to the Western-style library find it dominated by… Western writers.
They’re so supportive of diversity of thought, that is you disagree, they block you, and now she’s protected her twitter account because I’m sure she got ratioed.
Our civilization is dead if even librarians are now totalitarians.
Aelfheld wrote:
“‘They [libraries], are paid for using money that was usually ill-gotten and at the cost of black and brown lives via the prison industrial complex, the spoils of war, etc’
“It is likely that Ms Leung considers any money that is not hers ‘ill-gotten’.”
My libraries have been paid for, historically, by subscription, fundraising (with an assist from Carnegie), etc. Now us “black and brown (and white!) bodies” pay for libraries by self-imposed millages on property. Plus bake sales, book sales, and everything else we can.
Hey! Hey! Hey! This is library.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHhy2Gk_xik&feature=youtu.be
I’m sure she got ratioed.
I don’t know about her, but the Library Journal tweet is certainly getting ratioed. And impressively ratioed at that. As of now, the tweet has 7.2k comments, 621 retweets, and 647 likes.
Kind of surprised the great Iowahawk, David Burge, doesn’t get more of an airing round these parts:
Instalanche.
[ Sounds of document shredder kicking into overdrive. ]
Well, yes, after our visitors eat all the pickled eggs, they’ll prolly demand to be fed something more. . . .
Hey! Hey! Hey! This is library.
Hmmm. Perhaps if there were more of real librarians
Do I detect a failure to close an HTML tag?
Oh, let’s see.
Nope. I stand corrected.
Shall I retake my normal seat in the dark, oddly smelling corner?
Yes. … Quite.
I’ve got to the point where anyone who says ‘white people’ to me instantly gets ranked as an absolute knucklehead. Far right and far left share an absolute obsession with the concept.
Give this bitch a one way ticket back to whatever Asian country she or her parent, grandparents or great grandparents came from. I am so damn sick of these whiny POC bitches complaining about White people. If you don’t like the fact that WHITE PEOPLE built this country then feel free to leave it. Civil War 2 cannot start soon enough!
I suppose she really wouldn’t appreciate it being pointed-out how closely, if you just substitute “Jew” for “White”, her thought patterns resemble Hitler’s…
She referenced the disparity in news coverage between Monday’s fire [in Paris] and the recent arsons against predominantly black churches in Louisiana as proof of her argument.
There has been a spate of arson attacks against French churches over the past few months, and I didn’t notice much coverage in the media. So I think it more likely that the non-local media doesn’t really care about non-famous churches getting destroyed than that they’re all a bunch of racists.
This doesn’t qualify as fantasy, let alone sci-fi.
Darleen, watching that, ‘glorified PowerPoint’ was the term that came to mind.
“This doesn’t qualify as fantasy, let alone sci-fi.”
‘Glorified PowerPoint presentation’ is the term that came to mind.
Until now I did not realize there were Mary Sue PowerPoint presentations.
Isn’t Ms. Sofia Leung participating in cultural and linguistic (and even geographic) appropriation?
She’s speaking English in America, neither of which (or her name Sofia?) is that of her Chinese heritage. Who is she to pontificate on the alleged depredations of white heritage? She participates in what she condemns…
white dudes writing about white ideas
I hadn’t thought it was possible to write six words that encapsulate the collected works of Socrates, Plato, St Paul, St Augustine, Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Aquinas, Shakespeare, Moliere, Newton, Gibbon, Jefferson, Darwin, Lincoln, Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, Friedrich Hayek, Claude Shannon, Richard Feynman, George Orwell, C.S. Lewis, and P.G. Wodehouse,
and I still don’t.
They don’t even try to hide it now.
In an earlier, gloriously patronising public declaration, Ms Leung denounced the “privilege” and “racist audacity” of “white people,” on grounds that some of them voted in ways that displeased her, thus thwarting the election of Hillary Clinton. Coupled with the sentiments aired above, it rather adds weight to the suspicion that leftism entails quite a lot of psychological projection.
I hadn’t thought it was possible to write six words that encapsulate the collected works of Socrates, Plato, St Paul, St Augustine, Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Aquinas, Shakespeare, Moliere, Newton…
Well, quite. Again, wokeness is stupefying.
And the fact that Ms Leung’s overt racial animus and eye-widening ignorance haven’t been mocked out of her, or resulted in any kind of censure or career impediment – indeed, quite the opposite – suggests that she’s not entirely without “privilege” herself. I’m now trying to imagine a white librarian, employed by MIT, mouthing comparable noises about the history and literature of non-white people, and their malign inclinations, and surviving the day with the approval of their employer, and their peers, and their job, intact.
