Censored! If Henry Could See THEM Now!

The following comment, “Pipe Dream,” was written in response to Ithaca College professor Michael Smith’s Inside Higher Ed article, “If Henry Could See Us Now” (see http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/11/02/smith). Sadly and unsurprisingly censored by Inside Higher Ed, which exists to propagate PC and the academic established order. Mention of the censorship incident was sent to History/Ecology professor Michael Smith of Ithaca College. Smith, as good academic, chose to accept the censorship incident and remain silent. Mention was also sent to Ithaca College’s student newspaper and members of Smith’s history department, as well as college president. It is particularly reprehensible that my comment was censored because my comment simply sought to present another side of Thoreau, a side that was not happy-face PC-friendly. Was the truth in my comment rude? Well, isn’t truth always rude when spoken to power?

Pipe DreamThe project to build a replica Thoreau shack on Ithaca College’s campus, as noted in Professor Michael Smith’s article, “If Henry Could See Us Now,” is diversionary. In fact, would Henry really be happy to see college students working with professors to build a replica of his shack? Thoreau was mostly a loner, not a team player. “The gregariousness of men is their most contemptible & discouraging aspect,” he stated. “See how they follow each other like sheep not knowing why.” Individualism is hardly a valued trait on college campuses today.
The president of Ithaca College selected Walden as required reading because the book is entirely “safe” from his perspective. Any number of quotes from Thoreau’s journal entries would have proven far more provocative and thus apt to instigate vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy, though evidently not of academe. How about this quote, for example: “It suggests that the one great rule of composition — and if I were a professor of rhetoric I should insist on this — is to speak the truth.” Imagine if an English professor at Ithaca College, or better yet the president himself, actually encouraged that on campus! It would set the PC myrmidons aflame! It would free the student newspaper!
Emerson noted, regarding Thoreau: “Such dangerous frankness was in his dealing that his admirers, called him ‘that terrible Thoreau’.” Clearly, Thoreau was not the kind of fellow apt to get tenure today. After all, imagine such frankness before the ruling tenured professors and administrators. Thoreau had written: “A cross man, a coarse man, an eccentric man, a silent, a man who does not drill well,—of him there is some hope. Your gentlemen, they are all alike. They utter their opinions as if it was not a man that uttered them.”
That quote evokes the civility mantra suffocating free speech at so many institutions of purported higher learning today.
Imagine, instead of another replica shack—Yes, there’s one at Walden Pond too. I was threatened by a state trooper for leaving my free-speech flyers in it.—, if professors like Michael Smith actually stepped out from the comfortable academic herd to actively test the waters of democracy on their particular campuses by performing experiments in free speech, that is, by daring to speak what in their hearts they damn well know will get them not more carrots, but rather the ire of the reigning academic established order. Imagine, if we could get them to heed Thoreau’s famous dictum: “Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.” The result would surely be not continued academic censorship and corporatization of higher education, but rather fortified democracy and true appreciation for the First Amendment. Then one might truly and proudly ask: “if Henry could see us now.”

Scott McLemee

The following is the comment I attempted to post. It was, however, censored by Scott McLemee and/or his boss Doug Lederman, editor of Inside Higher Education. The comment pertained to McLemee's article, oddly enough called "Rude Democracy" (see http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee311). Note that McLemee boasts of not even holding a college degree. Yet, somehow, he's become a board member and regular columnist at Inside Higher Ed, an online newspaper devoted to matters of higher education. Only the Left could encourage a debate on the topic "Rude Democracy," while simultaneously censoring opinions it doesn't like. Should organs of purported higher education be in the censoring business? It is my humble opinion, as editor of The American Dissident and long-time professor, that they should not be. It is, however, the opinion of the president of the Association of American University Professors, Cary Nelson, that they should be. The Left clamors ad nauseum for civility. But is censorship civil?
..................................

