The Rally Monkey frowns upon your shenanigans.
Posted on 08/22/2009 11:31:45 AM PDT by past_present
Brooklyn's chief librarian has yanked a nearly 80-year-old book from the shelves because it depicts Africans as monkeys.
Tintin Au Congo is the only book in the city library system hidden from public view after a reader complained that it was "racially offensive."
The popular Belgian children's work - due to be made into a movie by Steven Spielberg - is locked behind a series of hidden doors on the third floor of Brooklyn's central library.
"'Tintin au Congo' was relocated," said director Richard Reyes-Gavilan. Library officials across the city said they've debated pulling about 25 books and DVDs from city shelves, including "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," by Ann Coulter, and a Harold Robbins novel, but rejected the requests.
Only "Tintin" was blacklisted in Brooklyn - and quietly yanked from the
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
"Library officials across the city said they've debated pulling about 25 books and DVDs from city shelves, including "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," by Ann Coulter..."
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHH!!!!
Sheesh....
CENSORSHIP
Aren’t the white people in Tin Tin sort of caricatured as well?
Where is the censorship?
"is locked behind a series of hidden doors on the third floor of Brooklyn's central library. "'Tintin au Congo' was relocated,"
Wow, I'm surprised they didn't put a Tyranosaurus Rex on a chain near the books, and a series of warding magical enchantments.
They should now look deeply into that racist book by Mark Twain “Life On The Mississippi” ...</sarc>
Looks like they have many copies of Mein Kampf freely available.
And what are they going to do with the books after they pull them? Burn them like their cousin with the mustache once did?
The Rally Monkey frowns upon your shenanigans.
"Library officials across the city said they've debated pulling about 25 books and DVDs from city shelves, including "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," by Ann Coulter, and a Harold Robbins novel, but rejected the requests"
In other news, the Brooklyn Library is celebrating “Banned Book Day” on Thursday, August . . .
It’s a matter of time. Ann is going to be behind a series of hidden doors on the thrid floor too. They’ll put in some kryptonite too— just to make sure.
Except if some kid wants to access a porn site on one of their computers.
ML/NJ
doesn’t count when it affects Christians...remember Piss Christ??or the statue of the Virgin Mother which purposely had feces thrown on it??? that was considered “art”- in fact the former won an award...
Which explains why so many copies of Mein Kampf have been checked out.
Until then, how 'bout sticking with the facts and not your specious, disingenuous and patently false posts.
Sometimes I think it would be best to stop following all that’s going on, due to my health.
“This shitze enough to make a grown man cry”..........
he said while checking his armory.
You can call me a prophet then. I guarantee you my friend- Ann will be behind the hidden doors any day now.
When I was a kid whenever adults made an uproar over a book they felt was unfit for teenagers, their efforts assured that we all got our hands on it and devoured every word.
As she should, --so that her books can continue to be checked out.
A popular liberal tactic is to "re-shelve" controversial books so that nobody can find them. No doubt there are many copies of Coulter's books hidden away behind stacks of childrens' or gardening books, listed as "unable to locate" in library computers.
I doubt it
Look if the book has been out longer than you’ve been alive just STFU and understand that the world doesn’t revolve around you and how you feel. GEEZ what is wrong with people today and how will they ever survive if they hav to face any sort of hardship?
I see some dated depictions of blacks but no monkeys
Liberals aways bring monkeys into these things which to me says that there is projection going on
Yes I have to agree with you about that. When the warning labels went onto music in the mid 80’s that pretty much insured a hit album if it got the parental warning!
Not if we can take back the libraries.
Your request for Tintin au Congo / Hergé. was successful. You will be able to pick up this material at Highlawn (42) when it is ready . Copyright © 2009 Brooklyn Public Library | Terms & Conditions
I remember when my public university locked “The Joy of Sex” in what was called “the cage” and the “Playboy” issue that featured a professor was locked in the attic.
Yeah, I’m not seeing the monkeys...
Where is the censorship?The library can't pass an all-encompassing, universal law to censor such books---it can't, legally or morally, ask any library other than itself to perform similarly---but it can perform, and apparently has performed, its own censorship for and within its own facility. We're no further enjoined from assailing its own censorship, however, than we would be enjoined from assailing any attempt by any government to consecrate any sort of censorship by law.
Glad to oblige in any case, if the writer is good. Hergé is clean, good-hearted fun. Anyone who takes offense at innocent caricatures in cartoons might as well be a Moslem.
My library has a gorgeous new edition of Little Black Sambo. Not the old golliwog illustrations.
I am not by any means a "book burner" but to some extent to believe in "community standards" which has kept pornography out of libraries in conservative communities.
So, in the case, I must stand with the Brooklyn Library, while you stand with the ACLU.
Love love love Tintin.
