David Ochs

Réjean Bonenfant

Poème « irrépondable »

                                                                           Inspiré par Réjean Bonenfant¹

Que c’est difficile de dialoguer dans la Noirceur,²… sinon impossible !

Qualifier d’«irrépondable» le réfléchissement dur sans fioriture d’un poète

révoltévenant d’au-delà de vos frontières,

vous excuse, sans doute, vous, poètes subventionnés de l’État, de réfléchir
sur ce qui est déjà trop bien enterré dans le fond de vos méninges surprotégées,
et vous permet de continuer de jouir de votre refuge dans la grande illusion littéraire. 
Si la plume est une épée, c’est seulement quand c’est dans vos mains
et ce n’est pas du tout au grand service de la poésie.
Le poète révolté reste désarmé devant vous, mais il refuse de s’en aller.
Appelez donc les flics… ou est-ce que vous l’avez déjà fait ?

Dénigrer son expérience d’être censuré devant l’apathie de la masse poète
par l’évocation de la vôtre ou de celle d’un autre d’il y a quelques années

vous enlève toute trace de culpabilité d’inaction là où vous auriez dû réagir

et vous permet sans doute de prospérer dans la grande hypocrisie de la poésie

chez vous où l’ouverture est prétendue car poètes d’outre-mer sont les bienvenus—

ben, pas tous—mais n’est-ce pas en réalité qu’un grand geste superficiel ?

La Machine de la poésie existe comme formidable ennemie de la poésie rebelle,
celle qui s’engage contre la Machine elle-même

car cette dernière, résultat naturel de la force indomptable de la mondialisation,

sert à diminuer le pouvoir de la poésie en répandant la versification délavée,

celle pratiquée dans vos cliques de bistrots pop ou salons confortables.

Examinez tout simplement le tonnelage de poèmes produits dans votre seule ville—

une masse, pour la plupart, qui n’éclaire aucunement

car au nom de l’aveuglement bénéfique perpétué par les poètes rouages.

Sans les subsides des oligarques, vous ne posséderiez pas

vos chics recueils imprimés sur papiers pas mal chers.

Que c’est difficile de dialoguer dans la Noirceur… sinon impossible !
Deux solitudes en état de guerre, vous et le poète révolté,

et vous êtes la puissance de loin dominatrice du fait de vos amples fonds

ce qui vous permettent d’accaparer les moyens de communication littéraire

tandis que le poète révolté fait partie des derniers sauvages car sans éditeur

pour lui gonfler la tête, ni coterie de groupies pour l’assurer dans cet univers sans assurance.

S’il perd cette guerre, et c’est sans doute ce qui va arriver, serez-vous vraiment contents

dans l’enfer que vous avez préféré, là où le poète devenu showman n’a plus de voix ?

Vous secouer de votre complaisance ne semble même plus une option aujourd’hui;

après tout et en fin de compte, les poètes de fonction ne sont que des poètes fonctionnaires !    

……………………………….

 

¹Réjean Bonenfant, écrivain québécois

²La Grande Noirceur, c’est l’époque où régnait Maurice Duplessis, dictateur soft québécois

Philip Kennicott

Notes on a Review by an Established-Order Critic

Philip Kennicott, critic for the Washington Post, manifests a certain “normal” inability to viscerally question and challenge.  In his reportage of the “Poetic Likeness” exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery, he notes “many famous poets” are not included without even wondering or caring why all non-famous poets are not included.  Fame, he at least seems to recognize though half-heartedly, does not necessarily equal greatness (whatever that might be in the realm of poetry).  But he seems incapable of realizing that not famous can mean not necessarily bad. 

Kennicott notes “celebrity poet” Maya Angelou was not included in the exhibit, though she recited at Clinton’s 1993 inauguration.  He doesn’t seem to grasp that poets invited by presidents clearly translates into poets innocuous to presidents.  He, of course, does not wonder how innocuous seems to be a trait shared by many, if not most good or even great poets. 

