Carla Hayden

The following essay was written in 2017 and not posted then.

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Unchecked Self-Aggrandizement—A Review of an Interview

New York Times interviewer Ana Marie Cox seems to be devoid of critical-thinking capacity.  Should one be surprised?  Not really.  After all, isn’t this the age of fake news?  “Carla Hayden Thinks Libraries Are a Key to Freedom” is an interview she did on the new librarian of Congress.  So, was banning library patrons like me without warning or due process a “key to freedom”?  If so, then that freedom really meant the freedom of librarians to be unaccountable and punish criticism of librarians.  

Cox begins her interview by asking what the best preparation for a librarian of Congress might be.  Hayden responds, “to have an open mind,” then notes that “Each librarian has been almost perfect for the time that they served.”  Does Cox challenge that statement?  Not in the least!  And yet a minimum of research on her part ought to have provoked challenge!  For example, the previous librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, lived a one-percenter lifestyle (e.g., “first-class airfare, $1,000-a-night hotels in Rome and Florence, chauffeured cars and Acela trains”), thanks to the dubious James Madison Council of exclusive one-percenters he created to purportedly fund-raise for the Library of Congress.  Long-time librarian Maureen Moore noted: “He likes to associate with rich and famous people.  To my knowledge, they’ve never put money toward anything useful.”  

Now, does that sound “almost perfect”?  And what about the congressional investigation that criticized the Library of Congress for its “technological failures”?  For details on that less than “almost perfect” librarian of Congress, see “Librarian’s trips abroad, posh hotels all paid for by James Madison Council.”

An independent, critical-thinking capable mind might have also wondered how the autocratic selection of poets laureate could be perceived as “almost perfect.”  And was “almost perfect” having to persist over and again for nine months to obtain a simple response from the Library of Congress? 

Dear Dr. Slone:

My apologies for not having responded to your earlier message.  The Library has determined that it will not acquire your serial.

Thank you.

Beacher Wiggins  bwig@loc.gov

Director for Acquisitions & Bibliographic Access

Library of Congress

Then when I asked what the criteria for acquisitions were, Wiggins would not respond.  Period.  So, I wrote a lengthy Open letter to the Library of Congress, which unsurprisingly did not respond.  Was non-response to questioning and challenging citizen-plebes like me “almost perfect”?  So, why didn’t Cox question and challenge?  Ah, back to square one:  the new librarian of Congress was a black female appointed by Obama!    

Well, it’s funny that you mention that each librarian appointed seems to have turned out, in retrospect, perfect for the time, because you’re a very particular librarian. You’re the first woman and the first African-American named to the role, and some people have called you a radical librarian.

Yes, a radical librarian who will likely not respond to citizen-plebes like me just like her predecessor.  And what is the librarian stereotype?  Well, Hayden gets it right, though not of course meaning it as I see and have experienced it.  

Maybe I’m a romantic, but I do think of librarians as inherently radical. There’s something political about access to information.  And it has been throughout history.

Yes, indeed, “something political about access to information,” including the acquisition of (i.e., access to) some periodicals, but rejection of others.  Well, “access” probably means precisely that in the Orwellian world of librarian gatekeepers.  Cox asks, “Do you think libraries can help in this epidemic of fake news and lack of trust in the media?”  And Hayden responds.

Librarians have been pounding on this issue in a different way for a while—that just having computer literacy is great, but as information professionals, we’re always looking at what’s the most authoritative source for the information and teaching information literacy.

“Information professionals” is of course a euphemism for information gatekeepers.  In other words, librarians like Beacher Wiggins, for example, guard the library collection, determining what enters and what must not enter into it.  Might I be wrong in assuming that “information literacy” probably means the ability to reject that information which conflicts with pc-approved information and dogma?  It’s a frightening brave new world today, especially the world of librarians.  

Hayden notes regarding her past that “In being elected to head the A.L.A., I became the face of the association.”  Well, the American Library Association will not publish any criticism with its regard.  And its “Office for Intellectual Freedom” is another of those librarian euphemisms, for it is really an Office for Intellectual Constraint and Impotence.  Well, now Hayden is “the face of the Library of Congress.”  Any difference?  Likely not in the least!  Will Hayden deign to respond to this review of her interview and that 2014 open letter?  Well, I shall not hold my breath…

James H. Billington

Billington just croaked, which is why I've just posted this cartoon, sketched in 2014.  The elevating of poetasters like Charles Wright by government-appointed hacks like Billington evidently serves a purpose:  cooptation and castration of poetry.

