Reality bites: the collision of rhetoric, rights, and reality and the Library Bill of Rights - includes related information on American Library Association's Code of Ethics - The Library Bill of Rights

Library Trends, Summer, 1996 by Shirley A. Wiegand

Introduction

Because this article focuses on three distinct but related issues--rhetoric, rights, and reality--it is in one sense a series of expanded "sound bites." But the term "bite" has a more significant meaning here. When examining the Library Bill of Rights, it becomes clear that the rhetoric of rights often clashes with reality; reliance upon the rhetoric will, in the final analysis, lead to the conclusion that reality bites. This article proposes a realistic approach to the rhetoric of rights.

Rhetoric

"Religious sect"--"pro-life"--"feminist"--"radical"--"far left"--"far right"--"political correctness." Readers will probably agree these are "buzzwords"--i.e., shorthand hot button terms and phrases that often produce a visceral emotional reaction. But the same can be said for words like "rights" and "censorship." These words are frequently bandied about within the library and legal communities, yet they end up meaning different things to different people. The Library Bill of Rights is rife with examples of rhetoric unsupported by the legal principles that usually undergird "rights." Baldwin addresses these in his article in this issue of Library Trends. This article, however, focuses primarily on just one example--censorship.

When a library patron requests a particular book that is not included in the library collection, is expensive, and has not been requested by anyone else, the librarian may refuse to order the book, believing she or he is simply exercising good judgment and responding in the community's best interest. The patron, however, believes the library has engaged in censorship.

Amy Hielsberg, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Library and Information Studies, complained publicly about "censorship" in her intellectual freedom class in the fall of 1993 (Hielsberg, 1994, p. 768). As her class presentation, she had decided to focus on the controversial novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (1991). She was well aware of the criticism directed at the book. Simon and Schuster had reneged on a decision to publish it; the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women had called it "misogynist" and a "manual on the mutilation of women" (p. 768). As Hielsberg began reading a passage she described as "a gruesome scene about the electrocution of a prostitute by means of jumper cables and the dismemberment and decapitation of a female acquaintance," one student objected. "I will not listen to another word of this!" she shouted. "You are verbally abusing me." Hielsberg claims she was shocked: "The last thing I had expected was to be 'challenged' in an intellectual freedom class," she said. "I didn't expect a fight" (pp. 768, 769).

Why not? Why didn't she expect a fight? And why was the challenge viewed so unfavorably? Why didn't she expect some students to speak out? In fact, the challenge gave Hielsberg an opportunity to defend her selection of topics and to formulate arguments supporting her decision to read the controversial selection. Yet she believed the student who spoke out was engaging in the sin of censorship rather than exercising her right to object. Criticism is not censorship.

Another writer, a public library trustee, related his experience at an American Library Association (ALA) Conference in June 1990 (Sheerin, 1991, p. 440). A self-described "First Amendment purist," speaking to the crowd, condemned a series of censorship attempts by various rightwing groups. During a question and answer period, the library trustee spoke up. A state-funded library agency had refused to accept as a donation the film The Silent Scream (1985), which claims to show, through ultrasound imaging, the destruction of a fetus during abortion. He also noted that a citizen had complained that community libraries failed to stock anti-abortion materials. Did the speaker believe such an act also constituted censorship? The ALA speaker responded only with a "bemused shrug of the shoulders" (Sheerin, 1991, p. 440).

Nat Hentoff (1992), author of Free Speech for Me, But Not for Thee, recalls a trip he took to Idaho to give a speech on the First Amendment. At the time, Coeur d'Alene, a town of 20,000 people, had been keenly divided over a series of textbooks in the schools. "Opponents of the texts claimed that the books proselytized for witchcraft, satanism, and the occult," he writes. When a local minister came to see Hentoff: "We went over a couple of volumes, and he pointed out what he saw as the satanism, the violence, the subliminal preaching of witchcraft" (p. 4). Hentoff disagreed with the minister about the dangers of the texts, but he wasn't the only one. Advocates of the new texts "were spreading the word that [the minister] and his followers were not only censors but kooks, zealots, obviously unable to take part in any meaningful dialogue on school curriculum." Furthermore, the text advocates complained: "These are the people ...who are trying to impose their values on us." But the minister astutely observed to Hentoff: "Surely...we have a right to protest, a right to fight for our beliefs" (pp. 4-5). Hentoff agreed and so do I.