He notes the fellow who created the exhibit included with the photos or paintings texts that were “deliciously indulgent,” as if the writing were a Twinkie.  And perhaps indeed that would sum up the bulk of bourgeois poets and poet critics.  Kennicott includes a couple of lines from Gertrude Stein to back his Twinkie observation:  “Very fine is my valentine./Very fine and very mine./Very mine is my valentine very mine and very fine.”  Well, to be fair, at least he characterizes those lines as “typically infantile doggerel,” though mentions that the curator Ward had said, “If I submitted that to the New Yorker I wouldn’t have to wait for the return mail to know the response.”  Apparently, Ward does not know the New Yorker, which would have probably eagerly published those lines, considering the fame element.  Kennicott, of course, fails to challenge Ward with regards the bulk of New Yorker published poetry, which seems to be representative of typical bourgeois doggerel.  Off limits:  any poetry apt to question and challenge the poetry establishment and its academically cocooned fluffy icons. 

“Spoken like a poet, which in fact Ward is,” remarks Kennicott, failing to add the qualifier bourgeois.  “Publicity and poetry went hand in hand, albeit uncomfortably, throughout the period,” he notes, failing to underscore that such has evidently gotten worse today, where poets of renown have websites dedicated to themselves and more often than not totally devoid of unique thought and ideas.  He also fails to underscore that the “self-mythologizing pioneered by Whitman”  is no longer even necessary today, for an entire network of mythologizing machinery exists from the Academy of Academic (uh, American) Poets and Poetry Foundation to the Library of Congress.   “Many of the names included are now fading into obscurity, even former poets laureate Howard Nemerov and Richard Wilbur,” notes Kennicott.  Well, let us then rejoice! 

Finally, Kennicott concludes regarding the exhibit:  “’Poetic Likeness’ emphasizes something essential about poetry — that it is dynamic and ongoing, and that its fundamental appeal is to the part of our brain that likes fine distinctions.”  As I tell my students, avoid using WE and OUR, for exceptions will always exist… thankfully.  What “Poetic Likeness” sadly seems to emphasize and seeks to push is nothing but base celebrity in the hope of somehow keeping the mythology of the poet as inflated as possible.  Wouldn’t it be far more interesting to create an exhibit that highlighted poets who actually stood up on their hind legs to speak rude truth against the bourgeois poetry machine that seeks to keep poetry as a coopted intellectual diversion, as opposed to a form of written combat against the corruption drowning the nation.

Keli Goff

---

From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: assistant@keligoff.com; submissions@keligoff.com
Subject: A new Keli Goff cartoon
Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2012 11:57:19 -0500

To Keli Goff,
Check out the satirical cartoon P. Maudit just drew on you:

http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2012/12/keli-goff.html. Please comment, though I doubt you will. Feel free to post the cartoon on your glowing egotistical website.

Sincerely...

Louis Hamelin

Les Néo-cons

Fuck you, yankee

—Louis Hamelin, chroniqueur du Devoir

 

Partisans coulissards de la censure,

ces journalistes, artistes, poètes,

profs et autres fonctionnaires de la

machine mangeuse de la démocratie

diront hautement et publiquement

non à la censure—

 

la face publique de leur double gueule

l’exige ; c’est comme ça qu’ils vivent

rangés, emmurés tranquillement

de courbettes et cérémonies.

 

O qu’ils encaissent mal la dure critique,

leur faisant mouche sur l’oignon

à court d’arguments,

qui leur provoque

un fulgurant

ad hominem d’indigné.

 

Ainsi, le moral de cette petite histoire vraie

c’est qu’il vaut mieux être un maudit “yankee”

qui ose dire ses quatre vérités

qu’un hostie de cocooné  

qui n’a aucun devoir à la véracité.

Dorianne Laux

 

Hi Dorianne,
You are the subject of my new blog post: http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2012/11/dorianne-laux.html. Feel free to comment, though I expect you won't. Poets tend to scorn vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy. 