Scott McLemee finally comes out of the PC-socialist closet. Bravo! He admits, though only indirectly, that he is not at all an independent journalist, but rather a doctrinaire socialist journalist who marches with the “Socialist Contingent.” “Full disclosure: I was part of this, and joined in chanting ‘We're gonna make Glen Beck cry!’,” he notes. Demonization of the likes of Beck or O’Reilly or Obama, for that matter, is a form of ad hominem which tends to be the way of the indoctrinated—left or right wing. The battle is clear today in America: free speech vs. PC civility (and accompanying censorship). Fox, at least, reports on that battle. And, yes, I tend to watch Fox more than CNN because CNN oozes PC.

These things said, just like McLemee, I’m definitely for “higher taxes for the rich and an end to the wars,” but unlike him I’m also for an end to facile demonization of those who are not for those things, for the creation of work programs for those getting free government housing and money (welfare), including Obama’s African aunt in Boston, and an end to PC tenure in the Humanities.

The problem with CIVILIY that is not mentioned in this article is its fundamental SUBJECTIVITY. Civil for you, McLemee, Herbst, and Lederman, might not be civil for me… and vice versa. That is why democracy demands a First Amendment and why perhaps Inside Higher Ed (IHE), though a private money-making organization, ought to embrace it. Sadly, it does not… or if it does, that embrace is highly superficial.

Susan Herbst is quite right, whereas IHE wrong: “Creating a culture of argument, and the thick skin that goes along with it, are long-term projects that will serve democracy well.” Her stats are of course quite frightening, though not at all surprising to me as a long-time professor: “72 percent of students agreed that it was very important for them always to feel comfortable in class.”

The thought I had the other day would be deemed sexist and thus dismissed… and probably censored. But I’ll evoke it here anyhow in the name of the FIRST Amendment: Have the soccer-mom tenured professors in power today in the Humanities, those women in purple, succeeded over the past several decades to coddle and otherwise cocoon student adults with their Safe Zones et al? Where are they hiding when right-wing student newspapers are burned and speakers heckled off the stage at college campuses across the nation? “Feeling comfortable and unthreatened intellectually is a value many students share,” notes Herbst. But is that really a value? What it does is foster cliquishness and lack of outside opinion and input. It fosters the knee-jerk, anti-Fox mentality.

McLemee has it right here and this is why he despises Beck: “Hence pursuing an argument is taken as very nearly an act of aggression.” BTW, I’m an out-of-the-closet atheist and even watch Beck now and then. Well, uh, I do tend to turn the channel to CNN when he starts spouting his god inanity. Oops, that’s an un-PC statement that might OFFEND and get this comment censored into oblivion in our so-called democracy.

McLemee notes: “The attitude that it's better to stay cool and amused than to risk making arguments or expressing too much ardor—this is not civility. It’s timidity.” But is he not being a grand hypocrite when those like me do express ardor, then are censored by his boss, while he remains silent with regards that censorship?

Finally, my comment regarding Herbst’s IHE essay on civility was censored by IHE. I brought that to Herbst’s attention in an email. Herbst, unsurprisingly or rather hypocritically, did not respond. Since it is perhaps likely that this comment will be censored to spare Herbst the embarrassment, it will be posted on my weblog. Thank you for your attention.

On "Removing Incompetent Faculty"

Open Letter to Professor Glenn Petersen:Bravo for not writing anonymously. So many professors seem to choose that road today… at the expense of their own dignity. Anyhow, “Removing Incompetent Faculty,” the brief opinion piece you wrote in NEA Higher Education Advocate, struck a little nerve. Of course, by writing such an article, unquestioning and unchallenging academic readers will automatically assume that you must be competent. Yet you fail to even mention a working definition of the term “competent.” From my perspective, as an untenured rude-truth speaking individual, “competent” faculty tend, more than anything else, to be faculty who have learned to turn a blind eye, behave obsequiously (and collegially and without spine), never speak the rude truth, and cleverly rationalize these professional traits. Your 33 years at Bernard Baruch College surely indicate a large measure of such “competence.” By the way, Advocate and Inside Higher Ed censor opinions like mine. Editor John Rosales would likely never permit this opinion to appear in his pages. Are you also an advocate of censorship… from hippie to tenured professor advocate of censorship? Well, you certainly wouldn’t be the only one! Thank you for your attention. BTW, why not get BBC to subscribe to The American Dissident. Students would likely appreciate it, though I don't think faculty would.

