NY Times Ethicist Steps Into My Arena

HOW DARE YOU!?

Being The Ethicist for the New York Times isn’t easy because you’re torn between some different needs.

Some people want help with their problems and apparently have no one in their lives to ask. They also seem to have a limited ability to look into their own hearts and minds for the answers to daunting questions like, “My neighbor won’t stop praying for me. What should I do?” Must be rough to have PEOPLE WHO CARE ABOUT YOU AND HOPE YOUR LIFE IMPROVES. I can’t imagine the pain.

Some people want to hear others taken down a peg, like I suspect is the case with the huge rash of Trump-related questions lately, or the steady stream of HOA questions you see from time to time. Is there anything we like more than an HOA takedown that was thoroughly deserved?

And some people, like me, just want to read something interesting, so we’re bored by easily-answered questions that don’t really present much of an ethical dilemma.

In fact, let’s do a quick lightning round of boring, easy questions, Pete-style:

My Neighbor Won’t Stop Praying for Me. What Should I Do?

Ethically, a religious person will feel obligated to pray for someone whose immortal soul they feel is in danger. Ethically, it’s reasonable for you to ask them to stop, but you can’t actually prevent someone from praying for you any more than you can prevent someone from thinking about you, sort of the way that kid from elementary school who said, “It takes me a long time to get my hair this way,” and then another kid said, “Yeah, stick your head in the toilet and flush!” —Is there are part of me that wishes I didn’t remember that and think about it every couple of weeks? Of course. But…I can’t help it. For a 4th grader, that was some damn sharp comedic timing.

If you’re the type that enjoys ill-advised confrontation, I suppose you could tell your neighbor to stop telling you that they’re praying for you. But my advice is to focus on the other 99.9999999999999999999% of your life that doesn’t involve your neighbor.

Can Voters Be Held Accountable for Their Candidate’s Behavior?

I suppose if someone voted for a candidate specifically FOR their behavior, we can. If someone voted for Dandoldd because they were hoping he’d rail a porn star in the Oval Office, sure.

But we can’t seem to hold candidate’s accountable for their own behavior, so I feel like shuttling that responsibility to someone who is bad at voting is silly.

But you’re going to do what you want to do, and I think “Accountability” in this case probably consists of being mad and shouting things into the voids of the internet, so you do you.

Plus, if we started doing this, would we also only confer the benefits of good voting choices to those who voted for the candidates that created benefits? That sounds like an even worse hellscape than the one we’ve concocted so far. I wish I hadn’t written that down. It’s such a terrible idea someone will definitely want to do it.

I Handle My Mother’s Money. Must I Donate to a Church I Disapprove of?

Well, you just said it’s your mother’s money, not yours, so, ethically, yes. I mean, if you said your mother was subscribed to a library-related newsletter, and did you have to continue that donation, I would be furious you’d even questioned it.

My Ailing Mom Hates Pot. Do I Tell Her What’s in Her Gummies?

If this is something she’s getting from her doctor or someone other than you, No, fuck it. Play dumb. Why would you know something about her prescription she doesn’t? If these are something you’re giving to her, I mean, you’re basically roofie-ing your mom. It’s her decision whether she wants to ride out the pain or fold on her moral standards and admit that maybe she was wrong about the evils of the devil’s lettuce.

An Ex-Friend Had an Affair With My Husband. Doesn’t She Owe Me a Sit-Down?

No, there’s really no situation where someone OWES it to you to sit down and be berated by you. It’s really not something you should be doing in life, ever, and your express desire to do so makes me think you’re probably a pretty horrible person to be around (I get to berate you a little because you wrote in for advice). I don’t even think this is an ethics question. It sounds like your life is a mess. Maybe take up a couple hobbies that you notice a lot of lowkey people do, jogging and knitting. Not at the same time.

~

Okay, we’ve had our fun.

What I don’t love about the Ethicist is that it’s just an advice column. Since Klosterman left, there aren’t interesting ethical dilemmas like whether or not it’s okay to fill a huge jug with office-provided Deep Rock water and take it home.

And this week, the Ethicist stepped into my realm with a little question about Little Free Libraries.

Fair Use?

I’m about to copy and paste the entirety of this Ethicist column.

I used a Fair Use Checklist, which is a tool I use a lot to make decisions about copyright and using portions of work.

There’s no real objective, surefire guarantee of Fair Use outside of getting permission from the copyright holder, despite what a certain brand of bozo will insist about not making a profit or only using certain portions of a work, but I do think that filling out a form of this type is a good attempt at making a best-faith effort to do right.

