At Least They Didn't Burn It (Far As I Know)

This stuff drives me nuts.

Bill Postmus, Chairman of the Board of Supervisors of suburban San Bernadino County, California, has ordered the county's libraries to remove the scholarly text 'Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics' from circulation. He proudly announced the move, calling the book "obscene comics," on the county's Website, saying, "That book is absolutely inappropriate for a public library and as soon as I was made aware of it yesterday, I ordered it to be removed immediately."

The flap started in Victorville, after a 16-year-old checked the book out of the adult section of the library.  The teen's mother "was horrified," according to a story in the local Desert Dispatch, and wrote a letter to the library asking that the book be removed.

Fuck that — one complaint? How about all the people who didn't complain? Aren't they the majority? Is it the library's task now to act as parents to 16-year-old patrons? How about this mom gives her son a talking-to, if she desires, and lets other kids and parents decide what's right for them?

For another account of how one tight-assed nanny can spoil it for everyone else, see here.

Comments

[Rover Random]

Well, at least you report it, and people like me are made aware of it. But damn, sometimes I think I'd be better off ignorant and high.

[George Arndt]

How niave can people be? There's worse things out there than manga..
Like pulling a book from a library after one complaint.

[Beny Shlevich]

Although I don't live in the US, here's an idea: Shouldn't someone there file a lawsuit against this guy and the board he's the head of for violating the First Ammendment? Seems to me like a clear cut issue here. Where's the ACLU?

[j]

This guy is a tool. I was on the high school newspaper in a town where he was on the school board and he came in and tried to censor our paper from talking about the school board election and other local politics. He made the student editor cry.