Harris Gardner

Harris Gardner, Another Little Caesar CensorAbout a decade ago I met Harris Gardner at the Jack Kerouac Festival in Lowell. I was manning a table for The American Dissident in the small press area. Gardner and Jack Powers were the bosses of that area. I recall Gardner sneering down at a book I had on the table: FUCK MASSACHUSETTS. He chatted with Powers. Both questioned me as to whether they should permit me to keep the book there because, well, it might anger their puppet masters. Gardner is one of thousands of little caesar censors in the literary world. His principle concern is obtaining cash from the state politicos so he can dole it out to his literary cronies.

What of course viscerally disgusts me about Gardner, besides his evident disdain for vigorous debate and democracy, are his hypocritical statements. “The poets are today’s prophets,” he blathers. “Poets should be examples of social consciousness, and awareness.” But awareness of what? The viewpoint discrimination effected by the likes of Harris? And what is social consciousness, being conscious of PC and its nefarious campaign of censorship and indoctrination?

“Poets are social critics, and social criticism is one part of the art,” he states, while excluding me from his National Poetry Month because of my evident rude-truth social criticism. But for Harris some social criticism is clearly taboo because it inevitably denounces his ilk.

“Political poetry is only a problem when it becomes a rant,” he continues. Rant, of course, is key! Anything apt to expose Gardner's hypocrisy would have to be dismissed as RANT!

“If it is done well, it still is poetry,” he states. Done well? But according to whom? The real-estate-broker, friend-of-the-Chamber-of-Commerce Gardner?

“You can have political poetry that uses metaphor without shaking a fist in someone’s face,” he argues. But how not to “shake a fist” in his face? And who would want to hide the fist behind metaphor?

To be invited to read at the Boston National Poetry Month Festival, one has to actually pass Gardner’s “audition,” as he terms it! Am I fucking dreaming? How did it ever get so rotten in the world of poetry? Where the fuck are the other barbarians? With flaccid bagel-bards like Gardner at the helm, the barbarians should be storming the gates in hoards!

Cary Nelson

CENSORSHIP and the President of the AAUP
The history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need for unfettered freedom, the right to think the unthinkable. Discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable. To curtail free expression strikes twice at intellectual freedom for whoever deprives another of the right to state unpopular views necessarily also deprives others of the right to listen to those views. [...] If a university is a place for knowledge, it is also a special kind of small society. Yet it is not primarily a fellowship, a club, a circle of friends, a replica of the civil society outside it. Without sacrificing its central purpose. It cannot make its primary and dominant value the fostering of friendship, solidarity, harmony, civility, or mutual respect. To be sure, these are important values; other institutions may properly assign them the highest, and not merely a subordinate priority; and a good university will seek and may in some significant measure attain these ends. But it will never let these values, important as they are, override its central purpose. We value freedom of expression precisely because it provides a forum for the new, the provocative, the disturbing, and the unorthodox. Free speech is a barrier to the tyranny of authoritarian or even majority opinion as to the rightness or wrongness of particular doctrines of thoughts.
—Woodward Report to the Fellows of the Yale Corporation (1975), which set a standard for freedom of expression at Yale and for the rest of the nation

Inside Higher Ed, an online academic publication, has been CENSORING my voice for several years (see http://www.theamericandissident.org/InsideHigherEd.htm). There’s not much a staunch individual like me can do to contest incidents of censorship. Last year, I informed Cary Nelson, tenured English professor and president of the AAUP, that my opinion regarding his IHE essay had been censored. Nelson did not respond. Yet, Nelson is the author of No University Is an Island: Saving Academic Freedom. That's right: SAVING ACADEMIC FREEDOM! So, how does he define academic freedom? The freedom to be PC indoctrinated? The freedom to CENSOR and condone CENSORSHIP?
Thus, I satirized Nelson in the above cartoon. The only thing a lone free-speech advocate can do against the Nelsons (and Ledermans) is satire and posting blog entries. Fortunately, posting such entries enables recusant voices like mine to be "heard" on the Internet. Thus, when someone googles Doug Lederman (editor of InsideHigherEd.com) or Cary Nelson, he or she will eventually find my CENSORED opinion. Both of those fellows, if they had it their way, would likely desire to "filter" or "moderate" all such opinions on the Internet. Thankfully, they do not yet have their way. One day, I suspect, however, they will have their way as the cloud of PC Big Brother and Big Sister gets larger and larger.