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Kate Ryan

Issue #18                                        Winter/Spring 2009

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Editorial Issue #18/ 2009

Against the Established Order—Check out the new AD blog wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com—

Given the times, The American Dissident ought to be receiving a lot of submissions decrying corrupt politicians, left and right, corrupt lobbyists, corrupt CEOs, intellectually-corrupt professors and poets, etc.  On the contrary, it does not.  And what it does receive tends to be scribbled by writers who cannot seem to comprehend the journal’s focus and guidelines. Poets, editors, and other writers seem content relegating American literature to mere ornamentation. Guernica: A Magazine of Art & Politics boasts, for example, a blurb from Howard Zinn, but publishes interviews with Pinsky, Hass, Kooser, and others anointed by the established order.  In that light, how could it possibly take my criticism of the National Endowment for the Arts seriously (see pp 30-38)?  “We don't do rants, which is what your piece reads like to me. It's really self-involved and paranoid,” wrote co-editor Joel Whitney, who does not have the guts to publish those who would criticize the NEA, preferring instead to publish self-admitting sellouts like Billy Collins, who states unabashedly:  "Suddenly you're asked to stop looking at specifics—I mean, I write about saltshakers and knives and forks—and talk like a politician.”  Well, I don’t write about saltshakers, nor do I talk like a politician (left or right-wing), therefore I must surely be, in the words of Whitney, “blinded by ego and rage.”  A decade ago, Michael Parenti (Z Mag) simply wrote me: “we’re not interested in literature.”  In retrospect, his statement makes sense.  
          The NEA will not be according The American Dissident public grant monies because its panelists unanimously proclaimed: the “artistic merit of the publication is low; the design and readability of the publication is [sic] poor.”  Some pipedream that was, eh?! In vain, I challenged the NEA on its negative unanimity, asked for precision, and got none at all (read the essay). After all, I’m just a citizen “blinded by ego and rage.”  Clearly, the NEA’s decision was a political one, and such political decisions should not be legal… and perhaps are not, but what the hell can I do against the vast government wall?  
          On a positive note, the Concord Free Public Library allowed me to hold a watercolor display in its art gallery for the month of August. There, I was actually permitted to criticize the local pillars, while advertising The AD.  One curator noted: “The only thing I know is that I have never seen anything like your work in the Gallery.  You don't soothe, you awaken.”  That alone made it worthwhile. I asked curator Nick Capasso of DeCordova Museum to check it out. He did.  “While DeCordova Museum does have a long track record of presenting politically engaged contemporary art, I’m afraid that we will not be able to include your work in our exhibition program. Good luck fining [sic] other venues for your work.”  So, I painted a watercolor depicting him as a Nazi at the gates of the art museum autocratically determining acceptable aesthetics (see p. 3).  He’s depicted in the center of the illustration surrounded by colleagues Kois and Rosenfield.  The pig and hearts actually exist at the museum, which tends to promote, despite Capasso’s assertion, diversionary art that doesn’t question or challenge much of anything at all. Now, when was the last time you’ve heard of an artist satirizing an art curator? The editor wishes to thank subscribers for making The American Dissident possible.  Robbins Library (Arlington, MA) is a new institutional subscriber!  

Carla Hayden

Beacher Wiggins

The following open letter was sent in 2014.  

Open Letter (2014)
To the Library of Congress Poetry and Literature Center,
Another Odd Sponsor of Banned Books Week Proudly… Banning Books

Should public servants be in the business of determining what literature should be accepted and what literature should be rejected at the publicly-funded Library of Congress?  Should they be serving as Gatekeepers of Propriety—Grand Censors and Banners of Books?  How can such activity possibly conform with the principles of democracy?  