Joan Houlihan

 

Read the amazingly stupidly contradictory statement poetry autocrat Joan Houlihan wrote me on dissidence here:  http://www.theamericandissident.org/orgs/concord_poetry_center.html. 

Freedom of Speech

Above is the front cover for Issue #21 of The American Dissident.  It's part of a series titled "Democracy" and is called "The Schizophrenic Citizen," depicting the conflict between rude truth and civility, the latter generally imposed in academe at the expense of the former. 

Hanna Pylvainen

Mark Gonzales

Becky Tuch

"The Party Line"

How does ones mind end up following a party line in all ways?  Difficult question.  In any case, that’s the title of the above aquarelle, which features Democrat in Chief Howard Dean feeding Becky Tuch, editor of the Review Review.  In supine position is courtjester poet Ian Thal.  The sketch was influenced by Goya’s “Las Chinchillas.”  Tuch had written a politically-correct inspired negative review of an issue of The American Dissident.   I'd met Howard Dean briefly, while I was protesting in front of the Emerson Umbrella Center for the Arts during the Concord Festival of Authors.  He was guest speaker and refused to even take a flyer.  A partir de la marde, la creativite! Merci, mademoiselle Tuch et cie. 

Jon E. Travis

The Anti-Freedom of Speech Mission to Destroy Public Education in America:  A Counter-Essay

Thought & Action (the National Education Association’s Higher Education Journal) published (Fall 2012) “The Anti-Egalitarian Mission to Destroy Public Education in America,” written by an educational bureaucrat, Jon E. Travis, Professor of Educational Leadership at Texas A&M University-Commerce.  In that essay, Travis decried so-called “anti-egalitarians” as “individuals hostile to the tenets of American liberty.”  Furthermore, he labeled those faceless individuals as “oligarchs” seeking to restrict “educational access to the rich and white.”  They remain faceless because Travis lacked the courage to name any of them. 

As a white, more or less unemployed professor, I’ve always dared “go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways” (Emerson), especially regarding institutions of higher education employing me.  Travis blindly, if not religiously, praises those institutions as “revered.”  Likely, he has never mustered the courage or dared think as an independent citizen to actually question and challenge them. 

Travis and the bulk of educrats seem purposefully ignorant of the damage left-wing ideological political correctness has been doing to higher education, especially in the form of restricting (often unconstitutionally!) democracy’s cornerstones, vigorous debate and freedom of speech.  Why the egregious ignorance?  Evidently, it is self-serving.

As a white citizen, I take offense at the anti-white racist programs educrats have institutionalized in those so-called “revered” establishments of higher education.  Affirmative Action and the Un-Fair Campaign (see http://unfaircampaign.org) are several examples.  Institutionalized multiculturalism has served to diminish the very “tenets of American Liberty” (the words are Travis’) more than anything else on college campuses across the nation.

Yet why the silence with that regard? Why do our so-called “revered” institutions of higher learning evidently prefer diversity over democracy? Why have most, if not all, of them established Departments of Diversity, as opposed to Departments of Democracy?  Could educrats like Travis possibly be unaware of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the annual statistics it compiles with regards campus speech codes?

“Public education faculty, staff, and administrators need to believe they are in a war,” notes Travis, but I note in a war not with the nebulous “anti-egalitarians,” but rather with freedom-of-speech libertarians. In fact, the politically-correct  institutions of higher education praised across the board by Travis tend to be anything but egalitarian in nature. Conservative white students, for example, are surely not considered on an equal footing with minority students. The professorate is anything but egalitarian.

Finally, how can independent-minded citizens, as opposed to politically-correct indoctrinated college graduates and professors, possibly agree with Travis’ overall assessment of America’s institutions of higher learning as “revered,” especially when the majority of those institutions willingly and often illegally suppress freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of speech?  

Neither Travis nor Thought & Action deigned to respond to this counter-essay.  Perhaps both he and editor Mary Ellen Flannery are examples of those anti-egalitarians. 

