Creative Tampa Bay convened a revival meeting recently at the University of Tampa to preach the gospel of Richard Florida and plot ways to implement his teachings, that we all might be touched by the divine hand of economic prosperity wrought by those arty people known as the "creative class."
I'm not sure what makes me shudder when commerce tries to jump into bed with art. Maybe it's that the suits and civic boosters try to get creative and come up with slogans, official city colors, gawdawful "arty" brochures and magazines, and grand plans for street festivals filled with happy mimes, face painters and banjo music.
It sounds absurd, but these are the kinds of things well-intentioned civic boosters are doing around the cult of Richard Florida and, as a matter of fact, have been doing for years in the name of Art.
Carol Coletta, a consultant from Memphis who spoke at the meeting, joked about the cult of Richard Florida and some of the misguided things communities are doing in his name. She warned the local congregation about a few pitfalls. I sincerely hope they will remember this one in particular:
"Imitation makes you average," she said.
Then she advised attendees to find what makes this community distinctive, and to preserve and celebrate it.
What leaps to mind here are those things right under our noses that we aren't preserving and celebrating, among them the Guida Mansion, a gorgeous but dilapidated Art Moderne building in the heart of Latin West Tampa, which could be leveled to make room for a Boys and Girls Club. It's adjacent to the also beautiful but woefully neglected McFarlane Park. And then there's the Harry Wolf building that no one seems to love because it's too unique, and the irreplaceable Dan Kiley garden, which is integral to the building but which the city intends to destroy because it leaks into the parking garage below.
I'm trying to reserve judgment until I see what this new group intends to do because there are some very intelligent, hard-working, well-intentioned and creative people involved. I just hope they'll spend their time and resources learning and enhancing what makes this place special instead of trying to turn it into someplace else.
Dangerous Reading"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us."
—Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
I love Banned Books Week, which falls this year on Sept. 20-26. It really should be designated our most important national holiday because it supports the most precious liberties of a democracy: freedom of thought and freedom of expression. Without exercising them vigorously, you won't have freedom of anything else for long.
That's why I think we should have the whole week off from work, to read about all the things people in positions of power don't want us to know. No school, no mail delivery, no garbage pick-up. The malls, movies, restaurants, gas stations should all be closed, so that all anyone has to do is read fiction like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Handmaid's Tale and Catcher in the Rye and nonfiction like Women on Top, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy or Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.
The Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association, which started Banned Books Week, keeps lists and statistics about books that have been banned and those that have been "challenged," which means attempts have been made to keep them out of libraries and schools.
Reflecting our puritanical heritage, a quarter of the challenges recorded between 1990 and 2000 were mounted because of sexual content; another quarter were due to offensive language; and 13 percent were for promoting the occult or "Satanism." Less than 12 percent were challenged because of violence. None was banned for bad writing or insipid content. Mostly we say we're trying to protect kids from sex and other scary stuff, which makes little sense when kids see all that on TV before they even learn to read.
Of course the other reason banning books makes no sense is that it usually backfires. The old forbidden fruit principle. If you tell people they shouldn't know about something, it just makes them all the more curious about it.
Banned Books Week reminds us of all those things people don't want us to think about. And in doing so, it defangs zealots who would put security, conformity and ignorance above free thought and expression.
These days, there are more insidious ways to censor ideas. Among the more useful are economic censorship and legal harassment. The most famous and satisfying recent example is Fox's lawsuit against Al Franken for his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Fox dropped the suit after a judge accused Fox of trying to undermine the First Amendment and refused to grant an injunction to keep the book from using Fox's laughable trademark of the phrase "fair and balanced." Fortunately, the lawsuit had already given the book far more publicity than it ever would have gotten otherwise, propelling it to the top of numerous best-seller lists.
Perhaps the easiest way to keep people from reading certain things is to ignore them, as the American media have ignored Greg Palast and Noam Chomsky, both of whom, interestingly enough, criticize the American media and often report things the media should have been uncovering and telling us about.
So let's all strike a small blow for liberty this Banned Books Week. Be a true patriot: Call in sick for a day, stay in bed and read a book someone has tried to stifle. It may be the most patriotic thing you do all year.
Senior Editor Susan F. Edwards can be reached at ed@weeklyplanet.com or 813-248-8888 ext. 122.
This article appears in Sep 18-24, 2003.