Silence is golden

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Folks — and I cannot stress the enough — never, under any circumstances, mess with librarians.

That the State Library Commission was surprised that a group of librarians could give it the cold shoulder en masse shows how disconnected the two groups are. After all, librarians pride themselves on their ability to shush whisperers, so it’s not so hard to imagine them icing out commissioners.

And, rightfully so.

It turns out that the librarians mashed the feelings of the state’s library commissioners after most of them decided to make a statement by not saying anything at all. And if there’s a more stone-cold librarian move than that, I haven’t seen it.

The offensive snubbing began at an annual meeting when librarians usually get together with the state government commission charged with overseeing the state library system. When it came time for the annual conversations between the commissioners and the librarians, no one showed up.

Well, that’s not exactly accurate: A couple of librarians told the commissioners why no one else was there, and those librarians delivered an anonymous letter which had been circulating that seemed to encourage a boycott because of the commission’s recent actions.

You may recall several notable issues have plagued the relationship between the commissioners and the public recently, taking the Montana State Library Commission out of relative bureaucratic anonymity into statewide headlines. Some of those debacles include the time that commissioners suggested the new logo was a subliminal reference to the rainbow flag used by the LGBTQ+ community. Using that logic, the state’s library logo should only appear in black-and-white.

That decision alone would seem outlandish if not for the another action taken by the commission to leave the national library association because of a concern the president was a lesbian and Marxist.

The librarians from around the state even seemed to handle those ridiculous situations with a certain amount of forbearance, but then the commission decided to lower the qualifications for library directors around the state, essentially dumbing down the requirements for an entire field that cherishes and upholds information and education.

And library commissioners seriously wonder why they’ve been snubbed?

Maybe the problem doesn’t center on educational requirements. Instead, maybe the reasons some people don’t want to work in libraries is that they’ve become the target of community and political attacks that have accused them of being pedophiles, groomers and perverts for simply having books that deal with such topics as human sexuality and political theory.

I’d suggest that if you can’t find one thing in a library that doesn’t challenge your beliefs or make you uncomfortable or uncertain, then you’re library isn’t big enough.

But to listen to angry residents at school board meetings and in places like the Legislature, you’d swear some people read books just to get offended.

It’s like going to the grocery store for automobile tires and taking it out on the produce clerk.

If being challenged by ideas or sensitive literary passages aren’t your deal, the option is simple: Don’t check out books — or even go to the library. And literally for God’s sake, don’t read the Bible.

While state library commissioners spent part of a meeting last week trashing the librarians for their boycott, one commissioner, Carmen Cuthbertson, likened the librarians to the Ku Klux Klan, reasoning that both groups like sending anonymous messages.

Sadly and ironically, the only cure for Cuthbertson’s stunning comparison is probably through reading more books. To compare a group of librarians to a racist, terrorist organization that lynched people is a disservice to the victims of those lynching and to the professionals who shelve books. It trivializes the brutality that hate groups have inflicted — and continue to use — on marginalized groups.

Still, the librarians demonstrated that you don’t need the loudest or shrillest voice to get the spotlight. In fact, the librarians said nothing at all.

And this, dear friends, is why you shouldn’t mess with librarians.

In a world of talking heads and screaming pundits, the librarians used their silence — essentially a librarian’s greatest weapon — to speak volumes about how they feel. They didn’t get together and play nice, while assassinating each other privately. Instead, they sent a message that even congressional candidate and Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen could understand.

Arntzen, for her part as a member of the State Library Commission, called the librarians’ boycott childish — and to the extent that a former kindergarten teacher would understand that, it’s a debatable point.

Yet, like any good story, there are several ways to interpret what happened, including that most of the librarians employed a peaceful, non-violent and non-combative way to make a statement that spoke more loudly than words.

It’s a crazy thought that in this world of never-ending sounds and pictures: The best form of protest is, instead, silence.

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