Basically, the way this works is that a checklist helps you lay out whether you can make a good case for Fair Use, given the qualities for and against.

I think the case is overwhelmingly in favor of this being Fair Use.

Can I Ban Books From My Front-Yard Little Free Library?

I have a Little Free Library in my front yard. I encourage my neighbors to take books and leave books, and many do. Children’s books are especially popular. I ‘‘curate’’ the library box at least weekly to be sure it is well stocked with books for various ages and interests: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, cookbooks, babies, storybooks, young adult literature, etc. If a book stays too long in the box, I rotate it out for a later time or donate it to another L.F.L. or to the public library.

As a book lover, I am concerned about right-wing movements to remove books from libraries; I’ve always believed that we should have free access to ideas. But I am now facing an ethical question. Someone leaves a lot of religious books in my Little Free Library. I welcome Bible stories, prayer books and religious philosophy, but recently donated books are making the case to children against evolution. In storybook form, these books state that the earth is only a few thousand years old, and that dinosaurs and humans coexisted. These are not told as stories, but as the word of God.

I realize that parents usually help children choose books from my front yard, and that I do not have an obligation to leave specific books in my L.F.L. indefinitely. Still, these anti-science books present me with an ethical dilemma: If I am opposed to schools’ and public libraries’ banning books like ‘‘In the Night Kitchen,’’ ‘‘Fun Home’’ and ‘‘Heather Has Two Mommies,’’ must I also distribute creationist children’s books? — Name Withheld

The Ethicist’s Answer:

Private providers of reading material aren’t bound by the political ideal of free expression: Marriott Hotels, founded by a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, can choose to put the Christian Bible and the Book of Mormon in their rooms, and not to place a copy of the Quran or the Upanishads there as well. Public and academic libraries, by contrast, play an important role in providing free access to varied viewpoints.

Let me step away from your front yard for a bit and acknowledge that the situation isn’t so clear cut when it comes to libraries meant for minors. School librarians must contend with issues of what’s age-appropriate, what’s consistent with the educational mission and what’s considered harmful, by parents as well as educators. In a progressive school in Brooklyn, you may not find a book viewed as hurtful to L.G.B.T.Q. people; in a Christian academy in the South, you might not find one viewed as advancing L.G.B.T.Q. perspectives. The point isn’t that they’re equivalent; it’s that people who say they’re opposed to banning books often wish themselves to keep certain books off the school shelves. Librarians, meanwhile, given budget constraints, can’t escape making choices based on content.

I favor a relatively permissive approach. Children get properly educated when they’re aware of a wide range of views, including, as they grow older, views their parents disagree with. Learning to evaluate ideas is a preparation for adult freedom. Adults, in turn, are entitled to make their own choices about what to read. That’s one way in which adults exercise their freedom.

Another way is by making choices about what books to provide to their young kids, or those in their neighborhood. So toss those creationist books if you like. Still, I doubt it would accomplish much. A parent intent on promoting creationism isn’t going to be hindered by their absence; another parent might use them to critique creationist views. Both will find a way to think outside your box.

Let’s Get Nitpicky

Private providers of reading material aren’t bound by the political ideal of free expression…

One common misconception about libraries is that we provide access to all sorts of materials, even ones you hate, because of the “political ideal” of free expression.

Yes, that’s part of it, but the bigger part is that this isn’t OUR stuff. It’s the taxpayers’ stuff. It belongs to them. We are just a, um, not socialist thingie, but a collective -er, we’re an organization that pools the money of a lot of people to make mass purchases, which provides a huge discount, which means everyone’s money goes a lot further.

So beyond a political ideal, there’s a financial/reality-based situation libraries are in, which is that we are spending someone else’s money, and we’re obligated to do that in a way that, as nearly as possible, represents every point of view.

Which doesn’t always mean materials that sort of represent the average or most common views, but best represent any point of view that may exist and has been expressed in print that’s reasonably purchase-able (and doesn’t exist for the exclusive purpose of selling books).

Let me step away from your front yard for a bit and acknowledge that the situation isn’t so clear cut when it comes to libraries meant for minors. School librarians must contend with issues of what’s age-appropriate, what’s consistent with the educational mission and what’s considered harmful, by parents as well as educators…

I do agree with this, but in this particular situation, a little free library in someone’s yard, there’s absolutely no guarantee of safety or browse-ability for a child, and no parent should expect that.

It would be completely reasonable for someone to build a LFL and stock it with nothing but Edward Lee books.

