Friday, March 14, 2008

Oh for Pete's sake!

With all due respect to my sister Beth, who is a librarian, (which means I am getting ready to say something really bad about librarians) but if librarians as a group are confused as to why our government needs (but has yet to exercise) the power to examine library records authorized under the Patriot Act, I give you exhibit A.

Now, just what important civil liberty was Biesterfield's [sic] supervisor defending?

From an employment standpoint, the fired librarian probably does not have a legal leg to stand on. The library and the county will claim that she was fired for disobeying her superior's directive and not for reporting a suspicious male viewing pornography in a public place.

(Why isn't that illegal, by the way? I can recall a similar incident when I worked at Arthur Andersen in Washington. Our company did a lot of work for the city government. I helped set up for an event at a DC public library once and my colleagues and I were shocked to see a boy of about 12 browsing hard core pornography right under the noses of the librarians! They could see what he was doing and either they didn't care or were precluded from doing anything (more likely). Heck, not only was he viewing the material, he was printing it out! And at his age, what he was doing was patently illegal.

I forgot. The men and women of our military fight and die to defend the right of adolescents to view pornography.

By the way, not being a library employee, it wasn't against the rules for me to tell the little fella to shove off, so I did.)

This kind of bad publicity may very well make the library rethink its decision and re-hire her (assuming she would even want to work there again). After all, who is going to want to patronize a library that is 'pedophile friendly'?

OTHER than pedophiles, I mean.

No comments: