The best offense, part one

I spent a few hours going through the list of 168 "books of concern" sent to TN Sen. Rusty Crowe by GOP "activists" from Washington Co., TN.

Somehow Six Rivers Media -- which thankfully published them -- got the idea they were all children's books, and the initial, printed version of the list had a front page story that indicated them as such. But a quick-acting Washington Co. librarian verified that fewer than 40 were actually classified as children's books, and once notified of the error, Six Rivers corrected the cover story as it appears online.

The list itself only includes title, author, and a letter code or note indicating the book's "offense." The vast majority -- 112 titles -- offended by being "LGBTQ." If anything that number should be higher, because a separate offense is "gender identity" (it appears 22 times) even though, as applied, there's actually no difference between it and the rainbow letters. And then when you look even more closely, some of the titles that lack the rainbow letters really should have them, e.g. Two Grooms and a Cake, whose crimes somehow are only "AI" ("Age Inappropriate") and "BI" (no, not the "bi" in LGBT, but "Bias/Indoctrination"), when the title clearly indicates its gay content. As for AI, it appears 97 times; BI appears separately from AI 18 times.

C'mon, let's just call this list what it is: the Biased, Age-Inappropriate LGBTQ Indoctrination Titles. And let's also characterize the censors' fear: that the books are poised to leap out and brainwash witless children by telepathic transfer of black-magick-pilled verbiage from a closed book.

I almost feel sorry for Stamped: Racism, Anti-racism, and You, with its lack of rainbow letters and its criminal codes HT (not in the key. Hot Topic?) and OF ("Omission of fact," an odd complaint from GOP activists given that OF is our sitting President's entire rhetorical game).

If you happen to be predisposed to dislike everything rainbow except what's in the Bible (which when it comes to objection codes, I'll put it up any day against The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie -- a six-time offender, and my next read), such a full-page list of offending titles can overwhelm. So let me provide you with some context:

Show me the 40 rainbow books in this children's department.

If you're browsing, there's a lot to choose from. No library user, adult or child, is a blank slate. Everyone brings a different outlook, interests, and tastes to the shelf; everyone wants the library to magically fit themselves (haha, standard pronoun usage now) with a good book. And what the library has done has been to put literary sleuths on the trail of applied book selection -- based on a wide array of reviews feeding from the source of the book industry.

If you pick a rainbow book, your choice comes from you. There is no coercion; there is no assigned reading. Most kids have an interested parent, usually the mom, who does not hesitate to filter their choices. If you read the book, do you enjoy it? One hopes the answer is yes. What does it mean about you if you do? Did it make you more aware? Was it relevant to your own life? How so? Did it broaden your horizons? Do you use the experience to ask questions and have conversations?

One thing for sure: the words in the book are not black magick pills of indoctrination. That's not the way reading works. At any age. 

One odd thing about this list is that 34 of the titles aren't in either the Johnson City or the Kingsport library, according to the online catalog of the Organization of Watauga Libraries. Most of those titles do appear in the collections of other libraries in the region, but that's not the same thing. And one title, listed as The Breakaways by Meg Grehan, is an out-and-out (sorry, rainbow letters) hallucination. So maybe there's a different kind of AI at work here.

Now that I think about it, the basic bibliographic quality of this list -- accuracy of titles, standardized format for authors' names, etc. -- is pretty darn enshittified. No, the Trans Teen Survival Guide isn't written by "Owl." It's written by Owl and Fox Fisher. And the subtitle of Check Please, book 2, isn't Sticks and Stones. It's Sticks and Scones. And it's a clever subtitle too, if you take time to read the book reviews that come with almost every title in the online catalog.

What a fabulous resource those online reviews are! And yet I bet my bottom dollar that none of the GOP activists who put this list together did anything more than cut and paste a list of these titles from somebody else, if they did that much. I'd be amazed if any of them read the least little thing about these books. When it comes to real, working knowledge of these books, they are -- not to put too fine a point on it -- ignorant. My sense of it is that some party operative ran a canned list against an outdated statewide catalog with location codes, and they've delivered customized lists to county part offices around the state to send to their legislators, and Rusty Crowe was the only one we know of who was -- what's the right word -- premature enough to pop off without bothering to talk to the librarians in his district whose job it is to know the books that they buy for their libraries.

It doesn't rise to the level of intelligence, artificial or otherwise. It's one-party-state political enshittification. And it's how censors do it. Again and again and again. The know-nothings are back. Another safe bet is that the censors won't allow any daylight into how they actually pulled the list together. That's not how they work. They're closet addicts of black-magick-pilled indoctrination. And they do love their Bible pills.

