Happy Friday News Viewers, we meet again after a week in the news full of successful and underplayed legislation and annoying and overplayed rhetoric. It may seem like the biggest story this week was the Bill Barr memo. It was the loud story, the ”I KNEW IT!” story, the latest in a massive mountain of lies all stored in a file called ”Republican.” It was the latest information in what has become old news.
The bigger story has to do with Librarians. They are unlikely superheroes who are now and have been fighting to make available what our increasingly right wing, extreme moralistic and fundamentalist culture would censor.
All the posturing about the right to free speech misses what Librarians get — free speech doesn’t start with bloviating on social media. Free speech begins with equal access to ideas expressed not in echo chambers but in language common to all in rooms open to all. Banning books, banning words, editing out parts of history, manufacturing the codes of PR, manipulation, of persuasion — fighting this looks to be where courage lies. Yeah, MEMO.
The memo, the banned books, bring it on. Whatever reality we’re facing, we prize those brave enough to put it in front of us rather than hide it in some moldy basement box……Thanks today to all the truth tellers……
This is Friday’s free chat, all the news that’s fit to print, your topics, jokes, insights, solutions and news of the world, both macro and micro. In Kentucky today it’s cloudy and dreary— what’s it like in your neck of the woods?