Yeah, I know I supposedly retired from this column some time ago. I did so because I’ve turned 80 and I’m tired and I feel as though I’ve mostly had my say and someone else can pick up the baton. I also know there are those who vehemently disagree with me and feel I should have packed it in years ago. That’s okay. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion and I understand – and appreciate that, even when they amuse themselves with personal attacks.
But on Tuesday, I received an e-copy of a book written by local school librarian Amanda Jones who wrote about her surreal experience with some very narrow-minded, non-thinking conspiracy nuts who only regurgitate what they are spoon-fed by equally mentally challenged people.
The ones instilling the community with fear and outright lies apparently have an agenda to sow as much discord and controversy as possible – supposedly to detract from real problems like politicians who would capitalize on division to usurp more and more rights from the very ones who keep electing them (keep an eye on your Social Security and Medicare).
Her book, That Librarian, was sent to me by her publisher so that I might review it. Her publisher, by the way, is the same publisher of the best-selling Harry Potter series. So, entrusted with offering my take on her book, I shall attempt to carry out my assigned chore – though, in fact, it is not a chore at all, but a privilege.
But to do so, it must first point out that the examples of the campaign waged against her by Michael Lunsford of St. Martinville, head of some wacko outfit called Citizens for a New Louisiana (of Lafayette), a local internet troll named Ryan Thames and their ilk give ample evidence that when you’re an a$$hole, you tend to talk out of your a$$.
What else could possibly explain an Aug. 14, 2022, email that said in part, “Continue with your LGBT agenda on our children cause (sic) we gonna (sic) put ur (sic) fat evil commie PEDO azz (sic) in the dirt very soon bitch. You can’t hide. We know where you work + live…you have a LARGE target on your back. Click, click…see you soon.”
Several observations must be made at this point. Ms. Jones is a librarian at a public school in Livingston Parish. “We know where you work” would appear to be a direct threat on a school and its occupants. Have we learned nothing of this kind of rhetoric? Threatening a teacher and by extension her students is nothing less than a act of terror. It was an anonymous threat, sent by a coward hiding behind a keyboard, but a coward nonetheless. The sender was also obviously mentally disturbed. No one but a sick, sociopathic person would post such a threat.
The second observation is where the hell was law enforcement on this? Ms. Jones, taking the threat seriously, reported it to both the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office and to the FBI. Neither agency acted on this threat. God forbid, if this threat should turn in the worst-case scenario, then Sheriff Jason Ard is going to have some “Ard questions” to answer regard his inactivity. It’s easy to trace an anonymous email and Ard knows it. Yet he extended no effort to discern if it was a threat to be taken seriously.
And Thames, that tower of intellect, posted this incredible message on his Facebook page (as he hid behind his keyboard), “The reality is they are grooming an entire generation so that ‘they’ can feel comfortable and so children will be less resistant to inappropriate advances. ‘They’…are working in your schools and librarys (sic) to push this agenda.”
Well, Thames, perhaps if you had worked a little harder in your school, you’d know that the plural for library is libraries, not librarys.
As for “grooming” children, what the hell do you call it when Republican politicians pass legislation forbidding the teaching about slavery of blacks and genocide against Native Americans? These people, these online critics, are like a two-year-old who thinks if he covers his eyes, he’s invisible. But I digress.
Let’s talk about Mr. Lunsford, or perhaps his PR flak who posted this on Citizens for a New Louisiana’s Facebook page: “After Amanda’s testimony (at a library board meeting), her school was struck by lightning and portions of it burned down. Not Kidding.”
Well, Lunsford, we’re not kidding either. It was a different school, not the school where Ms. Jones serves as librarian. Talking out of your a$$hole again, are we?
I’ve pointed out only a couple of attacks on Amanda Jones. The hate and the lies spread by Lunsford and Thames were bad enough, but people Amanda had known all her life and parents whose children she had taught (the same parents who had previously praised her), also turned on her, feeding on pure BS spewed out on social media. It’s really amazing – and shameful – how otherwise intelligent people will let some half-assed blowhard influence their thinking as though they didn’t have enough sense to separate the wheat from the chaff for themselves.
Amanda’s book is a 288-page love story – a story about her love for libraries (did you get that, Thames?), her love for books and, believe it or not, her love for the one-time Republican philosophy (yep, she’s a registered Republican).
It’s also a story of just how low some people are willing to go to destroy a person’s reputation and to put her and her students in potential danger. It’s a story of an effort undertaken by a select few to dictate their morals and standards on everyone else.
Whether or not you agree with Amanda’s viewpoint is irrelevant. What you should take from this book is an understanding of how willing people can be to accept what is fed them on social media and how these same people are so eager to read some unsubstantiated rumor and run with it as if it were carved in stone.
It’s sad, really. And frightening.
Reserve your copy ($29.99) by emailing Cavalier House Books in Denham Springs at info@cavalierhousebooks.com
We’ll I’m glad you come back from time to time to comment. Thanks for this article.
I hope her book does well. Oh, and her critics suck.
I have small kids and think the book bans are unnecessary. Kids question and we can help them discern what’s perversion and what’s normal.
I do think the LGBTQRFT (whatever letters they’ve come up with) are trying to normalize their aberrations. To be fair, right and left have their freaks.
You lost me on the equivalency of grooming and not teaching slavery or Native American history (my kids learn about both in their Louisiana school). You are 80 so I can give you an octogenarian pass!
