Cody Smith doesn't want you to read
Say hello to Carthage, Mo.'s own disappointment
In the GOP’s latest volley in the Revenge Wars, the Missouri state House GOP — led by state Rep. Cody Smith, R-Carthage, decided to take away funds from the state’s public libraries.
This defunding of roughly $4.5 million — a throwback to an uglier time — is a bald-faced retaliation for a lawsuit filed by the Missouri Library Association…
…which, along with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), is suing the state over a draconian law that bans hundreds of titles in public school district libraries, including books that discuss LGBTQ issues, racial justice and the history of the Holocaust. Any school official, including librarians, who fails to comply with the law could be fined up to $2,000 and/or could be imprisoned for up to a year.
Smith’s leadership makes Ron DeSantis look like a pantywaist in the Fascist Olympics.
I love my home state, but this is fucking embarrassing to have to try to explain that no, we’re not all toothless wonders and yes, we do love our books. I mean, Mark Twain, amirite? He’s probably spinning in his (New York) grave over the likes of Cody Smith, whose little power play will hit rural libraries the hardest.
Goddamn it, Missouri. I grew up in Webb City’s library, and worked there for my first job. I watched talk shows as a kid, and I remember someone mentioning Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer.” I gleaned from the conversation that it was a dirty book, though I had never heard of it. On my next visit to the library, can you believe that I found the book on the shelves, and carried it with my other tomes to the big oak check-out desk. I would have been 11, maybe 12. Do you know what the blue-haired librarian said to me? “This is due back in two weeks,” and she stamped it and handed it over. I read it and yes, it was a dirty book, and I survived it undamaged.
That library and those books showed me the big world out there and without that? I can’t imagine.
Y’all? I’m been regularly reaching out to Rep. Smith, who isn’t reaching back. By all means, have at it: Cody.Smith@house.mo.gov. Missouri libraries aren’t taking this laying down, nor should any one who’s ever loved a book.
Tangents:
Something I don't understand is how little public discourse there seems to be in response to all this GOP crap about indoctrinating children that says, "You can't help indoctrinating children. As you live with them that happens. We also want to indoctrinate children: just consider toilet training. But why is trying to program children to unquestioning adherence to a singular and puritanical standard superior to bring to provide children with a menu of choices humans have made?"
And at what child age does the parental right to blinker and impoverish their children cease? How obedient to their parents are these library-demolishers? Why, for example, 18 or 21? It's all arbitrary and parents are always parents.
And all these people who have been tutting about the mental health effects on children of the COVID shutdown of schools-- aren't an awful lot of them big on home schooling? Doesn't continuing home schooling concern them? I can easily buy that their true goal is privately run segregation academies for the standardly abled children of the ruling white supremacists, and lack of education for everyone else is just fine, but....
I know that these are the effete logical concerns of someone who doesn't worship raw power and isn't very terrorized by it (due to my demographics and lack of common sense). But I wonder about them, and wish they were being discussed more.
And don't these maroons know that "forbidden fruit" is much more appealing?