Presuming all goes as planned, folks holding their breath for Moore\’s Stupid
book can exhale February 19th. Michael
Moore->writes:
\”Word began to leak out about Stupid White Men being \”banned.\”
Articles appeared in Publishers Weekly and Salon.com.
I was trying to remain quiet about [the] whole affair, but once a number
of reporters found out (not from me), and a group of librarians organized
a letter-writing campaign, HarperCollins [owned by Murdoch\’s
NewsCorp],
after weighing all their options (and the potential reaction to those options),
decided finally to release the book AS IS — unchanged and uncensored,
on Tuesday, February 19th.\”
Earlier articles about
Moore picked up by LISNews.
😉 -> Citations+Updates
Presuming all goes as planned, folks holding their breath for Moore\’s Stupid
book can exhale February 19th. Michael
Moore->writes:
\”Word began to leak out about Stupid White Men being \”banned.\”
Articles appeared in Publishers Weekly and Salon.com.
I was trying to remain quiet about [the] whole affair, but once a number
of reporters found out (not from me), and a group of librarians organized
a letter-writing campaign, HarperCollins [owned by Murdoch\’s
NewsCorp],
after weighing all their options (and the potential reaction to those options),
decided finally to release the book AS IS — unchanged and uncensored,
on Tuesday, February 19th.\”
Earlier articles about
Moore picked up by LISNews.
😉 -> Citations+Updates
According to the Salon.com article, after September 11th, HarperCollins
\”asked Moore to rewrite\” almost half of his acerbic book, Stupid
White Men and Other Excuses for the State of the Nation.
Moore said no. After a couple of months of unsuccessful negotiations
he broke the news at a keynote speech to a private \”New Jersey Citizen\’s
Action\” group, which, surprise, had a citizen who decided to take action
despite Moore\’s request to let him \”\”\’deal with it.\’\”\” The \”citizen
librarian\”, Ann Sparanese, took it in her hands to pass the news on
to like-minded librarians.
As Pat Holt (HoltUncensored) pointed out, \”Well, here\’s one thing to
remember: Time was (Before the Internet), a controversial person like Michael
Moore could say one thing to the press and another thing to a private group
and never worry about getting, you know, caught.\”
The news wove a circuitous route around the web; ALA listservs, LibraryJuice,
PublishersWeekly, LibraryJournal, HoltUncensored, LISNews, even citizen
journalist Drudge passed along the story.
Of the controversy, the LibraryJournal
article deftly quipped,
\”It would appear to be a high stakes game of chicken. Or a
great bit of promotion: When the book finally comes out Moore gets the
mantel of \”defender of free expression\” while Judith Regan gets to tell
conservative friends she was bullied into the release by all the bad press.
Both, of course, get to keep the checks.\”\”
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