CSotD: Speaking up to remove all doubt
Skip to comments
Yesterday, I was listening to our local NPR station do the top-of-the-hour local news and, in announcing that an area sports team had hired a new coach with extensive experience in the minor leagues, the fellow reading the piece placed emphasis on "minor league" in a way that suggested that the new coach was now stepping up beyond that level. Which he isn't.
It wasn't the first time I'd heard an NPR news reader buzz through the sports in a way that suggested no familiarity with sports. Which is okay, because I've got a button I can push to switch the radio to ESPN.
But it occurred to me, as a former business writer with additional experience in that world, that this is how every news reader sounds when they are reporting on business. They read the words but they don't seem to quite get what the story means.
Which is how a routine business deal like Whitewater gets conflated into a "scandal."
And which brings us to West Virginia's chemical spill.
I like both Nick Anderson's straightforward approach and Matt Bors' more nuanced take, and, like anyone with a sense of irony and a love of gallows humor, I, too, appreciated the name of the company that poisoned Charleston's water supply.
But part of what makes these two cartoons work so well is that they don't go past the basic point: Government regulation is there to keep us safe, and the idea that industry will self-govern in the absence of regulations is toxic nonsense in both the metaphorical and literal sense.
I've seen several fairly intelligent people wander into the weeds, however, making points that show they don't quite get it. The main thing is their outrage over why a tank farm was built near a river that supplies the community's water.
To start with, every major river is somebody's water supply. So are most of the minor ones. Expecting special treatment for the Kanawha makes no sense.
And major rivers have carried barge traffic since before there were railroads. This, plus use of waterpower to drive mill wheels, is why cities are built on rivers.
To ask why the tank farm is next to the river is like asking why the Amtrak station is so close to the railroad tracks.
Not to suggest that dismantling tank farms and creating some sort of protective zone around rivers would be a bad idea. I think it's an excellent idea. But it would be a major economic change in how things happen there.
Any proposed reform, even a good one, needs to include alternatives to current practice. Which starts with understanding current practice.
I'm not saying you needed to know it all going in, but the benefit of technical savvy over rote memorization disappears if, knowing how to find the information you need, you don't go ahead and do that before you speak up.
One of the reasons I trot out Andy Rooney so often is because he epitomizes "speak before you think." Andy made a career out of asking questions like "Why do potato chip bags have so much air in them?"
There was a phone on his desk, but, if he'd picked it up and called someone to find out, they'd say, "To protect them from being crushed into dust on the way to the store." And then he'd have had to find something else to wonder about.
Besides, looking stuff up can be very entertaining as well as instructive.
Librarian very bad, her not good master
Tom Spurgeon links to this story about the library at Amhert College, (Note: No, it's the one in town.) explaining why the controversial graphic novel, "Tintin in the Congo," will remain freely available to kids in the children's library.
I'm not a fan of "censorship," but I am a big fan of "responsibility," and this decision is so riddled with non sequiturs and nonsense that it makes my head spin.
To encapsulate: Parents had objected to the book being on the shelves in the children's library, because of its racist content. The librarian, however, rejected their complaint, reasoning that:
1. To move the book from the children's section to either the young adult or adult section as the parents requested would be censorship.
2. Parents are responsible for the books their children choose to read or, apparently, even look at. “The ultimate message is all parents need to walk into this building and assume their children can’t just run free."
3. American Library Association guidelines state that "age restrictions aren’t appropriate to a well-functioning library."
To which I would ask why, then, they have a children's section at all?
And, at some point, someone decided that this book belonged in the so-called "children's section." Isn't that suggesting age restrictions and therefore a violation of ALA guidelines?
The other day, I linked to "Peter Pissgums and His Pervert Pirates," which is also a graphic novel, albeit a paperback. I assume it would also be an unacceptable act of censorship not to have this cartoon freely available on the shelves in the children's section.
The main thing I can't understand is this: If fear of censorship means that librarians cannot assume responsibility for what is on their shelves and how it is categorized, why do they need master's degrees? Why do they need degrees at all?
Anybody capable of understanding the Dewey Decimal System is qualified to shelve books, and volunteers often assume the duty of helping patrons check out and return books. With bar codes on books and library cards, that could even be automated.
I think requiring an MLS is a discriminatory hiring practice, given the responsibilities demanded of the job by ALA's own guidelines.
In fact, I think even having someone called a "librarian" is an unfair imposition of an inappropriate hierarchical structure.
But, then, my thinking that is probably an ethically unfair practice of some sort. I would be ashamed of myself, but, then, that would be judgemental.
Comments 6
Comments are closed.