Perhaps I should clarify. There are 23 states in which 47 bills have been introduced that would limit or prohibit any discussion or teaching of the Civil War, the civil rights struggle, the slaughter of American Indians, or “diverse concepts,” whatever that might entail. In 11 of those states the bills have already become law. They are Alabama, Arizona, Florida Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah. Louisiana is not among them yet but likely soon will be. A few years ago, a Louisiana legislator proposed a bill (it didn’t pass then) that would require Louisiana schools to teach only the “good things” about American history. That’s what I meant when I referred to grooming.
The problem arises when lefties spin the negative aspects of our history into fables and pariah all white people (1619 project, Kendi). History lessons become indoctrination tools where kids are poisoned (DEI, white privilege nonsense).
You can blame the race hustlers and white guilt folk for the backlash.
Okay, let me see if I understand this. When this country was founded, only white male landowners could vote and those same white male landowners could actually own other human beings as property who could be forced (legally) to labor for the profit and comfort of those white male landowners…and that was okay.
And it was okay that history was taught, political decisions made and lives controlled only from a white perspective for 200 years. But when blacks found their voices and decided to speak for themselves, it was suddenly “indoctrination,” kids were “poisoned,” and it was all the fault of “race hustlers” and “white guilt folks.”
Got it. Boy, those black folks should just know their place and keep quiet (except when they star for your favorite football or basketball team), right?
This mentality reminds me of a story comic Ron Ramey told onstage at the Baton Rouge Funny Bone a few years back. Ron is from New Orleans and graduated from Southern University. He was in line at a New Orleans grocery story as a white woman was purchasing some vegetables. As she laid the produce on the conveyor belt at the checkout, the cashier, who was black, started to pick them up to weigh them. The customer stopped her, saying, “I don’t want minorities touching my vegetables.” Ron, standing directly behind her, leaned over and said, “Who do you think picked them?”
Your argument works…if it were 1965. Or 73. Contemporary America is a place where anyone can get ahead. Case in point. White median income isn’t in the top ten when you break done income by ethnicities. Asians crush everyone. Nigerians do better than whitey.
Telling anyone they are a victim…surprise here…makes them a victim. If you want to help the downtrodden tell them they are warriors and watch the magic.
Your white guilt and Liz Warren type speeches on the “system being against you” hasn’t helped raise one damn person.
You really think are all better today. Wow. Yes, white income is down – unless you happen to be a corporate CEO. But keeping the minimum wage at $7.25 certainly assures the status quo. Also keeps a lot of people from pursuing a college degree. The Asians and Nigerians in this country who do so well financially probably owe that fact to their coming from upper class backgrounds in their countries which allows them to afford a good education Have you checked out the cost of tuition lately?
I have never and would never say people should be “given” something they didn’t earn. But at the same time, I WOULD say that everyone deserves an equal opportunity and that has not been the case – in 1965 or 1973 or now. When you have inadequate educational opportunities you have inadequate job opportunities.
If you truly think everything is rosy today, then you, my friend, live in a fantasy world. You think Elizabeth Warren and her ilk advocate handouts. We think you’re being callous by thinking you can just tell someone they are a “warrior” and it’ll change their life trajectory. If you truly think everything is peachy today, that you can improve someone’s lot by simply calling them a “warrior,” then you, my friend, need to be writing Hallmark movie scripts.
Things aren’t rosey. Half our population is addicted to food, their phone or other distractions. While the military industrial complex and lobbyists siphon off the money that would cure all our ills, we squabble over the frivolous. Dem vs. Repub. Black vs. white.
We have a southern border invasion that is displacing low skilled and blue collar workers. You can’t care about the poor and defend illegal aliens in the same breath.Big business and big government is the real enemy and our divisiveness is their best weapon.
I am starting to believe we aren’t smart enough to be a democracy and we are inching toward authoritarianism.
I hate to keep beating a dead horse, so I’ll end my response with this last observation.
First, I am in total agreement with you insofar as our eating disorders (I know I could stand to lose a few pounds), phones, distractions and especially the military-industrial complex and lobbyists. You are dead on on that point and on your opinion that we’re headed for authoritarianism. I think we disagree on only one area. If American businesses were not hiring illegal immigrants at low wages over Americans, I don’t think there would be an immigration problem. Illegals are not taking American jobs, American companies and contractors are. They hire them for cash – off the books – so they do not pay FICA taxes or for health or unemployment insurance. An illegal gets hurt on the job, too bad. There’s another waiting for his position and he’s cheaper than an American. Honest, hard-working Americans can’t get jobs because of these hiring practices. I know a legislator who harped and wailed and moaned about illegal immigrants but when she and her husband purchased a rent house as an investment, who do you think was hired to renovate it (Do I really have to tell you)?
That aside, I want to say I believe we’ve strayed from my original point. I was being critical of book banning and that was supposed to be the extent of my post. Somehow, we got into these other areas.
Those who so steadfastly support the Second Amendment should just as strongly support the First Amendment. They’re both part of the Constitution, after all. If one is going to argue that we must have the Second Amendment even at the expense of a few bad players going on a rampage and killing people with their constitutionally-protected guns, then we must also support the First Amendment (Freedom of press, speech and expression) even though there will inevitably be bad actors who write offensive books. I personally choose not to carry a concealed weapon – to leave my gun in my home and vehicle, but not my person – even though many will carry. By the same token, I choose not to read certain books even though others might wish to read them. That is their right and to say otherwise takes us deeper into that state of authoritarianism that you – and I – fear.
We, the right and left, are two petulant kids fighting over a toy in the back seat of a car being driven off a cliff.
The right and left are 2 petulant toddlers fighting over a toy in the back of a car being driven off a cliff.
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