During the first week of October, the American Library Association (ALA) “celebrates” an exercise in self-delusion called “Banned Books Week.”
“For more than 40 years,” the ALA insists, “the annual event has brought together the entire book community – librarians, teachers, booksellers, publishers, writers, journalists, and readers of all types – in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.”
In my experience, libraries are notoriously hostile to “unorthodox or unpopular” ideas when those ideas come from the right. Fueling that hostility are insecure, left-leaning women, the “Karens” of our sidewalk encounters and sleepless nights.