Louisiana Voice

Of all those sanctimonious members of the morality police who want to crack down on the content of public and school libraries under the disingenuous pretense of a protective desire to shield impressionable children from objectionable material, I can’t help but wonder how many have impressionable children/grandchildren walking around with equally or more negatively influential – and unsupervised – cellphone access.

Perhaps it would be appropriate for the members of the Lafayette Parish Library Board of Control (Control being the operative word here) to do a little reading of their own – except they’re probably too busy to actually read anything, being so ironically focused as they are on banning books. Anyway, should they find the time to do so, I would suggest that they go back and re-read Luke 4:23 (that’s on the assumption that they’ve so inclined to crack the Good Book in the first place).

It says, “Physician, heal thyself.”

Just sayin’.

Because, while you have your drawers in a wad over children’s access to books containing sexual references, your own kiddies and grandchildren are walking around checking out God knows what on their phones.

And they can watch just about anything their little hearts desire on Netflix, Hulu, their own computers, and iPads, and you most probably have no clue.

In fact, you don’t seem to have a clue about much of anything other than flexing your power over a woman who spent years pursuing a degree to do precisely what she’s doing: run a parish library system and to make administrative decisions consistent with her job description. As for the individual members of the board of control, I ask what are your qualifications to run a library – other than knowing some local political hack who was willing to nominate you to the board?

That is what really seems to be the problem these days – the whole country is being run by political hacks.

At the present time, the board of control is comprised of eight such individuals who will convene at 10 a.m. Thursday to consider disciplinary action against head librarian Cara Chance on charges of “gross insubordination,” whatever that’s supposed to mean.

Now when I say the board is comprised of eight members, I deliberately omitted the name of the ruthless manipulator of the board’s puppet strings. That’s because he is not officially a member but you’d better believe he is swinging an awfully big stick on the board in his one-man quest for all that’s decent and acceptable – by his standards, that is.

His name is Michael Lunsford. He’s not even from Lafayette Parish. He’s from next door St. Martin Parish and he’s in bed with one Jeff Landry, who just happens to be attorney general for the gret stet of Loozeanner. And he wants so badly to be governor that his ambition practically squirts from his very pores.

Lunsford, with Landry’s full backing, is going over the entire state, picking off parish library systems one-by-one in an effort to undercut professional librarians and to enforce his own warped view of how the world should be. On his stop by Livingston Parish, he appeared to be curiously preoccupied with a book about anal sex – enough so to kinda make you wonder how he managed to home in on that particular selection.

And just to show you that the end game for Lunsford and his outfit, Citizens for a New Louisiana, isn’t just banning books containing sexual content, it should be interesting to note that Citizens for a New Louisiana earlier blocked a Black History presentation at the library. That more or less tipped their hand that Lunsford, his organization, the Republican Party that backs him, and Landry have as their overall objective the complete and total control of all library content as well as educational curricula. That would include, if they are able to prevail, the stripping of all curricula about the Civil War, the Civil Rights struggle, women’s suffrage, Roe v. Wade, and anything that shines an unfavorable light on American history.

Anyway, after the flap over the Black History presentation, the board of control handed down a directive that banned any theme display at the library. That was a pretty heavy-handed move and if applied across the board, would dictate that no displays about Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Mardi Gras, July 4, Labor Day, Memorial Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, or anybody else’s day be allowed. Now, I think we can all agree that was not a well thought-out dictum. Kinda lame-brained, as a matter of fact. I mean, you’re gonna snub Ground Hog Day because some politically-appointed board of control had its collective head up its collective derriere? Okay, I can readily see how this bigoted board would give MLK Day short shrift. I mean, that’s what the board was appointed to do, right? That would be really white of them.

Well, Chance, who after all, is the head librarian, decided to be the head librarian and she erected a display that included the mantion of (gasp! cover your ears!) gay marriage and the board lost its fecal matter and began popping nitroglycerin tablets and tomorrow’s disciplinary hearing is the upshot of her uppity behavior.

Parish Library Director Danny Gillane had earlier tendered his resignation notice, effective January 31, and had applied for the same position in Baton Rouge but on Monday he unresigned. It’s not known if his decision to reconsider leaving had anything to do with this Thursday’s disciplinary hearing or not.

Chance has the option at Thursday’s hearing to demand that the meeting be held in open session. It would transfer the pressure to the board if it were forced to hold its discussion out in the open so everyone could hear just how absurd – and virulent – bigotry can be.