UPDATE: Friday, Mar 17, 2023 · 8:07:14 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
As expected, this entirely made-for-right-wing media incident of faux outrage has collected it’s first victim. As reported by The Tennessean, the Sumner County Library board met on Thursday evening and fired library director Allan Morales. The cause for firing was directly “related to the Kirk Cameron event.”
Board members, who ousted Morales in a 4-3 vote, refused to give any comments to the press.
An email from Morales before the event warned that the library didn’t have room to host the kind of event Cameron and his publisher were trying to stage. “Our invitation was sincere to read a book during our story time. We guard that time because it is for small children and not adults. We work hard at not promoting any agendas left or right.”
Which is, of course, the issue here. Because only a radical right agenda is allowed.
On Tuesday afternoon, Fox News ran this story about how the staff at a public library in Hendersonville, Tennessee, had been “rude” to former child actor Kirk Cameron and given “pushback” to an event at which Cameron and “Duck Dynasty” cast member Missy Robertson had been out to “share biblical wisdom with kids and families.” By that evening, local broadcaster WKRN was reporting this story:
Hendersonville library facing threats after allegations in national media relating to Christian actor’s story hour … On social media, people from middle Tennessee and across the country were calling for members of the library staff to be fired because of these claims of disrespect and allegations that the librarians suppressed Cameron’s First Amendment rights.
Those threats included a bomb threat, and a call in which a man promised to come to the library and “kill everyone inside.”
The whole affair is a textbook case of how the “Christian” right creates an incident, uses right-wing media to hype the faux outrage that they created, then uses real threats to the jobs and lives and others as a means of bringing even more attention for their lucrative, for-profit project.
Here’s how these assholes operate, and how Fox News assists them.
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Television has-been Cameron has written a children’s book. Or at least, he has his name on a children’s book. As someone who has ghost-written over two dozen novels, I can assure you that writing books for celebrities to slap their names on—even celebrities as far down the ladder of fame as Cameron—is a whole industry. The book is apparently Bible stories for kids. Probably not the ones about people sending their friends off to be killed so they can sleep with their wives, or the ones about cutting up babies. The safe stories. Like the one where every single person and animal on the planet except for a select few is purposely drowned.
To promote his book. Cameron (or more accurately, the media company that publishes the book) launched a national tour. That tour could have been conducted at bookstores. Since the book is heavily promoted for its Christian content, and local churches in the towns where Cameron is going have been contacted to stir up interest, it might have been handled at one or more of those churches.
That didn’t happen. Instead, they decided to do the book tour at public libraries. Why? Because …
These events are a direct response to "drag queen story hours," which have grown in popularity at public libraries across the country. Robertson, the author of children's book "Because You're My Family," and Gaines, who lives in the Hendersonville area, were invited to Cameron's event at the public library as special guests.
Hendersonville, Tennessee, is a suburb of Nashville. It is a bright, bright red suburb of well-off folks. Average income there is 40% higher than the average for Tennessee, and the wealthy parts of Hendersonville are genuinely wealthy. Donald Trump received over 69% of the vote in the area. They’re best known for a big annual fishing tournament. There have never been any “drag queen story hours” at the library.
Public libraries are not the greatest venue for this kind of event. Most libraries have rooms available for public events, but one word generally defines those rooms: booked. Competition for these rooms, which are provided free of charge on a first come, first serve basis, is fierce. As a local author who several times sought out a room at a library near me, the number of times I landed in such a room is easy to remember: zero. Every one of those rooms is in demand from clubs, civic organizations, and anyone with a pencil to put their name on the list, often months in advance.
That library in Hendersonville already has on its schedule for this month: adult movement classes, multiple book clubs, a chess tournament, art classes, knitting club, genealogy groups, tech classes, and Tuesday afternoon bingo for seniors. There’s even an ongoing murder mysteries staged by local actors. It’s a busy place. Oh, also there are people who come there to check out books, sample audiobooks and music, or just find a quiet place to read. Because it’s a library.
So, Cameron’s publishing company has scheduled his appearance at a nice public library in a heavily conservative town. The library offers him a room to do a reading. But by a couple of days before the event, it’s clear this isn’t going to be a few dozen people gathered in a small room for an hour to hear about some delightful plagues. The publishing company has been playing this up heavily. They—not the library—have invited “special guests” to attend this event. They have sent materials to local churches. The event has been promoted on local radio.
The library shifts the event to the largest room they have. Both the police department and the mayor’s office are already involved. It’s obviously going to be a big deal.
