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Our Orwellian Modern World
March 20th, 2008 at 05:35am Mark Noonan
What an amazingly topsy-turvy view:
Lindsay, Mar 19, 2008 (CNA).- The firing of a county library employee who disobeyed her supervisor in reporting to police a patron who was viewing child pornography has focused attention on permissive library “free speech” policies.
Brenda Biesterfeld, a librarian assistant in Lindsay, California, was ordered by her supervisor not to report a man who was looking at pictures of naked boys on the library’s public computer. She called police anyway. On the 39-year-old man’s next visit, police caught him allegedly viewing child pornography.
The man, Donny Lynn Chrisler, was arrested on March 4 on suspicion of violating child pornography and obscenity laws. Police say they found “kiddie porn” in Chrisler’s trailer home.
Biesterfeld said she had a hostile conversation with her supervisor, Judi Hill, after she ignored the supervisor’s orders and notified police. “She kind of threatened me,” Biesterfeld said. “She said I worked for the county, and when the county tells you to do something, you do what the county tells you. She said I had no loyalty to the county. I told her I was a mother and a citizen also, and not just a county employee.”
Biesterfeld was fired on March 6. A letter from Tulare County Librarian Brian Lewis said that probationary employees such as Biesterfeld can be terminated at any time if they don’t perform at a level “necessary for fully satisfactory performance in the employee’s position.”
However, a Lindsay city councilwoman said that six weeks before the firing, she was told that Biesterfeld was doing a great job.
On March 14, the Linsdsay City Council sent a letter to Tulare county supervisors complaining about Judi Hill’s “abrupt, demanding and demeaning” phone call to a police captain telling him to call off his pornography investigation because the city had “no business interfering” with library matters.
Do you want to know an indisputable and very obvious truth? The Minutemen who stood fast at Lexington and Concord; the boys in blue who won Gettysburg; the Doughboys who charged into the Argonne; the Marines who raised Old Glory on Iwo Jima…not a one of them fought for the right of creeps to view pornography. This is free speech:
Guy A: I think that taxes should be raised.
Guy B: I think tha taxes should be lowered.
Guy A: I say you’re a bloody fool for believing that.
Guy B: Well, so’s your old man.
Free speech is not and cannot ever be someone fondling himself while looking at dirty pictures - to say that it is a matter of free speech is to betray either an amazing ignorance of what freedom is, or an amazing cowardice afraid to stand up for what is right. But here we are - not only is this library (and many others around the nation; I’ve heard of this issue plenty of times - just not quite so starkly as this) allowing people to view pornography on public-owned computer (your tax dollars at work, boys and girls), but illegal pornography…and then getting mad when someone has the nerve to report a crime to the police.
We live in one utterly screwed up world, my friends - and the screwing up was uniformly and quite deliberately done by liberals…oh, sure; they didn’t mean it to come out this way, but any one with the sense God gave little, white mice could see where it would wind up…when you ease up on depravity all you get is more of it. Why? Because human beings are fallible - they will screw up, and the more you allow them to do so, the more they’ll do it. Life has rules not because someone arbitrarily is trying to stop fun from happening (though liberals are making a stab at that, too, with their asinine anti-smoking and anti-alchohol campaigns), but because people need rules to live in a civil society.
We’d better stop this pretty quick - the rot has gone far enough. A time when there is a dispute about whether a kiddie-porn consumer should be turned in to the police is a time when the final line has already been crossed, and if we don’t back up then things really will go to pieces.
Entry Filed under: General Government, Justice System, Kook Left, Life Issues, Popular Culture, Social Issues
20 Comments
1. bozo the neoclown | March 20th, 2008 at 5:48 am
I would be surprised if anyone here supports not turning this guy into the police. What he was was reprehensible and he deserves to spend a long, long period of “private time” with bubba in a very small cell. And it has nothing to do with your political views
2. TiredofLibBullSh** | March 20th, 2008 at 5:58 am
The librarian who ordered the aide not to report the CRIME should be arrested also for aiding and abetting.
