Mississippi libraries ban ‘Daily Show’ book: Objection to nude depictions of Supreme Court justices
I’ve been a librarian for 40 years and this is the only book I’ve objected to so strongly that I wouldn’t allow it to circulate. We’re not an adult bookstore. Our entire collection is open to the entire public. If they had published the book without that one picture, that one page, we’d have the book.
- Robert Willits, director of the Jackson-George Regional Library System
I got a copy of America (The Book) for Christmas, and I can confirm that there are in fact nekkid pictures of all nine Supreme Court justices. Well, OK, so the pictures are Photoshopped, but anyone with a vivid imagination and a minimal IQ would think that all nine Justices posed nekkid for the book. Of course, anyone with anything more than a minimal IQ would recognize the book as satire, and that there is nothing prurient or pornographic about it.
I suppose to some folks any display of the naked human form is a dirty, nasty, and inherently evil act. This would, of course, explain the Taliban. In this case, though, there is no attempt to appeal to the more prurient interests of the readers. It’s an attempt at humor. While a retail store can sell what it chooses to, should a public library be engaging in an act of censorship because one librarian happens to be offended by the content of a book? Since when is an individual librarian the last defense against the filth and smut that would corrupt and enslave our innocent and impressionable children?
If you’ve seen the book, you’d understand that it’s an attempt at humor. Could the point have been made without nudity? I suppose so, but there is nothing titillating about nine naked Supreme Court Justices. (Now if it had been George and Laura Bush…?)
Or is it just that Mr. Willits just doesn’t think Libruls are funny?