Beacher Wiggins, Director for Acquisitions & Bibliographic Access, finally responded to my query, originally sent in January 2014, then again in August and again in September of the same year, regarding the procedure for getting the Library of Congress to subscribe (only $20/year) to The American Dissident, a 501c3 nonprofit journal of literature, democracy, and dissidence.  His response was a curt “My apologies for not having responded to your earlier message.  The Library has determined that it will not acquire your serial.”  Period.  I’d received the same kind of curt response from the NEA regarding a grant request.  And the NEA refused to provide any details as to why its flat-out rejection of the journal as “low” and “poor.”  Of course, anything critical of the NEA or Library of Congress or National Poetry Month or Academy of American Poets or any other established-order organization, cog, or icon would have to be deemed “low” and “poor.”  

                As for Rob Casper, Director of the Library of Congress Poetry and Literature Center, he has yet to respond to my query as to how The American Dissident might be placed on his shelves (i.e., the public shelves of the Library of Congress!).  He and Wiggins have yet to respond to my request for details on the process of determination, that is, acquisition and non-acquisition.  Is their silence with that regard an indirect statement that the simple opinion of public-servant apparatchiks is the determining factor?  After all, how can one possibly make an objective determination regarding poetry and poetry criticism?  

Does the collection development policy of the Library of Congress include, like so many other libraries, the American Library Association's “Library Bill of Rights” statement that "libraries should provide materials and information providing ALL points of view"?  If so, why do chief acquisitions apparatchiks like Casper and Wiggins not adhere to it?  If not, why is that statement not part of it?  Do they espouse the left’s inclusivity mantra?  If so, why do they effect de facto exclusion.  Hypocrites?

Clearly, The American Dissident is a unique literary journal because it dares criticize what few if any other journals dare criticize:  the academic/literary established order.  Indeed, it questions and challenges, in the spirit of democracy, organizations like Poetry Foundation, the NEA, the Academy of American Poets, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and PEN America.  It has been critical of the knee-jerk ostracizing and banning of viewpoints subjectively deemed inappropriate or uncivil.  In fact, it also criticizes, in the spirit of democracy, the Library of Congress itself, including the aforementioned apparatchiks and its CEO Librarian James H. Billington.  The front cover of issue #18, for example, featured a satire on Billington and the poet he chose to be Poet Laureate of the USA (see https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=239569862679528067#allposts).  The front cover of issue #30 also featured Billington, this time with his new anointed poet laureate (see http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2016/01/juan-felipe-herrera.html).
Perhaps it was the watercolor I did on the Poetry Society of America that irritated Casper, former Programs Director of Poetry Society of America (see http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2014/08/alice-quinn.html)? Satire?  We no need no stinkin satire!  Is that it?  Sadly, those visiting the Library of Congress will not be exposed to such satire and criticism thanks to its gatekeepers.   Moreover,  one must wonder how American education failed not only them, but also the many American poets who manage to intellectually accept without question or challenge such an autocratic anointment effected by one man, Billington.  

Why have Casper and Wiggins decided to essentially ban The American Dissident from a publicly-funded library of the purported representative of the American public, the Congress?  Well, you’d have to ask them, for they have not been responsive at all.  After all, they do not have to be responsive, for they are public servants wholly unaccountable to the public.  As citizens are increasingly learning (hopefully!), public servants from President Obama to Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on down seem to be less and less accountable nowadays.  

Essentially, Casper and Wiggins have decided to ban hardcore criticism of the academic/literary established order, including that targeting the Library of Congress itself, from the publicly-funded shelves of the Library of Congress.  What a twisted sense of DEMOCRACY they must possess!  Shame on those who gave them the power of selection (i.e., banning)!  Perhaps Casper and Wiggins might wish to reflect, stand up as men (as opposed to careerist ladder climbers), speak honestly for once in their lives, where few librarians would dare, and openly express their true scorn for and disagreement with the ALA’s core statement as noted above.   Pipedream?  Likely! 

Finally, as the PC-hammer and sickle, represented by Casper and Wiggins, continues making progress in America, how not to be outraged?  Casper and Wiggins illustrate the fundamental problem with America as a democracy.  The country is much too large to operate as a democracy.  Its public servants will often simply not respond to the public.  The powerful organization Judicial Watch serves as an example, for it must battle tooth and nail to obtain Freedom of Information documents from the Obama administration.  Now, how can a simple publisher like me expect to obtain a response?  

Charles Simic

Poet Laureate of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce

Charles Wright

Charles Simic

Poet Laureate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce