Well, it’s official. I’ve been sent to the Facebook “naughty chair” for 12 hours. As I write this I’m still not able to access either one of my pages, personal or writer page, and it’s 1:46 am and I calculate that there are 14 minutes left in my punishment. That Mark Zuckerberg means it when he says it’s going to be a whole 12 hours.
What did I do, pray tell, that sent me, head hanging, to the corner with all the hate speechers and porn-posters? I got into an argument with a librarian who hates censorship. So she did what any logically challenged person would do and reported me to Facebook so they would censor me.
Ah, irony.
Unfortunately for Brittany Staszak, children’s librarian at Glencoe Public Library, actual laws (you know, the ones Congress makes without Mark Zuckerberg’s input), allow a person to re-post statements made in a public forum like Facebook or YouTube or anywhere else on the internet! So welcome to your 15 minutes of fame, Ms. Staszak. I hope it’s exciting for you! (Or at least as exciting as pushing the “report” button all day.) Here’s the exchange that got me thrown out of social media.
And then she reported me and made sure I was not able to access all the information in the form of media and internet access for the next 12 hours (actually we’re at 14 and counting now). Staszak wants to have her cake and eat it too by posting her ridiculous ideas in a public forum but at the same time pretending no one else has a right to comment on how crazy her ideas are.
Well, she can’t ban me from America (outside of Facebook, which I learned today is a lot slower and colder than I remember). Eventually, Zuckerberg will cave (I think). In the meantime, Brittany, please do email my editor (DaveSwindlePJM[@]gmail.com) with any more complaints and demands about how I should be silenced and censored and any other general comments you have about how awful I am. He loves mail like that. I think he is wallpapering a bathroom in his apartment with them.
[Editor note: I’ll go a step further. Rather than just complain, Ms. Staszak is invited to email me a letter to the editor for publication and a dialogue on these important issues. Likewise, any other librarians or others who object to Megan’s activist efforts to make her public library a sexual predator and public masturbation-free zone, please do email me your submission. -DS]
So that was the big crime that, in Mark Zuckerberg’s opinion, constitutes hideous harassment — screen-grabbing public comments from YouTube and re-posting them on Facebook to discuss with my friends and readers this terrible attitude about giving children access to porn. I had two major reasons for doing this.
1. No one believes me when I tell them that librarians are trained in college to give your kids access to porn.
The American Library Association wrote its own Constitution (isn’t that cute?), none of which was voted on or debated in Congress, in case you were wondering. In this fake “Constitution” (that has no legal authority over anything or anyone) there is also a pretend “Bill of Rights” which states,
Lack of access to information can be harmful to minors. Librarians and library governing bodies have a public and professional obligation to ensure that all members of the community they serve have free, equal, and equitable access to the entire range of library resources regardless of content, [emphasis mine] approach, format, or amount of detail. This principle of library service applies equally to all users, minors as well as adults.
This lack of concern for content is the whole problem. And since we know they do not care what is in the books and they will not help parents, this brings me to my next reason for posting Staszak’s hair-brained philosophy on Facebook (still locked out at 2:44 a.m.).
2. Parents need to know
The library carries video games that are rated. They don’t peel off the ratings and just hand Grand Theft Auto to a five year old. But books are sacrosanct. Books cannot possibly be given ratings based on content because that’s censorship! I understand that libraries could not do such a thing because there are just too many books. But publishers could do it very easily. Someone has to take responsibility for what is in some of these books marketed to youth.
Page 38 of David Zimmerman’s Caring is Creepy (a book that won the 2012 American Library Association Alex Award for being relevant to teens ages 12 to 17) says,
I’m going to tear a hole in your belly button and f*** your piggy fat. I’m going to hunt you down and kill you with my c***…I’m looking at you through your webcam right now.
And the librarians will all scream together in a chorus, “CONTEXT, THERE’S NO CONTEXT! YOU’RE A BOOK BURNER!” in the exact manner of townspeople ordering a farmer’s wife to climb on the pyre because someone said she’s a witch. I really don’t care what the context is. I never ever want my teen daughter to read those words in any book, let alone one that the American Library Association (ALA) says is good for her. How many parents are out there who would see the ALA-approved stamp on a book and think their child is reading high literature? Don’t parents have a right to know the kind of violent, graphic sexual content is in the books in the “youth” section of libraries?
I do not advocate book burning. (And it bothers me that I have to even say that.) I do not “hate books.” I love books and I love libraries (contrary to what some people believe because I am investigating one for open pornography and failure to report crimes). Most of all, I love my children and I worry about what this culture of porn and violence will do to their minds. I believe any idiot can write whatever they want, the same way I believe any jerk can make a violent video game and sell it to people.
But if violent video games with adult content must be labeled (because parents had enough and demanded a change), the same should hold true for books marketed to children and teens. If you want to write all the violent gore and sex and put it in an “adult” section book, I will never bother you. Go for it. You and God can work it out in the hereafter. But why should the “youth” section be littered with disgusting, pornographic trash that is of no value to young people, and parents not even be given the opportunity to know about it?
I don’t expect libraries to do anything about this, so I have started my own project reviewing popular books for young people called Story Time with Megan Fox, and you can find the reviews on my YouTube page here. If you would like me to review a book, please send me your recommendations and I will do so. I am also always on the lookout for great books for youth (although they are increasingly harder to find). I will also be reviewing those in the upcoming months. This is a service I am providing for free for parents because I know how it feels to be told your authority over your own children is meaningless by statists who think they are smarter and more powerful than you.
It is now 10:04 a.m. and my Facebook account is still blocked. The librarians of America have ganged up to harass and censor me with “report” posts, and Facebook does not allow a person being harassed in this way to launch any defense. Facebook has also not responded to media requests for clarification and reasoning behind this decision. But not to worry! “Godamn I Hate Sarah Palin” is still up and running.
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