Mary Jo Bang

Fluttering Dichterlings

There’s often a world of cocooned vacuity on the website of the Academy of American Poets... because the high-and-mighty Academy chancellors are as established order as it gets.  Do not offend is their mantra.  Smile, you’re on clever camera!  You’d be hard-pressed to find just one dissident mind amongst the lot of them.  Gary Snyder?  Maybe 100 years ago, but certainly not today.  He's comfortably gone from Beatnik to tenured emeritus academic stuffed in the established-order canon.  Oops.  He’s no longer on the chancellor roster. 

A handful of poets were asked on the Academy website (poets.org) to respond to the following question posed by some invisible Academy chancellor or likely lackey thereof: 

“What do you see as the role of the poet in today’s culture?” 

Now, if I were asked that question, I’d state upfront precisely what the chancellors would not wish to hear, for evidently they'd feel inevitably and uncomfortably, though indirectly, targeted. 

The poet, above and beyond all else, ought to decry censorship, speak rude truth even at the expense of literary and/or academic career, and otherwise be a soldier/defender of freedom of speech and vigorous debate, democracy's cornerstones.  He or she ought to have the courage to especially denounce the censorship effected by organizations like the Academy of American Poets. 

A few years ago, I’d contacted members of an earlier flock of chancellors who proved indifferent to censorship.  One of them is present in the current flock, prof emeritus, ex-hippie Lyn Hejinian.  No matter.  The careers of chancellor Dichterlings depend on chancellor Dichterlings turning a blind eye and adorning a classy-looking muzzle. 

Mary Jo Bang was first to present a response:  “Today, as in any era, there are myriad roles for poets: semiotician, elegist, eulogist, gamer, white noise machine, musician, Sapphist, theorist, father figure, bird watcher, a video projection of a moving mouth—all trapped behind the glass of Wittgenstein's fly-bottle.”   

Jo Bang seems to excel like most other known poets in the art of vacuous verbiage.  Perhaps that’s the true role of today's poet.  Brilliant, Jo Bang!

Mark Bibbins was next in line:  “To point out that today's culture has spinach in its teeth and egg on its face.” 

Now, that’s a good way to avoid speaking rude truth!  Cover it up with egg… and why not throw some bacon in its mouth too?   Brilliant, Bibbins!

Timothy Donnelly fired out the fundamental problem, without of course realizing it was in fact a problem:  “The role of the poet qua poet is to write poems. What is the role of the architect in today's culture? What is the role of the chef? The answers are self-evident. A poet writes poems. I don't see any other additional role or function or responsibility that all poets share...” 

Yes, the poet as ostrich supreme.  Brilliant, Donnelly!

Randall Mann echoed Donnelly’s modus operandi of scribouilleur uber alles:  “The poet should shut the door and write poems, and then, after much time and care, show the world. If this goes well, the role-playing will take care of itself.” 

Yes, the poet as role player certainly mirrored the sad reality of most poets as role-playing poseurs.  Just look at their websites.  Brilliant, Mann! 

Ben Mirov noted with a little touch of fanciful Dali:  “The role of the poet in today's culture is the same as it's always been: to be a huge transparent eyeball.”   

But it took more than a mere eyeball.  It also took a mouth and especially the courage to open it when doing so might irk the flock!  Brilliant, Mirov!

Brenda Shaughnessy suggested:  “Not that the poet's work makes it all the way out into actual ‘culture’ very often, but nonetheless, I do see the poet as someone whose role it is to push back against anti-intellectualism, anti-activism, and passivity in general.” 

Yet how not to be anti-intellectual when the intellectuals remained buffered in academic herds, ever truncating freedom of speech and vigorous debate in the name of today's world religion:  PC?  Would Shaughnessy remain passive now that she's been informed the Academy not only censored my remarks but also banned me from participating in its online forums several years ago?  But of course she would!  Brilliant, Shaughnessy!'

