Guest Post by Katie McCabe
When I saw someone called BookBurninParty start following writers on Twitter, my head nearly exploded. I mean, seriously, who outside of librarians and teachers, love books more than writers? Why would some idiot talk about burning books to writers????
I couldn’t help myself, I had to look into it to see whether or not it was some sick joke. And found out that it wasn’t… not in so many words. They have a facebook page and started posting signs like the one above all over Troy. But when looking at their Facebook page, I saw that it was actually part of some sort of political argument about taxes. I kinda went off on a rant to Sarah about the whole thing because I couldn’t understand why someone urging people to vote to raise taxes to save the library would threaten to have a book burning party if it failed. Does that make sense??
Sarah told me that it was a misguided attempt on the part of library supporters to use reverse psychology to sway people into voting to increase taxes. How stupid is that? Besides, what if there is a bunch of people who followed them because they thought they were going to actually get to burn books. They are going to be sadly disappointed because the last tweet (as of this moment) on the twitter account of these lunatics is:
There’s no book burning party. There never was. But now there’s awareness. Vote YES Aug 2.
I know I’m not old enough to vote, but trying to sway my vote that way would make me very angry and might even make me vote the opposite way. I don’t want to see a library closed. There are too many closing these days, but to think that someone would have the nerve to even suggest burning books as a plausible response–even if they really didn’t mean it is sick. Now it’s being called a hoax… I call it dirty politics. Is this really what we’ve come to in politics? And what happens to the people who tried to sway the public by lying to them? What example does that give us? That it’s okay to lie as long as it gives you the results you want? That sounds like Harvey’s logic to me. Disgusting is what I call it.
And NO friend of the library would ever think about burning books.
One Comment on “A Disgusting Show Of Politics”
I’m with you… WHAT were these people thinking?? If we were back in the good old days – when even in the dark times of WW2 and Britain was being bombed, Churchill STILL refused to consider closing/cutting back on public libraries on the grounds that they were were part of the fabric of life that we were fighting for – I could understand such a prank being faintly amusing. But when it looks like a quarter of British libraries are being cut back/shut down in the name of economic need, such a tactic is just stupid.