Librarians get worked up over ‘freedom of speech’ observations but are very quick to squelch dissenting views.
I’m not a lawyer, but I suspect the library’s action would not hold up to a civil lawsuit. My understanding is that public libraries must first establish criteria as to what constitutes an “offensive” book; that is, they can’t simply act in an arbitrary fashion regarding particular books.
This is how it works for public school libraries, so I suspect the law would be even more rigorous for municipal libraries. In schools, a parent or group of parents can’t simply insist a book be removed. Formal democratic procedures must be followed.
I am not by any means a "book burner" but to some extent to believe in "community standards" which has kept pornography out of libraries in conservative communities. So, in the case, I must stand with the Brooklyn Library, while you stand with the ACLU.Actually, I stand with no such thing. For one thing, saying we can assail the library's own internal censorship doesn't mean that we can't approve it, so long as it didn't assume that its own policy could or should become another library's policy in another community or venue. (This works, too, with a book the Brooklyn Library might okay, even if another library in another community rejected it, and this wouldn't even come close to remaining the exclusive province of porn which I think we'd all agree should be kept away from children, and not just in libraries.) Even if I think they're fools to pull or hide an ancient book that's being held to a standard that didn't exist, rightly or wrongly, in its own time and place (I don't believe one ancient Belgian book is going to turn a kid into a racist), never mind how foolish they were to have thought of pulling or hiding nothing more dangerous than one woman's political writing.
For another, and perhaps more important thing, you probably don't need me to tell you that the standard I enunciated in my original post would probably be hammered by the ACLU as sanctioning censorship of any kind! They'd see what I said in my first sentence and, perhaps having a case of apoplexy over that sentence, never even get to the very next sentence. Show me a cherry tree and I'll show you the spaces from which the ACLU has plucked very selectively the various fruits . . .
Well, it would appear that many on this thread stand with the ACLU in their assailing the Brooklyn Library for banning this book.
So, it appears that you are opposed to the banning of this particular book, that being the case, are there are books or subject manner that you believe should be banned from public libraries?
Looks as if they'll find a way to blame Sarah Palin for this too </sarcasm>
It appears that this situation is just as true as the BS stories about her doing the same thing during the campaign.
That was my thought as well. Herge's work uses the standard cartoonist caricature of the day for Africans--the lips and mouth depicted as a dot on a rounded white protrusion on a black face--that every cartoonist used, including Rube Goldberg and nearly every early animation studio. Whatever else might be said, they don't resemble monkeys. The protest says much more about the protesters and their need to read "racism" into everything than it does about Herge.
Well, it would appear that many on this thread stand with the ACLU in their assailing the Brooklyn Library for banning this book.Even the ACLU can be right once in a blue moon, even if in so doing they find themselves standing aside people they'd ordinarily and otherwise fight.
. . . are there are books or subject manner that you believe should be banned from public libraries?Given the absolute choice I'd probably sooner see public libraries impose control over access to certain books or publications without banning them outright. That said, I've never really understood the necessity for something like porn to be accessible in a public library myself, and I've never favoured its accessibility to children, even if I happen to think there's probably something very wrong with, say, a boy who didn't want to look at a pretty or sexy girl even once, it being understood that merely wanting to look at a sexy girl even once doesn't automatically mean said boy is going to turn into a raving sex offender.
But I don't believe it would be a terrible imposition upon some adult whose, ahem, taste runs that way, to find it available only through certain retail outlets and under certain conditions and not by way of his (or her, for that matter) local public library.
If you're asking me about other kinds of controversial materials---say, political or social writings, fiction or nonfiction---I don't have a problem with a library making them available, whatever they are. (If only because it's always good to know what your adversary might be thinking, assuming you can call it thinking in a lot of cases.) My worry regarding political or social writings over which my hairs would stand on end, especially those in which you can discern a pronounced eagerness on the author(s)' part not just to communicate a viewpoint but to consecrate it into a living and even legal prescription, is in the end the same as enunciated by Frank Chodorov in 1949. He wrote specifically of the prosecution (under the old Smith Act) of the top leaders of the Communist Party USA, but he could have been writing about anyone communicating any idea, even one far less grotesque than Communism:
The danger, to those who hold freedom as the highest good, is not the ideas . . . espouse[d] but the power . . . aspire[d] to. Let them rant their heads off—that is their right, which we cannot afford to infringe—but let us keep from them the political means of depriving everybody else of the same right. (From "How to Curb the Commies"; analysis, May 1949; republished in Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov [Indianapolis: LibertyFund, 1982].)
Er, apology for the clumsy HTML . . . ;)
Look, at least be honest enough to admit you don't have much of an argument.
What you are putting up is not an argument, it's just name calling.
Not all that much different than being called a racist because I object to the health care plan.
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