Gwinnett is the new Cobb

Here in Atlanta, our northern suburbs are a constant source of amusement and alarm due to their conservative and reactionary government by what appear to be the smallest minds available for the jobs. Cobb County used to be the county most likely to make national news for stupid decisions, like putting evolution is “just a theory” stickers in all science books or any number of institutional homophobic offenses.

Gwinnett County, our other neighbor to the north, is poised to fight for the dumbass crown. Not deterred by their loss in trying to remove Harry Potter from school libraries, the no-bookniks are at it again. First, they fired their Library Director, who led them to a National Library of the Year Award in 2000, without cause, apparently in an attempt to “harmonize the library system with conservative values” of the community. Uh, huh.

What are the conservative values of the community? Well for one thing, the library won’t be buying any more works of fiction in Spanish, because they ”can’t supply pleasure reading material for all language groups, so we’re not going to go down that road”. Also, “we didn’t need to cater to illegal aliens”. Here is my personal favorite and most paternalistic of all the self-serving quotes in the story:

Board member Dale Todd said her only objection to the Spanish books is that Harlequin romance novels are not of high enough literary value. Instead, she said, the library should offer life-skills books to help immigrants.

Ms. Todd, can I come over to your house and make some personal reading decisions for you? I have a few “life-skills” books that I think should take precedence over anything else on your shelf. Michael Schaub at Bookslut says that the money earmarked for Spanish books “will instead be allocated to the county’s “cross-burnin’ fund.” Heh. Wait until they find out that another library system recently tried to ban kids from the homeless shelter from borrowing books – those lazy reading bastards.