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Posted January 14, 2005.

America Defeats Mississippi Ban

At a special meeting of the Jackson-George Regional Library System board in Pascagoula, Mississippi, trustees voted 5–2 January 10 to put into circulation America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction, a bestselling humor book by Comedy Central’s Daily Show host Jon Stewart and his writing team. The meeting was called in reaction to a widely disseminated Associated Press report about the library director’s restriction of the book—of which the system had seven copies that officials had withheld from the shelves—and the resulting 400 e-mails, most of them from out-of-state and negative in tone.

“It’s not unusual for us to reconsider situations and reverse our opinion,” board Chair David Ables said in the January 11 Pascagoula Mississippi Press.

Trustees had affirmed on December 14 Director Robert Willits’s decision not to circulate the book because it includes a doctored image of the faces of the Supreme Court justices superimposed on the bodies of nine naked people. A facing page contains paper-doll cutouts of judicial robes with a caption encouraging readers to “restore their dignity by matching each justice with his or her respective robe.”

“If they had published the book without that one picture, that one page, we’d have the book,” Willits told the Associated Press before the reinstatement vote. Willits did not return American Libraries’ phone calls.

Library patron Tara Skelton said in the January 10 Biloxi Sun Herald that she first tried to borrow the book in October, only to be told by a library worker that it contained a nude photo that “showed private parts.” After the return to the circulating collection of America (The Book), Skelton remarked, “I’m so proud. Mississippi has done the right thing.”

Posted January 14, 2005.