Who would have believed a year ago that the Democratic Party would be imploding while trying to stifle their ideological base to take down a socialist who is out-fundraising everyone to preserve a Wall Street backed candidate whose approval ratings were less than desirable before their FBI scandal but you wouldn’t be able to even follow that on the news because the guy from “The Apprentice” had just wheeled and dealed his way to GOP frontrunner on a platform of building a literal border wall.
Well, not really. Honestly, I don’t know what else to say other than this has easily been the craziest election campaign I have seen in my life (as foretold by the great movie, “Idocracy”!)
Two outsider candidates are threatening the establishment insiders of both parties and the “Kang or Kodos” politics of barely distinguishable two-party candidates that we’re used to.
Donald Trump (Drumpf!) is dominating the Republican contest in a way that few foresaw by tapping into a weird blend of people’s fascination with wealth, pop culture, xenophobia and ‘Murica!
On the Democratic side, a wild-haired lifetime (democratic) socialist has basically come out of nowhere to become a legitimate challenger to one of the most well-known, well-financed, well-connected candidates in history. He’s done this by inspiring a legion of young, tech-savvy millennials to give record-setting amounts of small donations while denouncing traditional SuperPACs and corporate donations as he pursues a wholesale political revolution.
It’s been wild so far and I can only imagine what else we’ll see coming – people said Trump would eventually fall back to earth and he just keeps proving everyone wrong. People said Bernie Sanders was just a protest candidate and now he’s promising to take his campaign right to the Democratic convention in June in Philadelphia.
I’ve had this blog since 2006 but perhaps surprisingly, I’ve never really acknowledged Leap Years even though I’ve been blogging for two of them in 2008 and 2012.
So let’s continue that trend by ignoring February 29, 2016 completely in favour of a song inspired by tomorrow’s Super Tuesday vote in the United States…
“Vote” – The Submarines (if you click through to SongMeanings.com, you’ll see a typo in the lyrics – the actual lyric is: “On Super Tuesday, I wanted to die”, not “On Two for Tuesday, I wanted to die”. The final lyric about never voting again is extremely cynical but not in the light of the fact that the duo who comprise the Submarines are a real life couple but had a break-up before Super Tuesday.)
Below are a couple photos I took in Havana during our 2011 trip to Cuba.
This was a street vendor stall selling books (which is good!) but most here (and in our hotel’s gift shop or anywhere else we found books) were heavily propagandistic (bad!).
Cuba isn’t commercialized with billboards selling blue jeans and soda but in its place, there are numerous propaganda posters everywhere you look…
It’s an interesting dilemma – in Canada, we have a much freer, open society and working in a library, I see firsthand how we celebrate our willingness to provide access to any and all ideas (in fact, I tried to showcase this in my FTRW display this year by setting two non-fiction books with competing, potentially controversial ideas side-by-side.)
But at the same time, I sometimes wonder if that makes us more susceptible to being manipulated – by advertising and media outlets and biased educators and religious leaders and politicians and Internet memes and who knows what else?
I feel like this year’s Freedom to Read Week series is a bit more toned down than the usual controversial swear-fest I enjoy creating each year.
But there are things that happen on a less provocative level that have impacts on librarianship, censorship and access to information even if they don’t get an “R” rated sticker from Wal-Mart or some fundamentalist isn’t thrown into a tizzy by the book li’l Johnny brings home from the school library that has the word “Hell” in it.
Today had one of those significant moments when Barack Obama announced his nominee for the next Librarian of Congress, former CEO of Baltimore Public Library, Carla Hayden.
Some very notable points about this nomination – she would be the first female and first African-American to hold the position. Ms. Hayden would be only the second professional librarian to hold the position and the first who comes from a background in public libraries.
The Librarian of Congress is a very influential position yet with little in the way to define it:
The position of Librarian of Congress has been held by candidates of different backgrounds, interests, and talents, as there are no official rules for who qualifies to be the Librarian of Congress. Therefore, there have been politicians, businessmen, authors, poets, lawyers, and one professional librarian who have served as the Librarian of Congress…There is very little legislation for the Librarian of Congress or rules regarding who should be selected for the position. [In 1945, American Librarian Association President, Carl] Vitz stated the position “requires a top-flight administrator, a statesman-like leader in the world of knowledge, and an expert in bringing together the materials of scholarship and organizing them for use—in short, a distinguished librarian”.
Watching the Democratic Presidential Town Hall so thought I’d post this (in)appropriate ad I came across on Reddit.
To tie it back to censorship in a more serious fashion, it’s more important to remember that in various sectors but especially in politics, censorship isn’t just about the outright suppression of ideas – it also happens via spin, bias and omission.