Both Lederman and Nelson have been duly informed about this blog entry. Below is the harsh comment I tried unsuccessfully posting on Inside Higher Ed regarding Nelson’s self-serving, book plugging essay, “Solidarity vs. Contingency” (see http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/09/07/nelson), which makes him appear to be on the side of the “working” academic and further enhance his “tenured radical” image. But he is one of those riding on the comfy bullet-proof academic gravy train, a "successful" academic ladder climber. The comment below contains no threats, no four-letter words, and no pornographic images. It is thanks to the Ledermans and Nelsons that higher education has become anything but an arena for vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy.

Inside Higher Ed Censored Comment
It is difficult to believe in the sincerity of a Cary Nelson who perhaps earns upwards of $100,000 per year as a full-time tenured English professor at a big university teaching perhaps six measly courses per year, if that. It is indeed difficult to believe in an academic ladder climber, who once was a hippie. Indeed, how facile for Nelson to proclaim solidarity and equity, while enjoying what inequity and lack of solidarity have accorded him as a professor over the years: a life-time pass on the ivory-tower gravy train. Would Nelson be willing to scale down to the $20K per year those like me earn as adjuncts? Doubtfully. Would he be willing to give up just half his big salary, teach a few more courses, and spread the cash equally amongst adjuncts at his particular university? Now, that would be more than mere socialist feel-good jabber!
“Why congratulate ourselves for selling out?” asks Nelson, though I’m not convinced he realizes the depth of that selling out. And how to trust someone like Nelson who will not even stand up to decry censorship in academe? The last comment I’d posted regarding one of his articles was censored, and in vain I’d brought that to his attention. Nelson simply did not respond. Was I, an unconnected adjunct, simply naïve in thinking he might respond?
Nelson’s proclamation is as unrealistic and unattainable as it gets. The future is not in tenure and the cocoon security and salary that tenure affords professors. The future is online and the future is adjunct. I am happy with that situation because if it did not exist I would be without employment today. The Nelsons would certainly not be writing me three letters of recommendation or otherwise backing my quest for tenure. The AAUP and state college union stood idly by when I once fought corruption in the ranks.
Nelson’s comparison of adjuncts with sharecroppers is pitiful nonsense. Adjuncts are educated, while sharecroppers clearly were not. Adjuncts do not toil in unsanitary, menial, and physically exhausting hardcore labor. Adjuncts can seek employment in other spheres, while sharecroppers generally were stuck. Nelson belittles the tough life of sharecroppers by making such a comparison! One would have to believe that he’s never known the tough life of physical labor.
Unfortunately, I could not bring myself to finish reading Nelson’s lengthy article, stopped where he plugs his book, and wondered what he’ll be doing with the cash from book sales. Will he be refurbishing his little wainscoted luxury apartment or expensive home?
The problem with academic freedom is that tenure tends to be granted to those who would never speak out of line to begin with. In other words, it tends to be wholly unnecessary. Tenure tends to be awarded to those who play the game—to those who kowtow to the department chairperson Nelsons in power. I’ve seen it. I know it. Tenure has become in itself a rot in the heart of democracy, for it is a sham, a risible front. With all the tenured professors in the nation’s colleges and universities, how not to wonder why free speech and vigorous debate, democracy’s cornerstones, seem ever to be in peril in those very colleges and universities (see thefire.org). Indeed, it seems the tenured professors themselves are bent on keeping it that way. Yes, students, burn and steal those conservative newspapers! Yes, students, heckle that conservative speaker so he can no longer be heard! We’re in full solidarity with you. A-men.

