Okay, so this is the latest little hysterical wrinkle in my life and yet another reason why my right eye tends to twitch uncontrollably.
My library system, the Mid-York Library System, is sponsoring a regional read. A regional read is, for the uninitiated, an event where libraries in a certain city or, in my case, region, try to get everyone to read the same book.
The idea is that everyone will be reading the same book, people will start discussing and getting to know fellow citizens better and , I don't know, break into song and dance in the middle of the street or something. It's been done in some other cities, like Seattle, where it all started, incidentally, and it's been a success.
Anyway, the book they're asking everyone in central New York to read is 'Fahrenheit 451'. Political? We don't know what you're talking about. Honest. It's just a classic. They started planning this thing about a year and a half ago, and now everything's set to start in early September. Last week advertising billboards went up. And some people promptly freaked out.
Trouble is, there are apparently people in central New York that don't realize that 'Fahrenheit 451' was a BOOK by Ray Bradbury. They think the Mid-York Library System for some evil liberal reason put billboards up all over a rather conservative part of the state in support of Michael Moore's movie, 'Fahrenheit 9/11'. I'm actually shocked they could read well enough to figure out fahrenheit, since it's not exactly phonetic.
So, Mid-York has been deluged with calls from angry conservatives accusing them of propagating some sort of evil liberal campaign to brainwash people into being...I don't know, hippie tree huggers.
We directors got two e-mails today warning us about potential backlash from our patrons.
Yes, there was a bit of a political reason for choosing '451'. But not the political reason people are foaming at the mouth about.
What is Bradbury's classic tome about? A mindless society addicted to television, a society where books are outlawed and considered evil. A society ruled by a quasi-dictatorship government that frowns on free thought. Hmm. Okay, maybe we are really a bunch of shameless liberal, tree-hugging, hairy-legged, heathen baby killers. But we honestly didn't expect anyone to figure it out.