 

Betsy Newell

Celebrate Banning Books and Patrons Week

 

The Banned Books Week Farce

Why Banned Books Week Ought NOT to Be Celebrated

If one were to take the celebration of Banned Books Week literally, then it would perhaps make sense.  In other words, the librarians, publishers et al would be celebrating the books, periodicals, and patrons they’ve successfully banned or shunned over the years.  The rampant hypocrisy in the very heart of the American Library Association, which seems to be the chief sponsor of the event,  as well as that of the multitude of library directors spread across the nation like the proverbial layer of stale peanut butter, clearly needs to be exposed.  The celebration seems to have become nothing more than a self-congratulatory act of backslapping.  If there were an iota of integrity in it, a place, no matter how small, would be devoted to criticism of it and of the many librarians, as well as approving poets and writers, who do in fact ban books, periodicals, and even patrons. 

Politically-correct journalist Bill Moyers and wife were named Honorary Co-Chairs of this year’s celebration, which immediately politicizes the celebration.  One must wonder how many books and periodicals published by right-wingers critical of Islam, Obama, and/or PC have been shunned by the likes of Moyers and wife.  And why appoint such a buffered and wealthy couple to be honorary co-chairs?  Why not appoint instead someone who has indeed tested librarians over the years to determine just how open, or rather closed, they really are to new books and periodicals, not to mention criticism of them? 

With that regard, Charles Willett, founding editor of Counterpoise and retired librarian, comes to mind.  At the Fifth National Conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries, he stated:  “In almost all the 45 libraries studied here, and probably hundreds and hundreds more across the country, we have failed our professional duty to seek out diverse political views. [...] These books are not expensive. Their absence from our libraries makes a mockery of ALA’s vaunted ‘freedom to read.’ But we do not even notice that we are censoring our collections. Complacently, we watch our new automated systems stuff the shelves with Henry Kissinger’s memoirs.” 

               So, why celebrate such a despicably deplorable record?  Why not instead satirize the intellectually corrupt bibliotards, philes, and snubs, as I've done regarding the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom
(see http://www.theamericandissident.org/orgs/american_library_association.html )?  The OIF, by the way, remains utterly indifferent to my complaint of being permanently trespassed without warning or due process by Sturgis Library, which celebrates Banned Books Week, though not this year, according to its fascistic director Lucy Loomis?  The only response from the ALA to my complaint was from Valerie Hawkins, though not of the Office of Intellectual Freedom: 

At any rate, the policies of any local public library are set by its board of trustees. Any and all complaints as to your treatment by its employees should be taken up with the library’s trustees, as they would be the ones who would decide if there was library staff misconduct and then could take steps accordingly.

We’re in Chicago. We have no jurisdiction whatsoever over your local public library and your problems with them.

You’ll need to work this out on your own, with your own local resources and legal authorities.

Now, does Hawkins seem at all interested or concerned?  And what happens, as in my case, when the board of trustees refuses to even respond  and when one of the trustees, boyfriend of the director, Dan Santos, dismisses my criticism as “intellectual masturbation” without even examining it, if in fact he's even capable of doing so?  And how might one explain the total refusal of PEN New England (“defending freedom of expression”)  to respond to my complaints of having my freedom of expression truncated here and there in New England at several libraries, including Watertown Free Public Library, which trespassed me for three months for simply trying to get the ref librarian Ardis Francoeur to understand why she should at least consider subscribing to The American Dissident?  Calling director Karen Wulf, calling director Karen Wulf!  Sorry, nobody home.  PEN is of course a Banned Books Week sponsor.  And how might one explain Suffolk University Poetry Center’s refusal to consider subscribing to The American Dissident, a journal of literature, democracy, and dissidence?  In fact, it too would not respond, that is until the student editor I’d contacted confronted Fred Marchant, its director and former PEN New England director.  And why does the National Coalition Against Censorship refuse to respond regarding my complaint against PEN’s blatant hypocrisy?  Well, it too is listed as a main sponsor.  How does one explain the refusal of famous City Lights Bookstore to carry The American Dissident?  Perhaps because it’s been critical of Beatniks?  City Lights is of course a big promoter of Banned Books Week. 

