Rant Follow-up – Dear Governor Pence, Save $2 million, Resign Now

The people who make up the largest percentage of this blog’s readership aren’t from from Indiana.  In fact, there is a huge block from Russia and another from Europe. And for the most part, my posts focus on writing crime fiction and film. So why am I fixating on the ignorant Governor of one-mid-sized state?

Dear Lt. Governor, Why So Quiet?

I’m sorry.  He’s like a stone in my shoe.  He is a prime example of what I like least in human behavior – bullying. He is making his personal fundamentalist religious beliefs law and says he is doing so for the cause of “religious freedom.”  There is, of course, no freedom, religious or otherwise, when one’s religious freedom trumps another’s.  

While a congressman, Pence voted against the notion that women must be paid the same as men when they do the exact same job and was consistently anti-gay. As governor, he disliked the results of the school superintendent election so he created a new state office to which newly elected superintendent must report, essentially putting himself in charge despite the electorate. No one is less qualified to run any educational program, which is why the electorate ignored his candidate in the first place He’s not particularly fond of any class that teaches the world is older than what the creationists’ believe. He doesn’t believe in evolution or climate change. And he has strange notions about being poor. “We’re ‘ennobling’ poor people by cutting off food stamps,” he said.

Unsatisfied by how the largely conservative Hoosier press was treating him – apparently they had the audacity to ask him questions – he tried to set up his own news agency. That didn’t go well.  Then the tsunami hit. He had proposed and the gerry-mandered state legislature agreed to legislation that would permit if not encourage discrimination against LGBT people and by logical extension would also revive all sorts of discrimination. This upset a lot of people, not only in Indiana, but elsewhere.  Businesses threatened to move.  Other states instituted boycotts. Performers cancelled concerts. Conventions threatened to move. Corporations delayed expansion plans.  Lost business hit Indianapolis big time, and it had begun to affect other Indiana cities, Fort Wayne, South Bend and Bloomington to name a few.

What did Pence do?  He stood firm.  The law wasn’t intended to discriminate, he insisted, despite the fact that that the bill signing took place in a private ceremony attended by the most rabid anti-gay leaders the state could produce. He denied the obvious and stood firm as the state began to fall apart. Five mayors of Indianapolis, four former and four of them Republican, wrote to express their outrage. He squared his jaw and tightened his lips. He was standing his ground.

Indiana was getting the reputation of being the most confederate state north of the Mason Dixon line. Even Arkansas, which considered copying the law, backed off.  But not Governor Pence.

The state legislature folded and Pence relented, finally signing a “fix.”  Pence went off to Europe, perhaps to clear his head or negotiate a deal with a P.R. agency.  Once touted as a presidential possibility or, at minimum a VP candidate, Pence was now in trouble.  No one expected a Republican to be progressive on social issues, but they were supposed to be good for business.

Pence’s penance turns out to be $2 million of Indiana taxpayer money to hire a P.R. firm to improve Indiana’s image, which was actually pretty good until Pence became governor. The money went to the departments of Business Development and Tourism. No fan of his privatizer-in-chief predecessor, Mitch Daniels, Daniels nonetheless manufactured the perception that Indiana was a great state for business and a great place to live. Indianapolis, in particular, was and is seeing a kind of renaissance, no thanksto the governor. Pence and his inability to manage a crisis of his own creation, destroyed years of hard work. His incompetence was broadcast nationally not by opinionated pundits, but by Pence himself.

Dear Pence, Save $2 Million:" Resign

There are many questions here. What does all this say about the man’s competence, let alone intelligence?  Perhaps more important, is the expensive, tax-funded P.R. campaign designed to restore Indiana’s image or Pence’s? First you beat up the citizens and then ask them to pay the hospital bills and buy you a new suit and a haircut. 

There are those in Indiana who think Hoosiers should move on, that continued attention to Pence’s folly only further embarrasses the state. It’s also true: If he were to resign, the lieutenant governor (a person of similar political persuasion) would take over and be in a position to go after the seat herself, unless, of course, she was complicit.  Though constitutionally in charge of the Department of Commerce, to which business development and tourism, usually report, Lt. Gov. Sue Ellspermann has been strangely quiet. Is she in hiding?

Meanwhile Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard may consider a gubernatorial run during the GOP turmoil. Another connected Republican has quit his day job and hinted he might challenge Pence who only a short time ago was invinceable. Now, a battle for Indiana’s top job – between pro-business and socially conservative Republicans – may ensue. The Grand Old Party’s Good Old Boys suddenly have to deal with a restless herd.

Whatever happens, a bully like Pence should not be allowed to skate, though I worry that his new $2 million connection to a gigantic international P.R. firm could net him dividends in his golden years or keep him afloat during his potential exile.  He has made, some might consider, a substantial down payment on an office with a K Street address.

What he really deserves is to be ennobled. Really, a Pence resignation would do more to restore Indiana’s image than a $2 million P.R. campaign. They would make a big deal of it on the evening news.  There would be a big sigh of relief and we could again think about other things: Chris Christie in a revival of “The Sopranos,” for example.

Booknotes — Banned Books Update

We’re in the middle of Banned Book Week.  Independent Bookstores and libraries are busy promoting books that many people don’t want you to read — books by such legends a Mark Twain, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Ray Bradbury.

