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?