Craig Teicher

To: craig@craigmorganteicher.com
Cc: admin@pw.org; calif@pw.org; directory@pw.org; friends@pw.org; advertising@pw.org; editor@pw.org; webmaster@pw.org; info_services@pw.org; rwny@pw.org; calif@pw.org; wex@pw.org; areditor@pacbell.net; mossotti@siu.edu; melissabroder@gmail.com; kubrickpoems@gmail.com; freelancewrite.guide@about.com; maryotte@riseup.net; klarimer@pw.org; mgannon@pw.org; spettypiece@pw.org; jhartig@pw.org
Sent: Sun, September 5, 2010 8:18:42 AM
Subject: Craig Teicher

To Craig Teicher,
You are featured in this week's American Dissident blog entry: http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2010/09/craig-teicher.html. The good thing about the Internet and blogging is that people like me can voice opinions that people like you would normally CENSOR. Moreover, those opinions do appear when people like you are GOOGLED.

A BAS LA CENSURE ET LES CENSEURS!

Arnie Danielson

Too Old for Democracy
Excerpt from Fierce Contention: Conversations with the Established Order
And Other Parodias de Discursos and Diálogos con Sordos

Into the darkness I’d shot some poems. I did that periodically, though certainly not widely and often. It was a means, amongst others, of testing the waters. An email arrived, announcing in so many words that my poems had been placed into the trash bucket. No problem. The Greater Brockton Society for Poetry and the Arts was probably no different at all from the myriad of other poetry and arts societies found all over the country to form one monstrously contented bourgeois smile. It had chosen a handful of poets to perform in front of X. J. Kennedy like a bevy of begging court jesters. Kennedy was chosen to be the judge. And indeed what better judge of bourgeois poetry than the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters award recipient for light verse. That’s right, light verse. Kennedy’s poems had appeared in more than one hundred fifty textbooks and anthologies! How much more established-order innocuous could a poet possibly get? Hell, he’d even been on the Today Show, Good Morning America, and Garrison Keillor’s radio programs.

Poetry had become mere highbrow entertainment, co-opted like everything else by corporate America, apt to upset nobody, not even the proverbial old lady seated in the audience. There was nothing at all dangerous about it, certainly not like it had been in the former Soviet Union and Catholic Paris of Villon’s day. Today, it was welcomed by the local branches of the Chamber of Commerce, public libraries, colleges and universities, not to mention grammar schools, and even during presidential inaugurals. It questioned and challenged little if anything at all. With that regard, I decided to assault the Greater Brockton Society for Poetry and the Arts with a good dose of logic and criticism. It would not be the first organization to rubberize its auditory ear canals.

Thus I wrote Frank Miller, one of its organizers, mentioned that not one dissident poet had been selected to present critical poems at the Brockport Public Library and asked how that might help further literature and democracy. How sad it was that poetry in America had become so domesticated and safe for public high school principals, university deans, college presidents, local politicos, and even Chamber of Commerce functionaries. People like Miller, X J Kennedy, Sheila Mullen Twyman, chancellors of the Academy of American Poets, which actually censored and banned me (see www.theamericandissident.org/AcademyAmericanPoets.htm), and the members-only of the Academy of Arts and Letters rendered poetry a mere diversion—comfortable, bourgeois intellectual entertainment.

As our society continued its downward spiral into happy-face positivism, plutocracy, and corporatocracy, poetry would certainly not be a threat. On the contrary, it’s become a threat not to politicians or Wall Street, but rather to democracy. To my surprise, Miller actually responded, though unsurprisingly ignoring the points made.

"I am too old to lose my temper so—Dissent is not poetry—it can be but does not automatically get the wreath. Line breaks ans [sic] stanzas do not create a poem. Descriptions of flowers are not in and of themselves poems. John Clare wrote poetry on his madness Hopins Blake Donne often wrote of acceptance although sometimes in violent tones. I a [sic] reading again Weigl's poetry—read his Song of Napalm—is this dissent. Try poetry because it is poetry not as a message bearer. Langston Hughes wrote poetry. I am not against dissent but it does not give words a pass to sleep on the page. Politics and poetry can mingle but the poetry must work on its own. Good luck."