Even if the person who built it intended it for minors, there’s no guarantee it will function that way if others are permitted to add their own titles.

Additionally, saying that religious materials for minors may be inappropriate for minors is a stretch. It’s less about them being minors, more about a clash of beliefs.

Children get properly educated when they’re aware of a wide range of views, including, as they grow older, views their parents disagree with. Learning to evaluate ideas is a preparation for adult freedom. Adults, in turn, are entitled to make their own choices about what to read. That’s one way in which adults exercise their freedom.

Yes, AND, I do think the appropriate place for a library is nowhere in between the parent-child connection.

Would I prefer parents allow their kids to read things they disagree with? Mostly yes. But I, as a library professional, have to recognize that’s not my choice.

See, this is kind of the crux of the book-banning thing: I don’t think others should decide what’s appropriate for me, but that means I also don’t get to decide what’s appropriate for them.

We all have to permit a wide range of stuff on the library shelves, that’s the “for everyone” part, but that doesn’t mean we have to take all that crap home, that’s the “for me” part.

It’s a little more complex in that we’re talking about a parent-child relationship, and the child may have restricted choices, but consider that I, as a librarian, have ZERO control over what parents tell their kids, the morals they raise their kids with, whether or not they require their kids get baptized, and so on. I don’t think these things are my place, and therefore I also don’t think it’s my place to tell parents how permissive they must be when it comes to books. I am happy to make suggestions when parents ask, and if a parent is wondering whether it’s okay for their kids to read things that seem a little advanced, I usually give the thumbs-up, but if nobody’s asking, Pete’s not decreeing.

So toss those creationist books if you like. Still, I doubt it would accomplish much. A parent intent on promoting creationism isn’t going to be hindered by their absence; another parent might use them to critique creationist views. Both will find a way to think outside your box.

And this is where I get frustrated. This doesn’t address the ethics of tossing the books whatsoever, it’s just an advice column on whether or not the person SHOULD do it and what the results might be.

Let’s do this right.

Pete’s Answer:

Ah, welcome to the wonderful, often frustrating world of providing something to the public. It’s been fun to see the dreams of so many slam into the brick wall of reality through the charming, cute vector of little free libraries.

Many librarians have a moment in their career where they lovingly craft something, a service, a collection, an interactive display, something that they think is pure and wonderful and just generally makes the world a better place.

And then it’s deployed to the public, and someone fucks it all up.

Or, sometimes they don’t fuck it up, but there’s an unintended, unanticipated use you didn’t expect.

Mine was Wish Ape.

Ages ago, I had a boss who had one of those carboard cylinders, those forms for pouring concrete, and she brought it to me and said, “Do something with this in the children’s area.”

So I did. I wrapped it in yellow paper, stuck a stuffed ape in the top, cut a slot in the tube, and left instructions for people to write their wishes for the Wish Ape, fold them up, and put them in the slot.

I saw a few people doing it, and after maybe a month or so, there were probably a dozen wishes inside.

A few were from kids. Most were from moms, and they were heartbreaking. Things like, “Help me find a man who will cherish and appreciate me for who I am.”

Now, this was not the intent of Wish Ape. I kinda figured I’d get things like, “A red bicycle” or whatever, or maybe “I wish my mom wouldn’t pack me terrible sandwiches for lunch anymore.” But Wish Ape almost turned into a confessional of sorts, a harmless, small way for people to put names to the things that hadn’t quite worked out for them.

I wanted to tell you about Wish Ape because it’s an example where the thing didn’t go bad, per se, but it did go a way I didn’t expect.

Working with the public is ALWAYS like that. People who designed certain parks didn’t expect that skateboarding would rise up and people would skate down long, challenging railings. People who designed bathrooms to be more private didn’t anticipate that some would use those spaces to do drugs, pass out, and be difficult to notice when they may be in need of medical intervention.

The way the public uses things is not always bad, but it ALWAYS goes a way you didn’t expect.

I’m sure you expected your Little Free Library to be a nice, cute way for people to exchange and access books, especially kids. I’m sure you spent time and energy crafting this thing to be adorable, and I bet you did a great job.

And when it’s used in a way that you didn’t intend, it stings.

But that’s not your question. Your question is about book banning.

For me, yes, removing creation-based books from your LFL IS banning behavior, which I define as any act intended to place a barrier between a material and its intended audience. It’s removing something for a moral reason, much the same way it would be if you were opposed to something like Diary of a Wimpy Kid books because they had morals you disliked.

On the other hand, it IS a bit different.

The LFL has some considerations that the public library doesn’t.

