Monday, October 02, 2006

Saved from Myself

I have a confession to make: I've come to regard fisking Mark Rosenzweig as a guilty pleasure on a par with watching reruns of Cops. When I saw his latest bit of nonsense about the National Book Festival, it took all my self control to keep from spending valuable time ripping it apart. Thankfully, Jack Stephens has stepped up and taken care of this matter. Jack, you have my gratitude.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mark Rosenzweig should be kicked off of ALA's Governing Council. The fact that he's never even been censured is a disgrace to ALA & the reason why I will not join it. The Governing Council is truly disfunctional. Here is Rosenzweig's latest rant of lies, posted on 10/3/06. Sounds like a case of libel to me.

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"I want to bring to the attention of ALA Councilors the fact that we have a bona fide open racist running for Council this next election. This is, in fact, his second run.
His name is Greg McClay; he formerly published a right-wing blog called SHUSH and currently publishes a blog called "The Notebook" fulminating against "liberal ALA" (that is to say, for him, against ALA).
Below is a sample, from last week, of his thinking, to my mind, a clearly racist swipe at President-Elect Loriene Roy.
You see for yourselves. I want to let you see it because I believe you are unlikely to come accross his blog where it appeared. I especially am appalled by the part where he snidely says: "Apparently her growing up in a wigwam is going to offer some profound insight on how ALA is run." His supporters will jump to say : "And what's racist about that?" You decide.
And it's not an isolated remark. He has time and again attacked ALA's commitments to diversity, the SPECTRUM initiative , etc. in a way reminiscent of "white power" bloggers. He also argued at the last annual conference against the resolution on the Darfur genocide, saying before the Membership meeting "Genocides happen and will happen again": "why single out Darfur?" He is an outspoken proponent of the use of torture by US forces-- in case you thought nobody in a profession like ours could make an affirmative case for torture -- and ridicules ALA's position in strong opposition to those practices.
He is already braying about getting his petition in order for Seattle and lining up his "conservative" constituency -- and a lot of people who just plain don't know who and what he is --to vote for him. I sincerely hope those genuinely conservative members of ALA will not embrace this bigot.
Make sure you and your colleagues know who McClay is. He is not someone who has a few disagreements with the Council of ALA. He is opposed to ALA's most basic values."

Mark Rosenzweig
ALA Councilor at large

11:09 AM  

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