To me, his little response was a paltry crock, a weakling's justification for running always with the herd! Yes, cite others, but what about him? When did HE ever "go upright and vital, and speak the RUDE TRUTH in all ways" (Emerson)? When did HE ever put TRUTH before CAREER? He and his literary ilk needed to be shaken up, needed to open the doors to hardcore DISSIDENCE and harsh critique of their little poesy circles, contests, and light-verse judge anointees... not for their sake... no, they and others were evidently already too, too far gone… but for the sake of young students not yet fully indoctrinated by their herd professors and teachers... and for the sake of literature and democracy in America. Young students need to be exposed to all viewpoints, not just PC-bourgeois, careerist hippie-sellout, yuppie viewpoints. I mentioned all that in my response and how they needed to invite those like me and others who did stand up, who did dare speak RUDE, nonconformist TRUTHS and at the expense of JOB and CAREER—things they obviously held far more important. For a poet, a true poet, that should not be the case.

Well, Miller wrote again.

"First I am n [sic] America. Second I try to judge poetry for its worth not by any political or social theme. I hope you can understand that the concept of poetry as needing to fit any form is foolish. I have written poems against the establishment. I studied with Bruce Weill—read his Song of Napalm—stop being so set in your opinions—I am old and know nothing."

Old or not (hell, he looked like he wasn’t that much older than me!), he was still an established-order propagator of the banal. The problem with him (and others) trying to judge "poetry for its worth" was that the judgments always seemed to end up apolitical and bourgeois in nature. It was sad that he, the Brockton Public Library, and Brockton Poetry Society refused to open up to alternative poetry—political poetry, highly critical poetry, poetry against the local literary apparatchiks, etc., etc. It was sadly typical that the library would not even consider subscribing to The American Dissident for the simple reason that the journal offered a concrete alternative to the business-as-usual apolitical and bourgeois poetry always offered by the library. The ALA BIll of Rights clearly stipulated that libraries should offer such alternatives. Sadly, however, most librarians just wanted to offer People Magazine and Poetry Magazine. They operated as paladins of the town pillars and Chamber of Commerce functionaries. I'd also cc’d my correspondence to Sheila Twyman, the director of the Society, who responded, though only indirectly. She wrote Miller and cc’d it to me.

"Frank, I can see you getting madder and madder at this character. It's no wonder he doesn't have a job anymore...probably got fired. I assume his reference to "that lady from the brockton poesy society" refers to me. I don't think it's worth my time to even give him a response. He's just an angry unemployed teacher who didn't win the $500."

Addressing someone indirectly was just another cowardly, haughty bourgeois ploy. Yes, let's pretend that I simply do not exist. Dare stand up and away from the happy-face herd, and it would inevitably respond: he's just angry. He doesn't wear a constant smiley face like us, doesn't speak niceties all the time, doesn’t maintain a healthy positivist outlook, and actually questions and challenges things we'd never dare question and challenge. It was as if somehow being a little angry regarding the evident National Poetry Month, National Public Radio, PC perversion of literature was so terribly bad. As if being ANGRY at the tax-dollar supported Academy of American Poets for its penchant for censorship was so terribly bad. The problem with their ilk was that they’d become a democracy-scorning plague of little ceasar censors proficient at rationalizing their actions. Poetry needed to be more than ENTERTAINMENT and DIVERSION! It was evident that message would NEVER be able to penetrate their self-satisfied skull. I also wrote another member of the Society, Arnie Danielson, who managed the art exhibits at the library, requesting he consider doing an exhibit of my highly critical watercolors and cartoons, one of which featured him. I sent that particular cartoon to him and the others. He never responded. Miller, however, did respond. He deserved kudos for at least engaging in debate.

"You are indeed a pitiful figure—a child stamping his feet to attract attention. You flaunt your degree like a codpiece stuffed with paper. It is not your opinions which turn me away from your work—it is, quite simply, its lack of art. n [sic] I have paid attention to you once more. Relish the feeling in the corner."

