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Published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, South Jersey Commentary, on
July 23, 1999. Offensive material pervasive as it is without library's help By Sidney B. Kurtz
I had to apologize to a recent hostess. After dining generously on absolutely delicious poached salmon smothered in onions, mushrooms, and assorted herbs, I lounged around with the other guests while she served apple cake and iced tea. It wasn't long before the conversation gravitated to teen violence and the debate in the New Jersey legislature over the availability of guns. We all agreed that banning guns outright seemed the simplest and best solution. Since that is hopeless, we put forward the other usual suggestions: limiting gun sales, requiring gun locks, outlawing automatic weapons, and targeting (pun intended) violent and other offensive material on TV and movies. By now, you may be asking: What has all this to do with an apology to my hostess? Waiting politely until we finished the apple cake, she came up with an amazing question. "Do you know that the libraries right here in South Jersey allow all kinds of pornographic and hate material to be displayed on their computers? And it's accessible by anyone!" "With all due respect," I said to her, "I find it difficult to believe." "Nevertheless," she insisted, "it is true." I could hardly wait to rush over to the Cherry Hill Library and shatter her preposterous statement. But first, a relevant detour - a promised baby-sitting job. During the evening, my 12-year-old grandson invited me to watch a short movie on the computer that he had helped produce. A few feet away, his 9-year-old brother was manipulating a wrestling match on another computer screen. Two mean-looking wrestlers were destroying not only each other, but the referee as well. I was wondering what my well-brought-up grandchild thought about this violence when the movie began. The plot involved a death-row inmate who's girlfriend was searching for evidence that would clear him. She found it, but not before barely surviving an attack by a henchman. The post-cake conversation popped into my mind. I asked my grandson, "How do you feel when you see violence like this?" He stared at me as if I had asked a stupid question. "What violence, Grandpa?" "Why, the girl being strangled." "He wasn't strangling her, Grandpa," he answered calmly. "He was using a knife." This was too much, I thought, as off in the distance I heard the wrestling referee scream in pain. "A knifing or a strangling, what's the difference? It's still violence. And what about that referee over there?" "But they weren't killed," he replied blandly. I wondered if I was missing the point, or do today's kids know something I don't? I went home rather confused. Is it possible I don't understand what constitutes violence? The next day, my worst fears were confirmed. Sure enough, pornography, hate literature and other scummy slop that you wouldn't want in your home is indeed available at our trusted library. And there's nothing anyone but our lawmakers can do about it without incurring the free-speech wrath of the American Civil Liberties Union. It's a new world that I live in, one where an attempted knifing and the tying of a referee into knots are not considered violence by a 12-year-old, one where TV and movies are aimed at the lowest common denominator, and - worst of all - our libraries are part of it. Later, in the antiseptic morality of my apartment, I called the apple cake hostess. "I apologize," I said humbly. "What for?" she asked. "You were right about the library computers." "Isn't it a disgrace?" she said. "What can we do about it?" "We can write our congressmen and senators." "Wonderful," she said. "Do it right now before you forget." "I will. What about you?" "I can't at the moment," she said. "I have too much paperwork to do and errands to run. I'll take care of it tomorrow, or the day after." I put down the phone and reached for my Prozac. Sidney B. Kurtz is the author of a family memoir, The Jewish Rectangle: An American Adventure. He lives in Pennsauken. |