For one, it’s little. Hence the name.

And that’s not just about it being small, it’s about the range of materials and points of view it can accommodate. In a library with over 100,000 books, it’s pretty easy to accommodate a creationist viewpoint as well as an evolutionary viewpoint. We don’t have to choose, so choosing to eliminate one or the other perspective has a different meaning.

An LFL cannot possibly hope to accommodate all points of view.

Another issue is selection. In a real library, you make selections based on research, popularity, and decades of data regarding what your patrons like, and there’s usually some kind of collection development policy. In an LFL, you’re probably stocking it with stuff you think slaps as well as stuff that others just stick in there.

And, see, this is something the regular library does not permit. You can’t come in and just stick your book on the shelves. I mean, you CAN, there’s really nothing stopping you from cramming your self-published novel in the shelves. I’m sometimes accused of being an agent of chaos, and I have to admit, I do like the idea of hordes of smalltime writers slipping their books on the shelves.

But in a regular library, it’s obvious we haven’t labeled and catalogued these materials, and if they’re present, they are not endorsed by us.

In an LFL, that’s not so clear.

The NYT Ethicist did hit one something important here as well: It may be that you’re uncomfortable putting everything under the sun in your LFL. Some books are, well, horny as hell.

And even as a hardline intellectual freedom guy, I don’t think it’d be reasonable if, say, someone stuck 2 years of 80s Penthouse magazines in your LFL — PLEASE send those to me— it wouldn’t be reasonable for me to say you MUST leave those in for the sake of intellectual freedom.

~

The NYT Ethicist kind of answered the question, Do I have the right to remove these materials? And the answer to that question is an easy Yes.

But the real question is, How do I square my ethics, which are opposed to book banning, with removing these items from my LFL?

Well, you don’t. You are, in fact, banning books. It’s a matter of degree, and what you’re doing is lesser than trying to remove books from a school system, for sure.

But by making it clear that there’s no place for religious materials in your LFL, you are banning something.

~

To be clear, I would take them out of my LFL, if I had one.

I’m typically a pretty hardline intellectual freedom guy, but my take on this specific thing is that there are PLENTY of resources for that kind of shit, including the public library.

When I was in high school, these old guys would hand out Bibles as we left the parking lot, and it always irritated me because I felt like, “Listen, I know where to get a Bible. These are not difficult to come by. I guarantee I could walk into any church in this town and ask for a Bible, and they’d just give me one.”

My LFL is going to look more like my personal bookshelf than it is a public library. It’s going to reflect my personal views, not my professional views, just the way the bumper stickers on my car are going to represent my views, not a balance of all available points of view.

I kind of think the answer here is that you need to stop thinking of LFLs as public libraries, even as supplements to public libraries. Because they’re just not. They’re personal projects, hobbies, and that’s not denigration. You have limited time and resources to spend on this thing, and it’s incredibly unrealistic to try and run an LFL like a taxpayer funded public institution that employs people who went to grad school to figure this shit out.

So, yes, in this hypothetical, I would be banning books from my LFL. I would be a book banner.

But I don’t run an LFL. Partially because my experience working with the public has taught me that this is how these sorts of things go. You’ll lovingly craft this thing, and some asshole will smash it. Some dickhead will put a half-eaten burrito in it. Some jerkoff will just open the door, splash the contents with Monster, and drive off.

This sort of thing happens in public libraries, too, but the difference is that things done to the public library are not personal. SUPER annoying, but it’s not a personal attack when someone draws a marijuana leaf on a table, nor is it when the library is damaged in a misguided portion of a protest.

And I can’t take the kind of heartbreak that comes along with having to re-center my own identity. Because I identify as someone who is a protector of intellectual freedom—I don’t want to build a box on my lawn that forces me to question my entire body of ethics.

My advice is, instead of trying to reform and reorient your ethics, reform and reorient your LFL. Stop calling it a library. It’s a book box now. And the books in your book box are your choice. The collection development policy is “Things I like.”

It’s a bookshelf that just so happens to be outside your house, and that you’re being goodly enough to let other people use. That and a library are not the same, therefore the same ethics do not apply.

Bonus Question:

I am strongly against the banning of any books — until it comes to my own child. My 6-year-old son likes a number of books that not only really stink but also teach him bad manners and rude phrases, like ‘‘stinky butt,’’ ‘‘total dork’’ and ‘‘dumb’’ — words that are way below my son’s capacity as a reader and thinker. After he reads these books, he turns into what could only be called a rude jerk.