If you take the time to read those online reviews, you can get an idea of the quality of these books. You might not like them, and the subject matter might make you uncomfortable, but you get a sense that the books contain a salubrious complexity that will challenge the reader.

My own sense of it -- as a lifelong reader, as a father and grandfather of readers, as a librarian ensconced in the culture of reading -- is this: the kids reading these books are way smarter, wiser, and able to deal with intellectual and moral challenges than the adults who are trying to tell them they're not old enough to read them.

Here's a breakdown by collection of the books on the list:

Neither library: 34

Children's, Johnson City: 35

Children's, Kingsport: 5

Young adult, Johnson City: 83

Young adult, Kingsport: 56

Adult, Johnson City and Kingsport: 8

Someone had asked for a list of the titles in the Johnson City children's collection:

A church for all

Alice Austen lived here

Being you

Better Nate than ever

Bullied

Call me Max

Dear Mothman

Flight of the puffin

Melissa

How women won the vote

Identity and gender

It feels good to be yourself

I am Jazz

Ivy Aberdeen's letter to the world

Maybe he just likes you

Morris Micklewhite and the tangerine dress

My Maddy

Pink, blue, and you

Payden's pronoun party

Pride: The story of Harvey Milk and the rainbow flag

Rabbit chase

Rainbow: A first book of pride

Puberty is gross but really awesome

Rick

Sir Callie and the champions of Helston

The best liars in Riverview

The deepest breath

The family Fletcher takes Rock Island

The legend of Auntie Po

The list of things that will not change

The mighty heart of Sunny St. James

The real Riley Mayes

To Night Owl from Dogfish

Too bright to see

What was Stonewall?

Commissar Tre Hargett's gulag

If you want an example of grotesque bureaucratic overreach, may I offer you TN Secy. of State Tre Hargett’s Oct. 27, 2025, letter to the principals of the Linebaugh Public Library. After an opening in which he says he believes that “Libraries are best suited to make the decisions regarding the books they purchase, and they also have policies in place to review materials that may be challenged,” Hargett goes on to contradict himself. He and he alone can do that. Why? Because it is part of his job “to ensure that our federal and state funding is used in accordance with all laws and not put at risk due to potential misuse by an individual library or librarian. Said more specifically, I cannot allow the actions of one library to potentially harm and impact over 200 other libraries throughout the state.” Local decisions be damned if Tre Hargett finds something that *he* believes to be "potential misuse."

Potential misuse? Talk about a squirrelly concept ripe for actual abuse.

And actual abuse follows accordingly. Hargett in his letter then demands that libraries "undertake an immediate age-appropriateness review (over the next 60 days) of all materials in your juvenile children’s section. As part of this review please identify any materials that may be inconsistent with Tennessee age-appropriateness laws, in violation of any federal law, including President Trump’s Executive Order” (relating to the promotion of gender ideology).

This is off-the-charts weird. Hargett has for years ruled over a system by which libraries signed off on state standards in order to qualify for grants. Now it seems that Hargett's system isn't good enough for Hargett.

But it gets truly weird when Hargett writes “Additionally, legitimate concerns about a particular book in your juvenile children’s collection have been brought to my attention. Fred Gets Dressed, by Peter Brown, is worthy of review both for age-appropriateness and to determine whether the book and its purchase comply with President Trump’s Executive Order title “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”

Now it all becomes clear. Somebody has gone to Tre Hargett (maybe the same person who's been "disappearing" the library's copies of Forever by Judy Blume?) to complain about this children’s book, and they want to get rid of it. So Hargett goes, “I know, let me just make y’all do an inventory, and I’ll just mention this book, and boom it’s done.” Or something like that.

Tre Hargett, who calls the shots for the whole state library system, is now specifically going after Fred Gets Dressed? One piddling little kids book? And implying that if LInebaugh keeps this book, it’s threatening the whole state system with losing Federal funding? That is just so off-the-charts BS I can’t begin to shovel it into any sensible conceptual shithole that doesn’t resemble a Soviet gulag.

Why can’t Tre Hargett do what any other citizen would do? Which would be to follow the library policy for review of materials. Linebaugh has such a policy (the State Library requires them). You just have to fill out a form and say what you don’t like about the item, and indicate whether or not (or how much) you’ve read.

Well, in Hargett’s case, this starts not to look like a good idea because he’d have to admit on the form he hasn’t read Fred Gets Dressed. All he has is hearsay: “legitimate concerns have been brought to my attention” according to which the book doesn’t “comply” (don’t you just love the jackboot thump of that word?) with Trump’s gender ideology EO.