“Pitiful figure” or just good old American satire? If he couldn’t take the satirical heat, perhaps he ought to consider getting out the poetry oven. Name calling seemed all that Miller was capable of. He was the one on YouTube, reading his verse, not me! So who was trying to attract attention? Moreover, it was indeed my "opinions" that he rejected! Such opinions could never be presented in a manner that he and others like him could ever consider “artful” because to do so would automatically dilute and irrevocably alter them. “Artful” was not an objective term, though he and others of the established order wanted us to believe it was. On the contrary, “artful” for him would definitely not be “artful” for me… and vice versa. Why couldn’t he understand that most basic of premises? Where did his teachers and professors go wrong? It was indeed my "opinions" that he, Arnie, and Sheila rejected because he, Arnie, and Sheila rejected democracy and its cornerstone, vigorous debate. They sought to restrict the arena of ideas and creativity. That was their shame, not mine. That was what the bourgeoisie had always sought to do. Well, it got a little more interesting. Arnie still refused to reply. Instead the director of the Brockton Public Library, Harry R. Williams, III replied.

"Gross hypocrite here... Disappointing how many statements below are painted with such broad brushes. I have no knowledge of any of the "backstory" on the exchange or any that preceded the messages below. (Apologies that my email seems to mess up the formatting of everything that is punctuated.) I read with concern but felt personally unscathed until I got to the end of the most recent entry. I invite anyone, including Dr. Slone, to test the accuracy of the "hypothesis that you [Frank Miller], Arnie, and Sheila would never permit my ideas at your poesy readings," by signing up for, or simply attending, the open microphone portion of any of our programs. You will see that there is no censorship, nor any favoritism. Newcomers are encouraged, "regulars" welcomed back, and everyone is held to the same time limit. You might also discover that although some of the readers may well represent "the bourgeois ilk," the opinions and forms range from greeting card verse to formalism and from old (and young) Marxists to a World War II veteran's brand of patriotism, to paeans to nature or baseball. I don't know if Dr. Slone looked at our poetry collection - or visited the library at all—before branding me a traitor to the principles of my profession. Would I be unfair to use words like "hostile" and "aggressive" to characterize such a description from one who has never met me? Actually, Dr. Slone may be quite a seer—I haven't written a poem since 1969, but prior to that I did one in which I referred to myself as "The Supreme Hypocrite." How did he know?
Peace be with all of you, and as a veteran of the sixties I cannot resist ending thus: Can't we all just get along? Kumbaya...
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions."

Thus, I contacted the director, Sixties Sellout, thanked him for the response, and even complimented him for responding since cogs of the power structure rarely did respond. I filled him in on how the exchange began with my seeking to get his library to subscribe to The American Dissident and noting the ALA’s precept that libraries should offer all points of view. Most librarians would much rather subscribe to Elle, People, Entertainment Today, etc., etc. They'd always use the excuse that their patrons wanted those magazines. And they’d always pout when I mentioned the ALA’s Library Bill of Rights, if in fact they'd even aware of it.” Williams, III would of course remain silent on that note and in fact would not respond again. I noted that “open mike” was not an invitation per se, since anyone could attend and recite. What I really meant (and he knew I meant it) was the kind of invitations (one poet per invitation!) accorded by the “Friends” of public libraries. Here in Concord, the Friends would never invite someone like me. In fact, they wouldn’t even respond to my queries regarding the criteria for their choices. Thus, calling open mike an invitation was fraudulent.

Most librarians were indeed probably hypocrites regarding the ALA’s Library Bill of Rights, National Poetry Month, and Banned Books Week (what about including periodicals like The American Dissident that were banned by most libraries?). Ferlinghetti celebrated banned books week, yet banned books from his City Lights Bookstore. Did Williams, III give a damn? Of course not! Finally to top off the Brockton exchange, Arnie’s wife, Stephanie Danielson, wrote:

"Thank you for bringing a bit of brevity to my day. Anyone who would accuse my husband of not enjoying a vigorous debate surely has never taken the time to meet him or get to know him."

Well, Steph, your hubby has yet to engage in this little debate! Strange, corrupted minds exist in the nation today, spreading like a plague from coast to coast!