I read this in today’s Press –
LUDINGTON — A library employee in this Lake Michigan resort community has been fired for writing a book that describes a range of unpleasant patrons, from the merely unpleasant to online sex fiends, in a town she calls “Denialville.”
At first it sounds like the grumpy, mean old library people can’t take a sharp wit in their midst. But some things about the description of it gives me pause:
Publish America issued the book, and its online catalog offers this description:
“The Library Diaries reads like Seinfeld meets Lou Dobbs meets Glenn Beck. Issues that most of us are afraid to talk about, issues we have had to veil through humor, are talked about candidly by the author, who has seen the terrible consequences of us not talking about these issues — children’s lives.
“Open this book and you’ll meet the naked patron, the greedy, unenlightened patrons, destination hell, the masturbator, horny old men, Mr. Three Hats, and a menagerie of other characters you never dreamt were housed at your public library.”
Sexually creepy patrons are creepy indeed, and libraries are a place where people often hang out who have nowhere else decent to go, so you see a lot of folk you won’t see at upscale family restaurants, say. But Seinfeld meets Lou Dobbs meets Glenn Beck? Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck are best known for hating people. Especially people who aren’t upper-middle-class white conservative male Americans. Especially Mexican people. (They would say, not Mexican people, but “illegal aliens.” As if it’s purely a concern for legal niceties, not xenophobia, racism, or eliminationism, that moves them.)
What would inspire a comparison to those people? Is this some kind of code talk on the part of Publish America to indicate that this is a hyperconservative hate rant, and people who enjoy that should pick up the book?
Weird.