in the Kansas City suburb of Leawood, Kansas, a 9-year-old named Spencer Collins has been informed by the city that his nifty “Little Library” is in violation of zoning ordinances, and has to be removed. Now of course, the real lesson is that inside any organization there are pinheads who are sticklers for the rules, and freedom and democracy are advanced by laughing and shaming them into better behavior, not by doing away with governance altogether, but you can bet that this story will get traction on the right as an example of why government is no damn good, ever, and on the left as an example of “Kansas.”
Spencer was motivated to set up his little library after hearing about the Little Free Library movement, which seeks to share books for free from homemade book repositories with one simple rule: “take a book, return a book in order” to promote literacy and lifelong learning that claims to boast about 15,000 of these homemade libraries nationwide. And Spencer being one of those bright hyper-literate kids that far too many of us can achingly identify with -Identify with them, well as having taken lumps for being one of them – he set up his very own Little Library, complete with a bench for people to sit and read on.
“Reading is one of my favorite things to do. We built it on Mother’s Day as a present for my mom because she really wanted one.”
Spencer stocked it with some of his favorite books, like Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time (I loved that book. I bought it from Scholastic Books and ever since, I’ve been nothing but a dreaming wiseass. See also: The Phantom Toll Booth). Just imagine the shit-storm that would have ensued had the kid had Islamopagancommie Lit like Slaughterhouse Five, The Collected Works of Stephen Jay Gould or Heather Has Two Mommies on his shelves. Shoulda stocked his little lie-berry with at least a coupla copies of Guns and Ammo, Glen Beck books and whatever drivel Rush Limpballs has recently “wrote.” Or maybe they were they pissed because he didn’t have a Bible in his Secular Temple O’ Book Learning? All they had to do was leave one. The preacher could have picked up Gideon’s at his next motel tryst with the mayor’s wife.
But a month later, his parents received a letter from officials saying the library violated the city’s zoning ordinance and needed to be removed or they would be fined. The city prohibits people from having structures on their property that are detached from the physical house.
City officials justified the move because they said they “need to treat everybody the same,” says Richard Coleman, noting they can’t just ignore the two complaints they’d received because “we like the little libraries.”
And right there is your Buried Lede, nerds. This isn’t just a tale of gummint overreach, this is a tale of unidentified busybody assholic neighbors who complained that a little bookworm had a cute little library in his front yard, probably because property values and socialism and god knows what else. there’s never any shortage of complainers. Petty little tyrants, always pissed off at someone with a less-than-golf-course lawn or someone with the wrong color shutters. Take pictures of all the birdhouses and trellises etc and to “complain” about all those.
Whatcha wanna bet the complaining neighbors were in favor of Small Government? Private bureaucracies would never, ever do something like this. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to spend four hours negotiating with my insurance company in order to reduce my $100 copay just to be interviewed by a therapist for one morning to maybe $90 if I’m lucky.
This must be why right wingers hate government- they always fuck it up when they’re in charge. This has RW interference written all over it, what do you want to bet that those “complaints” came from the owners of the local used book store? Serves the little pinko right. He should done what any normal, decent ‘american kid from Kansas would do. Set up a target practice range.
“Go back inside and play your Tour of Duty!”
Leawood is a wealthy suburb. Advertising on the street is déclassé and would invite ne’er do wells from god forbid Wyandotte County. This is Koch country, snob city for Midwesterners and you can’t be too careful — in Kansas, public displays of books will bring down your property values. I don’t get it–you’re still in Kansas, for god’s sake!! Were this in Wyandotte County, KS, they’d just want to make sure this wasn’t a front for a meth operation.
Fortunately, Spencer is doing exactly what decent people do when confronted with rank schmuckery and/or bureaucratic idiocy. He’s alerted the media and he’s got a Facebook page, and best of all, he says he’s going to try to convince the city council to amend its zoning code. Cute kid + nerdy popular cause + idiocy in high places was a winning combination for Olivia McConnell, the awesome nerdgirl who eventually prevailed against dumb creationists and got South Carolina to name the wooly mammoth as its state fossil.
If worst comes to worse, Spencer, nail the bookcase to the side of the house. Problem solved. Unless they will consider that an addition. Put it on top of a Hoverround, problem solved. On wheels, not a structure. Fuck you , Kansas.