Damn, Tre, go down to the library and check it out. And see for yourself that whatever Mr./Ms. “Legitimate Concern” told you, this book has *nothing* to do with gender ideology. Or with sexual matters of any kind. It’s about a boy who wanders around the house naked until he discovers his parents’ clothes closets and decides his mother’s clothes look better on him, after which both of his parents get into the act and help him with makeup. I didn’t realize that “birth of a theater kid” could bring on a full-blown Stalinist purge, but here we are. If Tre Hargett wants to be the guy to make something sexual out of this book, I won't stand in his way. I'll just say it doesn't pass the smell test that he himself has worked for years to establish.

What really pisses me off about this is what it says about Tre Hargett’s complete and utter contempt for library staff. He might talk a good game, but this right here is him showing his true colors. In spite of his years of contact with the profession, he seemingly has no understanding of or respect for the pride and professionalism that library staff bring to their job. Age appropriateness? Library staff invented age appropriateness when they started children’s departments and young adult libraries. They want people to read. They live for people to read the books that they purchase for the community. On their own — in their own professional organizations — they have developed model policies that set out to balance collection-building with the uniquely American right to free speech.

It is not an easy thing to do. The reason collection development policies are so important is that they articulate the balance that library staff try to strike. They say, “This is how we are going to go about choosing materials that are right for our community. We will adopt a positive stance. We will add materials for positive reasons that can be discerned a variety of ways, primarily through reviews and recommendations. We believe in the value of what we’re doing. If, however, any citizen thinks we fall short, we also have a challenge procedure so that items can be measured against collection criteria.”

So someone on the library staff at Linebaugh did the necessary legwork and determined that Fred Gets Dressed would be a good fit with the community. It’d be a book that some kids and their parent(s) might enjoy together. Not everybody, of course, but some people. And if not, after a few years it’d get weeded for underuse. A library staffer thought the book a good risk for helping the library’s mission to engage people with books.

Then along comes Tre Hargett willing to stroke Mr./Ms. Legitimate Concern’s narrow-minded sex fixation and here we are in a steaming pile of collusive skulduggery.

Whom do you believe, Hargett or library staff? I’ll take the library staff over Tre Hargett any day, because I know them, and I know their hearts. Hargett can't even trust his own system, nor can he even abide by the controls that he has set up.

As a career librarian, I respectfully ask Rutherford Co. library staff: when you close down for inventory, consider these things: 

    

1. Post anonymously (on Facebook) to the Rutherford County Library Alliance the specific weeding criteria you’ve been given.
2. Understand that any potential withdrawal criteria other than the ones listed below (which are from Rutherford Co. policy and State Library requirements) — particularly as they may relate to age appropriateness or gender ideology “promotion” —  are not based on any statutory requirements that relate to public libraries in TN. You will note that there is no content-based criterion for withdrawal other than "misleading or dangerous." This reflects the confidence that policy places in the intial work of library staff to build the collection appropriately. The only avenue for content-based withdrawal is the "Request for Reconsideration," which requires a thorough process of review that mirrors the work and effort intially performed to add the item in question. The work you are being asked to perform here directly violates this process.
3. Remember that it was a colleague (or you!) who put those books there, and respect their work.
4. Carry out a brief work stoppage or walkout in order to express your opposition at being made to violate library policy.
5. Consider organizing. If the State is trampling all over policies that the State itself has been instrumental in creating, and if your Board and administration are not standing up to this abuse of power -- or worse, are abetting it -- you are the only ones in a position to uphold your own professional, ethical standards, as well as the standards for library governance that Tennessee has worked for years to accomplish.

Work to rule, Rutherford County comrades. Might as well: it's the only way to push back when you're inside the commissar's gulag.

**************************************************************

Withdrawal “guidelines” as per RCLS policy:

1. Obsolescence

2. Misleading or dangerous information

3. Relevance of subject matter within overall collection

4. Existence of a new or better edition of the same work

5. Number of copies in collection

6. Lack of shelf space

7. Material’s availability via other libraries or outlets

8. Physical condition of the material

9. Lack of use

10. Expiration or withdrawal of user license (in the case of electronic resources)

TN State Collection Development requirements

1. All materials are selected by the local public library in accordance with the individual public library’s full Collection Development Policy;

2. The public library’s Collection Development Policy is approved by the public library’s Board of Trustees (or equivalent governing body) at least annually;

3. All books selected for purchase by the individual public library, through the Regional Library System or otherwise, are reviewed by the public library’s director before purchase, with the library director then sharing a list or lists of newly purchased materials with the public library’s Board of Trustees (or equivalent governing body);

4. No funds received are used to purchase, nor will the library otherwise acquire, material that constitutes “child pornography,” is “pornographic for minors,” or is “obscene;”

5. Books and materials that contain sexual themes or content are reviewed by the public library independently for age-appropriateness and cataloged accordingly – even if this overrides the age appropriateness recommended by the publisher