Hat doffed to bgates for correctly including Plum in his list of greats. Hat pointedly donned at David for not leaving him in at the end of the ellipsis.
Great blog. Tip jar hit.
Tip jar hit.
Bless you, sir. May your armpits be fragrant during unexpected moments of intimacy.
I’m now trying to imagine a white librarian, employed by MIT, mouthing comparable noises about the history and literature of non-white people, and their malign inclinations, and surviving the day with the approval of their employer, and their peers, and their job, intact.
MIT? Sure. Only a matter of time. Harvard, Yale, Duke, and looks like Penn is trying to catch up. We are living at the intersection of 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and A Brave New World.
From Sam Duncan: ‘What I’ve learned in the last 24 hours: librarians hate books, architects hate buildings, and historians hate history.’
True. What’s left of local libraries near me is they are no longer for books. They are now ‘community centres’ (I always shudder at hearing those two words in such close proximity) and as places for people to do things other than reading, not very interested in the printed word.
Years ago, when the Virgin capitalist machine briefly flirted with bookshops I noted with dismay that while all books on offer were categorised into sections and categories (which is what Dewey thought should happen where many books are gathered together) that on the very top row, in first place, was the Koran. Apparently in that collection of inspirational guidance it says that no book should be placed higher than theirs, so that’s what the kuffar organisation of Virgin did. Unfortunately visitors to the store were less devout and tended to pick up a book like ‘The Beginner’s Guide to Witchcraft’ or even ‘How To Fix Your Waste Disposal System’ and place them on the top of the shelf. Yes, the infidels put them above the wholly holy book!
No doubt distressed, Virgin closed the one and only book shop of theirs I ever saw. A sad loss.
On the topic of libraries…
…I am guessing the books are getting in the way of shooting up…
…because the latrines are full.
Yes, unavoidable, it must be accepted, because I am sure it is racist or something to throw bums and junkies out.
They are now ‘community centres’ (I always shudder at hearing those two words in such close proximity) and as places for people to do things other than reading, not very interested in the printed word.
Ah. This is why my wife is complaining that they are no longer quiet places, though I gotta admit I noticed this 20 years ago when they became placed for middle and high school students to have “study sessions “, for which it was wrong, wrong, wrong to criticize them for because simply by being in a library they were doing something “noble”. With the internet I have little reason to go to the library anymore. Seems whenever I do go (to vote, usually) there’s a good number of old hippie types and other marginally functional folks hanging around. And this is in suburban Central Florida, not some northern urban circus.
I am sure it is racist or something to throw bums and junkies out.
Even the word bum now has an air of transgression about it, on account of not implying the obligatory victimhood.
“What better place is there to do this than in a public library?” … “It is unavoidable that people are going to use drugs in public bathrooms,” says Dr. Alex Walley, director of the Addiction Medicine Fellowship Program…
By “unavoidable” he means “we will require you to accomodate addicts and other lowlifes.”
…”The sooner that libraries accept that and try to prepare for it, the better off they’re going to be.”
A better suggestion: arrange for an endless stream of addicts, bums and creeps to invade his property, shoot up in his bathroom, eat his food, sleep in his bed, defecate on his floors. Prevent him from resisting this. Tell him that he’ll be better off if he just accepts it.
The sooner that libraries accept that and try to prepare for it, the better off they’re going to be.
At which point, you realise that the degenerates shooting up in the library toilets aren’t the only degenerates you need to get rid of.
The sooner that libraries accept that and try to prepare for it…
It is a failure of society that there is no place more equipped with trained medical staff fully able accurately to explain Narcan and its correct usage, equipped and prepared to handle all the potential complications of some clown ODing, not to mention fully able to tell the difference between an OD and some other medical problem (and correctly respond to it) than a public library.
Of course the librarians are right to have such a high opinion of themselves, why I remember clearly anatomy class and the librarians assisting us in dissection, talking us through biochem lab, and our first forays into surgery in the ORs back in the 300-399 stacks.
May your armpits be fragrant during unexpected moments of intimacy.
While that sounds pleasant, perhaps…
*Will: (kissing his paramour wildly)
*Grace: (pulls away suddenly)
Will: Darling?
Grace: Do you…smell something?
Will: ??
Grace: Something…flowery and….fragrant?
Will: (sniffs inquisitively) Mmmm…. yyyyess, I think I do now that you mention it.