On the day, people start lining up hours before Cameron is scheduled to talk. The room where the reading has been scheduled is nowhere large enough to handle the crowd the media company has whipped up (though that crowd is unlikely to be anywhere near as large as the media company or Duck Dynasty Robertson would later claim.) But no one from Cameron’s group makes a move do something like give out numbers, or tell folks beyond a certain point that they should go home.
What does Robertson propose as a solution? Just hand over the whole library.
"Not only were they rude to us … they were super rude to their entire community that lived there in Hendersonville, Tennessee, because that is a public library and they could have invited all those people who were standing in the rain to come and form lines inside the library, down the aisles, sit on the ground," Robertson said. "We weren't even reading in the library part, we were down the hall in a conference room. They wouldn't let them in. They made them stand outside in the freezing cold with their children in the rain. Total rudeness to me."
Yes, it was super rude to not allow them to use the entire rest of the library for their event. Because having people standing in the aisles and sitting in the library rooms would surely not bother people who were there to do anything other than listen to Growing Pain’s Mikey give his spin on Bible stories.
Pictures of the event make it clear that the library staff was eventually forced to fold because parts of the reading happened, not just in the scheduled room, but also in at least one main areas of the library. But that was just the start of the ways that the staff was “rude.”
On the "Unashamed" podcast with Phil and Jase Robertson, Missy said library staff were disruptive as she and Cameron attempted to film marketing videos for their books before the Feb. 25 event. She described how staff members made loud noises and played music from behind the front desk after they had asked for about a minute of quiet to record their videos.
The library staff had the nerve to make a sound to Cameron and Robertson commandeering the entire library to film multiple commercials. For their very much for-profit publishing company. On this “stomp on public libraries” tour. That complaint included this peachy segment on Robertson’s podcast.
"[The lady at the front desk of the library] said, 'We're just trying to look for things to deal with our stress.' Stre— ... what stress? ... We're just standing there with a camera doing a marketing video,”
Gee, what in all of this could possibly have caused the library staff any stress?
Fox, of course, reported this as "pushback" that Cameron and Robertson received because they were trying to bring “messages of faith, family, and country … to take back the hearts and minds of America's children." Cameron also claims that 50 libraries have refused to let him do a reading, though he doesn’t bother to name them. Fox, of course, reports this as another attack on Christianity.
Just to be clear on all this:
- Cameron and Robertson deliberately staged their events at public libraries in order to attack public libraries.
- They were given a room, for free, to promote their book, and eventually got not just that space but much more, at an event that was so purposely disruptive planning had to include the police and mayor’s office.
- They then demand that the library give them, not just that room, but the entire library for the people who came to see them, with Robertson declaring it “rude” to not give them everything.
- Eventually, they get their crowd stirred up enough to take over most of the library anyway—to hell with anyone who came there expecting to, you know, use the library.
- They then requisition the entire place to shoot a series of commercials, during which they demand that the library staff stay quiet and out of the way.
- The library staff tries to let them know that the library has other needs, and that all this is causing stress for workers and patrons. Robertson and Cameron dismiss this as more rudeness.
- Robertson then calls Fox News to tell them this story as a tale of how public libraries "which have been known to host drag show events" snubbed all these good Christians who just, you know, wanted to take over their place, use it for their promotional book tour, and shoot a few commercials.
- Fox writes this all up as a story of how the library hates Christians, hates their community, and doesn’t want Christian authors to bring family-friendly tales to an adoring audience.
- The library, with absolute predictability, receives multiple death threats, bomb threats, and calls for everyone there to be fired, killed, or both.
- On to the next town in this good Christian event.
Right now, Cameron & Co. are high-fiving for their skill in generating precisely the kind of publicity they set out to create on this tour. Meanwhile, the library staff of a small, conservative city are left facing death threats, and some of them will almost certainly lose their jobs.
That’s how the business of being a professional Christian works.
Progressives have had tremendous success passing all sorts of reforms at the ballot box in recent years, including measures that have expanded Medicaid, increased the minimum wage, and created independent redistricting commissions. How have Republicans responded? By making it harder to qualify measures for the ballot.
Daily Kos Elections' own Stephen Wolf joins us on this week's episode of The Downballot for a deep dive on the GOP's war on ballot initiatives, which includes burdensome signature requirements that disproportionately impact liberals; ramping up the threshold for passage for citizen-backed measures but not those referred by legislatures; and simply repealing voter-passed laws Republicans don't like. But Republican power is not unfettered, and Stephen explains how progressives can fight back by defeating efforts to curtail ballot measures—many of which voters themselves would first have to approve.