                Could I possibly be the only one in America who’s been banned from a publicly-funded library for written criticism?  Could the periodical I publish be the only one that’s ever been banned from an entire library system like the Clams Library System of Cape Cod?  Could the flyers I attempted to distribute be the only ones ever banned from a publicly-funded library?  Now that’s highly unlikely.  But dissidents like me, who actually question and challenge celebrity dissidents like Moyers, tend to be fully ostracized by the established-order system, be it the biblio or cultural sectors. 

Finally, the ALA stipulates that “Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community—librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types—in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.”  But does it really?  Readers of all types?  Certainly not my type!  And doesn’t the commercialization of such a serious subject as censorship serve to demean it, though fill the pockets of dubious types like Moyers and ALA executives?   “Help support Banned Books Week by purchasing t-shirts, buttons, and more.  Shop!”  Christ.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

CELEBRATE BANNED BOOKS WEEK... With the Hypocrites

Sept 29-Oct 6 2012

Stephen Burt

Hrant R. Russian

Money, money, money!  Is that what art has become on Cape Cod?  Sadly, it appears so.  “With all of these positives it is hard to even think that we are anywhere near the apocalypse of art on Cape Cod,” noted Clive Beasley in his comment on “Cape Cod Museum of Art faces mountain of debt,” which appeared in Cape Cod Times, which refuses to report on my being permanently trespassed from Sturgis Library for having expressed an opinion in writing.  Yet, isn’t money, money, and commerce, commerce the “apocalypse” for art?  Beasley further states he has “yet to hear anyone say, ‘We do not want to have an art museum on Cape Cod’.”  Well, if money, money, and commerce, commerce is indeed what art has come to be on the Cape, as it sure as hell seems, then let me be the first to say I don’t want an art museum on the Cape, especially if funded with taxpayer dollars.  There, Mr. Beasley, now you’ve heard it.

What is needed at the museum is not a “business-oriented leader with a talent for fundraising,” but rather a democracy-oriented leader with a talent for encouraging rude truth, vigorous debate, and real freedom of expression in art.  Such a director would likely be willing to work for a lot less than the Joe or Jill-average art director.  Rather than force money out of the public’s pockets via Massachusetts Cultural Council, the NEA, etc. to help finance the museum debt, why not have one or several of those pro-Obama Cape Cod multi-millionaires foot the bill.  Hell, it would be tax free! 

Over a year ago, I’d written a critical (questioning and challenging) letter to Elizabeth Ives Hunter, Executive Director, and Hrant R. Russian, President of the Board of Trustees of the museum.  Neither, of course, responded.  Hunter has since resigned (forced out for lack of money-raising prowess). The letter is still pertinent and follows: 

Your statements in the Cape Cod Museum of Art brochure are vacuous and self-congratulating. Does not art deserve more than the smiley-face vacuity of politicians? What are “outstanding artists”? Should our nation’s citizens simply open wide and swallow without ever questioning and challenging such terms? Can an artist, who questions and challenges the art community, as I do here, actually rise to become one of your “outstanding artists” to be displayed at your museum? Thus, we finally begin to define the term.

What does “operating for the benefit of the public” imply? Who in fact is the “public”? Is it exclusively formed by the herds of obedient sheep who open wide and swallow? By criticizing you, am I still part of the “public”? Or has that automatically rendered me persona non grata or "enemy of the people," to borrow the Soviet gulag term?  What does “held in trust for the public” mean? As an individual thinker and artist, I’d be much more interested in art that is not “held in trust for the public” by art gatekeepers like you and Lucy Loomis, director of Cape Cod Cultural Council and Sturgis Library.  [Loomis just informed me she was, and no longer is, director of the Mid-Cape Cultural Council.  Thus, I erred.  Oddly, she has failed to correct me regarding her hypocritical collection development policy.  Evidently, I must not have erred with that regard.  See http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2012/06/lucy-loomis.html.]