Banned Book Week

September 22 — 28

North Carolina was right on time when, according to the Los Angeles Times, a county school board member joined the majority to ban Ralph Ellison’s classic about American racial attitudes.  Invisible Man won the National Book Award in 1953.  One of the board members couldn’t “…find any literary value” in a book that a national critics’ poll (1965) declared the “greatest American novel written since World War II.”

It’s not all that surprising to hear about literary censorship in the South, particularly if the subject is at least partially about racism. It is more fun to talk about the unexpected.  NUVO, an alternative weekly in Indianapolis, reported some strange goings-on in the red state’s capitol.  Not only did the anti-evolution, anti-gay governor Mike Pence officially proclaim Banned Book Week in Indiana, the first lady read from the often-banned children’s book Harriet the Spy at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library.  The book has been criticized and challenged for its alleged portrayal of the main character as a disobedient child with lesbian overtones (or undertones?).

Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, Indianapolis

Indiana’s previous governor, Mitch Daniels, now president of Purdue University, was in the censorship spotlight recently by revelations that while in the state’s highest office he searched for ways to remove books by historian Howard Zinn from college curriculums.

Incidentally, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library honors the Indiana author of Slaughterhoue Five, banned by the state of Missouri and one of the most challenged, as well as honored books in American literature.  The library, featuring a week-long program on the subject of censorship, opened two years ago.

September 26, 2013 UPDATE:  The decision in North Carolina to ban Invisible Man was reversed today. The book is back on the shelves.

Book Notes — Banned in Guantanamo Bay, Texas Jails And In A Library Near You

Each year the American Library Association hosts “Banned Book Week,” when they call upon the public to remember the U.S. has a history of trying to determine what we should be allowed to read. I remember as a kid turning the wire bookrack in Simpson’s Pharmacy, seeing those excitingly vulgar paperbacks with hot type banners: Banned in Boston.  If the books were arty, the word, “unabridged” might convey a certain sauciness therein.  Very desirable that was.  I remember the owner of Aristotle’s Bookstore in Indianapolis being arrested for selling Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer under the counter. Aristotle’s was an academic bookstore not particularly known for its appeal to the prurient. Yet the state of Indiana deemed the book obscene and banned it. This was in the early ‘60s.  I was in my teens and the only encouragement I’d need to read the book was to be told I couldn’t.

As a side note, Indiana is a funny state.  There was a big kerfuffle about the musical Hair coming to town. It was nearly banned.  Hair contains nudity. On the other hand it was the hottest ticket in the country.  There was a fight among the citizenry between those who wanted the city to be culturally savvy — cool  — and those who wanted to hold the line against savage appetites stealing the souls of our young.  A number of concerned citizens just wanted the play and its message of love to go away.  Producers were caught.  If they went ahead, the play might be raided.  Threats were made. The troupe couldn’t find a venue because of it.  Eventually they worked it out.  A strange compromise.  The logic was this:  Nude statues were legal.  In fact there were concrete and marble penises here and there in fountains, for example — all around the city.  And breasts.  Same thing.  Right? So, cast members would spend a moment in compete darkness, during which they would remove their clothing. They would remain PERFECTLY still when the lights were on, still like statues, the show could go on. It did.

Back to books attacked for political reasons.  Indiana doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone.  It seems determined to uphold the rights of the uptights at the expense of the rest of the population.  The state and another Republican governor made news again in its desire for mind control. Recently — that is 2013 — Indiana Governor and potential presidential candidate Mitch Daniels, who had no academic credentials, tried to get books by historian Howard Zinn thrown out of state university curriculums. Zinn’s sin was that he didn’t always portray the U.S. in a positive light. It’s true. It’s doubtful he could have portrayed Daniels in a positive light either.  After terming out of office and needing a legit job, Daniels was appointed head of Purdue University by the school’s board of trustees — the same trustees he appointed while governor.  Mr. Zinn, had he not died a couple of years earlier, would have found that bit of business historically interesting.

In another bit of irony, this time on the world stage, the people who run Guantanamo Bay have banned Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago.  In apparent homage to Mother Russia who originally banned his books, an uncharged Gitmo detainee was not allowed to accept a copy.  They are allowed books — just not this one.  Perhaps authorities didn’t want the detainee to make that Gulag connection. Next time, try Kafka.

In Texas, contrary to federal law, the state’s department in charge of criminal justice maintains a database of 12,000 banned books, many of them by the usual suspects “Slick Willie” Shakespeare, Big George Orwell and Norman (Tough Guys Don’t Dance) Mailer.  Usually the only books banned in prisons are ones that explain how to make a bomb out of oatmeal or how to carve an AK15 out of a case of DOVE soap. But this is Texas.

This year, we will “celebrate” Banned Books Week from September 22 to September 28.  Libraries and bookstores around the country will have special sections devoted to books that have been banned throughout the years.  Among the many authors with that distinction are Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Harper Lee, Maya Angelou, Kurt Vonnegut, William Golding, Richard Wright, Aldous Huxley, J.D. Salinger and Ken Kesey.

And here are a few of the 50 or so books, The American Library Association said were banned or challenged just last year:

Alexie Sherman, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

Georges Remi Hergé, Tintin in the Congo

Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

Stephen King, Different Seasons

Toni Morrison, Beloved

Chuck Palaniuk, Fight Club

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Check out and support your local library and go here for a list of independent bookstores throughout the U.S.