That said, my not liking behaviors and phrases he learns from these books is akin to others not liking the thoughts and actions described in books that have been banned in schools and libraries across the country. I find those bans appalling. Should I let him read these books that I despise, or am I on strong ethical grounds to curtail his personal library? — Name Withheld

Bous Ethicist Answer:

Rights come with rationales. We don’t want to remove controversial books from public libraries, because we have an ideal of a society where adults make their own choices about what to read. People will decide to read things that would be deplored by literary critics or anti-smut campaigners or religious clerics or card-carrying rationalists. Some people’s views, inevitably, will be shaped by wrongheaded ideas. That’s a bad thing, but ruling out that possibility would involve giving someone else the authority to make these decisions, which would be worse.

It’s also true that, historically, magistrates and decency commissions have been curiously unworried that they themselves would be corrupted by work that, they judged, would corrupt others. A British prosecutor, urging a jury in 1960 to find a paperback edition of ‘‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’’ obscene, notoriously asked, ‘‘Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or servants to read?’’ But it’s not silly to ask whether a book is one you would want your children to read. Parents properly supervise the reading of their young children.

Still, I see no problem in letting your child read books that get up your nose; children are often drawn to books that feel transgressive. Besides, learning literary discrimination requires exposure to a range of materials. The real issue here is his tendency to forget his manners after reading these books that he likes and you loathe. If you don’t like his talk, by all means show your disapproval. But there’s the basis for a deal here. You’ll let him read about stinky butts if he’ll stop talking about them so much.

Pete’s Response:

Well, first of all, Jesus Christ, NYT, you really went “since the dawn of time” on that one, no? Are we really comparing the paternalism of someone not letting their servants read a sexy novel to a modern parent being not so thrilled about their kid walking around calling everyone “Stinkbutt” or “Asshat” or “Dickcheese?”

Look, I applaud this parent. I do. This is literally all I ask of people in a library setting.

You do not have to let your kids read anything you don’t want them to. And if you’re not preventing or attempting to prevent other kids from reading these awesome books with hilarious words in them, we’re cool.

And, let’s slow down a second, we do not know this parent’s situation.

It seems ridiculous to me to ban books because the main character is a disrespectful little jerk, but we don’t know some key info here. Maybe this parent’s kid is…kind of a disrespectful little jerk. Maybe they are apt to call their teacher “stinkbutt.” Maybe this kid isn’t mature enough to recognize that behaving like the characters in these books just isn’t so hot. Which may mean he’s not mature enough to read those books.

Remember, my definition of a book ban is blocking a book from reaching its intended audience. And while this individual child may be demographically within the intended audience, no book’s audience is an audience of one. These books were not written specifically for your son.

Honestly, it’s more like saying your kid can’t watch scary movies anymore because you tried one, he pissed himself and ran through a sliding glass patio door. It’s not an attack on his intellectual freedom to say, “You know what? Let’s not do that again for awhile.”

Now, let me give you some other advice.

Maybe half of American adults read a book last year, and a fraction of those adults were men.

Boys (this is going to be a bit controversial, buckle up) grow up in a world of books intended for their reading enjoyment, and they grow into teenagers and men in a world almost devoid of books that are enjoyable for them, that have characters they identify with, or that speak to them. This is why so many boys read like 3 books: Fight Club, Watchmen, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

Did you think our lil’ pal Greg would be in there among a murderer and a terrorist?

I do think part of the issue here is that we view men’s interests as childish or juvenile or unenriching. We view the books men like as silly and frivolous, and that’s a problem, or we view them as toxic and overly masculine, and that’s a different problem.

For men, there really isn’t a whole lot of Goldilocks space in the world of books, a place that most people would view as “just right,” between being silly and childish and being adult, but in the wrong way.

Many, many parents come through the library sick of Wimpy Kid books. They fuckin’ hate ‘em. They want their sons to read ANYTHING else. “Real books” was the phrase I heard a lot.

Let your kid read things he enjoys. Let your kid grow up thinking that reading for pleasure is good fun, and that there are books out there he will enjoy. I don’t care if your kid is reading Wimpy Kid books in high school, it’s fine.

Your kid’s reading skills will progress just fine. And if your kid is reading Wimpy Kid instead of assigned, class reading, you’re in a much better spot than 99% of parents, who need to take a tablet out of their kids’ hands to get them to read.

And, finally, your kid is 6. He’s got a whole life ahead of him to read classics, to have teachers put shitty books in his hands for the sake of education, and to boost his reading abilities. Let him read some silly shit. Let him be a kid.