From my experience with art and literary gatekeepers, it is likely you will not understand anything written in this email at all, whose purpose is not to convince you but rather to make a statement for the public record.  Here’s several more questions for you: Why do art managers on the Cape always seem to wear ties and jackets? Is it not odd that art seems to be paired with the bourgeois game of golf today, as in your Friends of the Cape Cod Museum Golf Tournament? Should not art be more than paintings of hydrangeas, boats, lobster shacks, nudes, and seascapes? It seems that you willingly participate in the widespread banality, subservience, and castration of art today. Why do you tend to support subservient and castrated artists? Well, I certainly know the answer to that one… and so do the apparatchiks at the local Chamber of Commerce.

.................................................................................................................................

Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2012 11:38:16 +0000
From: sturgislibrary@comcast.net
To: todslone@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Cape Cod Art Museum featured in this week's American Dissident blog entry

Mr. Slone:
There are two incorrect statements in your latest blog post. There is no Cape Cod Cultural Council -- there are regional and town Cultural Councils on the Cape; the one for Barnstable and Yarmouth is called the Mid-Cape Regional Cultural Council. I stepped down from the MCRCC over a year and a half ago. Their current President is Becky Lawrence.
https://www.mass-culture.org/lcc_public.aspx
https://www.mass-culture.org/Mid-Cape
There is no need to send us notifications about your blog posts -- if we want to subscribe, we will do so.
Thank you.

Lucy Loomis, Library Director
Sturgis Library, Barnstable Village
http://www.sturgislibrary.org
508-362-8448

 

Agnieszka Kolek

From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: agnieszka@agnieszkakolek.com
Subject: Your statement on artists is a farce!
Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 19:28:17 -0400

To Agniezka Kolek, Curator of the Passion for Freedom exhibit:
Your statement is a farce: "There are regimes that are afraid of art, but artists are not afraid of regimes." 95% of the poets and artists I've observed are in fact part of cultural sectors of regimes. 95% are cultural or academic ladder climbers, thus fearful of regimes. 95% would not dare stand alone to protest against anything for 95% are herd members. Is that you the gorgeous blond in black dress standing in front of the picture of a nude woman? I was looking for your photo so I could do a satire on that statement of yours. To add to the already over-bloated myth of the artist and poet only helps keep his or her art and poetry bland and safe usually in some academic cocoon.


[NO RESPONSE]

From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: todslone@hotmail.com; agnieszka@agnieszkakolek.com
Subject: RE: Your statement on artists is a farce!
Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2012 11:48:47 -0400

To Agniezka Kolek, Curator of the Passion for Freedom exhibit:
A satirical cartoon on you is featured in this week's American Dissident blog entry: http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2012/09/blog-post.html. Please feel free to comment. Comments are never moderated or otherwise censored. Thank you for your attention.
Sincerely,
G. Tod Slone, Ed.
The American Dissident

Tim Wise

Patrick T. Harker

FIRE noted President Harker did not respond to its letter.  Will he respond to the above satire?  Imagine, on the university level, even thinking about prohibiting "teasing"!  One must wonder which PC professor/indoctrinators drew up the Bullying Code.  For the article and letter on this troubling concern, consult http://thefire.org/article/14752.html.

Will the student newspaper publish the satire?  Miracles do happen:  Syracuse University's student newspaper published a P. Maudit satire on a SU gender-studies self-professed "revolutionary" professor/indoctrinator, Minnie Bruce Pratt.  The following is the email I cc'd to President Harker:

To Marina Koren, Editor-in-Chief; Nora Kelly, Executive Editor; Emily Nassi, Editorial Editor; and Megan Krol, Editorial Cartoonist for The Review (The University of Delaware’s Independent Student Newspaper):

Are you truly independent, or is that just a meaningless term nowadays? If so, please at least consider publishing in The Review the attached satire on President Harker and the university’s constitutionally illegal speech codes. Perhaps the satire might actually illicit debate on the subject. Please do not think that I am “teasing” or “bullying” you here. Please inform me what your decision will be. Thank you for your attention.

Not one student or administrator contacted responded!  Onwards... to the next elitist pomp and circumstantial cible [target].