Grace: (sniffing further in a Willward direction) It’s coming from your armpits!
Will: (sniffs self) Good God! So it is!
Grace: Will, that smells like… it smells like…mother’s eau de toilette! How could you!?
Will: But darling! I don’t know how it got there! Honestly!
Grace: You don’t know how you wound up wearing my mother’s cologne?! That’s it Will, my sister told me something like this would happen! (storms out)
Will: But…but… (sobs uncontrollably)
Just sayin’
*Yes, I know the sitcom characters wouldn’t be involved like this but I had to work with the name I was given. Frankly, Reginald would have been funnier in my opinion but there you are.
Just sayin’
I see you’ve given it way more thought than was strictly necessary.
Of course the librarians are right to have such a high opinion of themselves
I could never understand how they could find enough subject matter to justify post docs in Library “Science” let alone undergrad degrees. People coming out of community college as library technicians are better equipped to run a library than the librarians. It’s not, as you point out, surgery.
People coming out of community college as library technicians are better equipped to run a library than the librarians.
As the holder of a Master’s of Library “Science” I have to agree whole-heartedly with this. Most of my job consists of helping students print their documents, insert page numbers into their headers, and, occasionally, helping them find articles in various online databases to which the library subscribes.
An Associates degree would’ve been fully adequate for everything I do. BUT! If my job “requires” a Master’s then obviously librarians should be paid more than was the case anon!
Yeah, it’s creeping credentialism and rent-seeking. I just think of it as getting my tax money back and try not to feel too guilty:-/.
Yeah, it’s creeping credentialism and rent-seeking.
A product of our age and time and it’s in all fields I’m afraid.
We may have reached an inflection point where that is changing. I’ve been semi-retired for the last five years to spend more time with the kids. We’re past the point where they need me now and I’m going a little stir crazy so I’ve been looking at getting a job to keep me occupied. Most of the listings I’m seeing don’t require anything more than high school, albeit these aren’t professional positions. But It’s a switch from 5 years ago when employers were asking for university degrees simply because they could.
I think they’re finding that people with BAs make no better employees that those with High School Diplomas. In fact, anecdotally, a lot of degree holders make their way to community college before finding employment.
My mom was a library tech for 20 years. During that time I met several of her colleagues (including the librarians)and they turned out to be pretty good people for the most part. Your cartoon is the reason she left the library to become the Admin Coordinator in the music theatre department. 😉
We may have reached an inflection point where that is changing.
NZ just saw an ad campaign actively discouraging people going to university and taking up a trade qualification instead.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/02/commercial-uses-coming-out-experience-to-change-stigma-around-trades.html
B-b-b-but all the blue collar trade jobs are going to be replaced by robots. All the smart people who write for Wired magazine and the Washington Post say so. Ask any millennial or most x-ers…and even many of the hippest of the boomers. They’ll tell you what they know about the future. You see, it’s because they’ve read so much about it. The future, I mean. They know these things.
I have to agree with WTP (April 19, 2019 at 10:09) regarding how many people know what the future holds. Michel Houellebecq said in an interview that ‘Europe’s true vocation is to make democracy impossible and install a government of experts.’
Curious how many youngsters today think being ruled by people with no accountability is a great way forward, unless of course they think *they* will be the ones who will be chosen to be the experts. As they say, kids know everything until they actually grow up.
Curious how many youngsters today think being ruled by people with no accountability is a great way forward, unless of course they think *they* will be the ones who will be chosen to be the experts.
There are some people who find the burden of self-responsibility to be too heavy, and who like being taken care of by Big Brother. I have known a few such people.
Do you remember the late ‘sixties? Richard Brautigan? All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace – that was the phrase that crystalised for me the recognition that there was something creepy inside our hippie pipedream. Most troubling was that Brautigan didn’t seem to know how creepy he sounded there – nor did his publishers, publicists, or most of his audience. But Brautigan’s fame was a bubble, a nine-days-wonder; his published burblings don’t ornament many coffee tables nowadays, if any. But the creepy side of bliss-without-responsibility has shown itself over and over; and still very few heed the alarm.
“They are paid for using money that was usually ill-gotten and at the cost of black and brown lives via the prison industrial complex, the spoils of war, etc.”
I’m surprised she wrote “black and brown lives”… It’s “black and brown BODIES”, dummy. This woman is clearly a moderate.
“As they say, kids know everything until they actually grow up.”
Well that’s the thing. Younger people can be very dismissive in these regards, yet older people are the ones who have actually lived in the future.