Evanston has long had a storied tradition of prudery and pecksniffery. It was, after all, home to Frances Willard one of the founders of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Her Evanston home -- The Willard House -- served as its national headquarters and is now a designated historic monument.
As such Evanston was one of the last municipalities in the state to allow the sale of booze --this many decades after the repeal of prohibition.
When we were prep school roustabouts, we would make a point of swinging by the old WCTU HQ at 1730 Chicago Avenue and flinging our empty beer cans on the lawn -- take that, you old biddies!
Today, Evanston had become hipper, younger and leftist -- but maintains its tradition of chasing down moral bugaboos. Today, instead of going after boozehounds, it goes after racists, hatemongers and homophobes with an enthusiasm that Mrs. Willard would admire. It stages an annual " Run Against Hate" and is a sanctuary city for illegal aliens.
But I didn't expect its librarians to catch the Evanston morality fever. But it seems they have with their extremely zealous use of anti-pornography filters at the Evanston Public Library.
For almost an entire month now, its public internet connections have disabled just about anything that requires a flash player. This means that usually all of youtube is off limits there.
Recently while stopping in there for a quick email check, I tried to open a link to an article in Forbes sent by a friend.
I was notified that due to the graphics contained in the Forbes article, it was filtered by the moral guardians of the EPL. Same with all the youtube bits on my own blog -- although come to think of it, Barry Manilow and ABBA are kind of aesthetically obscene.
The librarians on the 3rd floor say they are cognizant of their filtering problems and are working on it.
I just hope their crack techno-staff solves it with greater alacrity than the geniuses who are grappling with the Gulf oil gusher -- but it seems to be taking almost as long.
So I think I'll just forgo use of the Evanston library, for now, and spend my time just down the block from Mrs. Willard's house -- swilling beer at the Celtic Knot Public House.
So the library has the filters turned up too high and you can't stand it. That's funny. Let me tell you why. There was legislation that would have required filtering of all Illinois libraries. To protest, the Illinois Library Association [ILA] ordered all libraries to fool the public into demanding the legislation not pass, and one way this was done was by turning the filters up to full blast for a day. So your saying filters on full blast are to be avoided is evidence that Robert P. Doyle's use of the ILA to order local libraries to, as a means of protest, deny their own citizens services for which they paid taxes was an effective propagandistic means to fool the public. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting! I did not know that. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteTo protest, the Illinois Library Association [ILA] ordered all libraries to fool the public into demanding the legislation not pass, and one way this was done was by turning the filters up to full blast for a day.
ReplyDeletePosting as "safelibraries" and supporting censorship seems a little strange to me
ReplyDeleteSafeLibraries opposes censorship.
ReplyDelete