Susan Edwards Richmond

The following email was sent to Susan Edwards Richmond, who unsurprisingly did not respond.



Hi Susan Edwards Richmond:

Time for a reality check. Step out of the poesy cocoon and take a gander (Sanctuary!) at the new P. Maudit cartoon on YOU posted on The American Dissident blogsite http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2012/08/susan-edwards-richmond.html

Feel free to use it in Wild Cherries, uh, Apples. Feel free to comment, though I doubt you’re a partisan of vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy. Enjoy!

Elizabeth Warren

Pat Condell

Daniel W. Santos

And, perhaps most importantly of all, [these rights] include the right to voice our opinions freely and to publish them without hindrance.  Yet freedom of speech is under attack today all across Europe. I have experienced the full brunt of it in my own country, Austria...

              —Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff

Here in America, one might of course say the same thing.  Far too many faceless little-caesars like Daniel Santos, Betsy Newell, Eleanor Claus, and Lucy Loomis remain willfully ignorant of citizen rights and are bent on limiting those rights and punishing anyone who dares actually exercise them. 

My right to voice my opinions freely and publish them without hindrance was clearly violated by those faceless little-caesars, each of whom firmly backed the decision to have me permanently trespassed from Sturgis Library without warning or DUE PROCESS on June 19, 2012.

Email from Daniel Santos

From: danielsantos@comcast.net
Subject: Re: Criticism of Cape Cod Librarians
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2012 10:35:29 -0400
To: todslone@hotmail.com

Dear recipients of Todd Sloan’s email.

Preface: I speak for myself and not as the representative of any organization.

Mr. Sloan is correct in that he is unlikely to get a response to his rant. If one must yell to be heard then the message likely carries little substance. Mr. Sloan wallows in bloviating (Thanks, Mr. Will) self-interest. If his publication has value than those with interest will find it.

At last year’s Barnstable Village 4^thof Julyparade and festivities, Mr. Sloan walked around the village as a human billboard, sporting the “F” word.Apparently being offensive is another tactic in his arsenal to garner attention to himself. He is no more than an exhibitionist engaging in intellectual masturbation. No wonder his message is falling on deaf ears.

Dan Santos

...................................................

Rebuttal of Daniel Santos' Email

Santos contradicts himself by arguing he speaks "not as the representative of any organization" because he is clearly a representative trustee of Sturgis Library, which receives public funding. 

The RANT Santos mentions is really nothing but his own RANT: "Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view and Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval."

Why is it a RANT? It is a RANT because HE and Sturgis Library do not even believe in their own statement.  After all, if they did, they wouldn't have permanently banned my viewpoint and me from its premises.

Oddly, Santos has not been sufficiently educated to be able to understand this egregious contradiction, which is why he dismisses it as a RANT.

Of course, it is in my "self-interest" to fight for my rights as a citizen in a democracy, especially when those like Santos seek to eliminate them.

Santos, former chairperson of Barnstable Municipal Airport Committee, willfully remains ignorant of America's First Amendment. "Being offensive," as he puts it, is in fact expression protected by the First Amendment.  Santos cannot understand that offensive for him might be valid criticism for me, and vice versa.  He chooses to remain willfully ignorant. 

His paucity of education can only explain his inability to understand that my "offensive" message was a message in support of the First Amendment. CELEBRATE THE FIRST FUCKING AMENDMENT, NOT COMMERCE. That was my "billboard." Santos would of course much rather celebrate COMMERCE, which was why he was so offended by the "billboard."

Santos would never think of celebrating the First Amendment on July 4th. All he can think about is COMMERCE.  Santos and so many others like him seek to weaken, if not eliminate, the First Amendment.

For Santos and those like him, fighting openly for ones First Amendment rights is nothing but "intellectual masturbation."  In other words, any thinking outside of the Santos box of commerce should be done in the privacy of ones home. 

BTW, I have offered to meet with Santos and the other trustees to discuss the issues at hand.  He and they have yet to respond to that offer.  After all, how could meeting with me possibly further his and their careers?