3. Cavalor Epthith, Esquire, D.S.V.J. | March 20th, 2008 at 6:18 am
Brenda Biesterfeld is a hero to me Mr. Noonan for more reasons than what is obvious. She took the hard step forward and bucked a system that allowed for loopholes through which pedophiles could leap. She is to be hailed and I am speaking a father of one year old twins here and given her job back with a healthy 100% raise.
I will now take off my parental cap and put on my solicitor’s wig:
Local statues make it illegal for pornography, what is deemed by local law as pornographic, to be displayed in the full view of the public. In this matter I agree. Where the law must draw the line is the use of the law as a control on the free enterprise system. The right to purchase view or even make pornographic films in the privacy of your own home or studio, as long as no other laws are broken is a free speech and commerce matter that is precisely what those who fought and died for the nation did those heroic acts for.
They did not for the industry or even because they had the viewing of still or video images of sexual acts in the forefront of their minds but the concept of freedom Mr. Noonan is all encompassing. The right you have to pray as a Catholic is held in no higher regard by the resting Souls at Arlington than the right of a man to watch American Bukkake 12 in his home in Topeka, Kansas without fear of reprisal from law enforcement as long as he breaks no laws while doing so.
The law in Tulare should be rewritten to allow a librarian to enforce the law already on the books and no libraries should be used to view legal or illegal pornography. The place for legal pornography is in the privacy of one’s own domicile and at that door jamb is the limit that conservative Christians should have on telling adult people what they can and cannot, legally, view.
Qu’ul cuda praedex nihil!
4. clark smith | March 20th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Local employers should be lining up, and competing amongst themselves over who can offer Biesterfeld the most desirable position and wages possible.
Anyone who has lost their job for acting in such an appropriate fashion, should be a prospective employer’s dream.
5. Some Assembly Required | March 20th, 2008 at 10:23 am
“The librarian who ordered the aide not to report the CRIME should be arrested also for aiding and abetting.”
I completely agree. She protected the rights of a man who stares at child porn in a public library. Such a man who cannot hold his sexual urges until he gets into the privacy of his own home is surely soon to want to take them to the next step.
Ms. Hill, I’m sure would be the first person to make a phone call to police or voice her outrage if this man was seen staring at her children. But she condemns the librarian for calling the police. She should at least be fired from her position at the library and Ms. Biesterfeld should be re-instated. Possibly even promoted.
6. JPL | March 20th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
To Cavalor Epthith, Esquire, D.S.V.J.:
Agreed that “Brenda Biesterfeld is a hero”, but your notion that American anti-pornography statutes stop at the front door jamb is wrong. Both state and federal statutes make it a crime to knowingly possess and/or view child pornography, regardless of where the act takes place. U.S. courts have held such statutes constitutional (i.e., not in violation of the 1st Amendment right to free speech) because child pornography per se isn’t protected “speech”.
Of course you’re free to disagree with those court interpretations, but as U.S. law currently stands, you’re not free to knowingly view child pornography, including “in the privacy of one’s own domicile” (which, by the way is fine with me).
7. MorrisMajor | March 20th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
I just love Marks reference to Gettysburg, Iwo et al., as if framing it this way makes anyone who disagrees into some sort of traitor. By the way, Mark, since you can’t read the minds of 100,000’s of dead people, your noxious reference to soldiers is defacto wrong, cause just one disagreeing with your bombastic generalization makes your statement NULL.
But that is your right to free speech. I thinks it’s pretty Orwellian that someone can be arrested for viewing a website, no matter how contemptible it is. I also believe that someone should not be viewing that in public either. And whether someone dead soldier agreed with me or not, is irrelevant. But the employee did disobey an order and knowingly risked her job.
8. InDaVa | March 20th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Damn, Hasn’t this library ever heard of a firewall?
9. MorrisMajor | March 20th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Slightly off topic:
Since everyone loves to quote Orwell no matter how irrelevant the topic at hand, Mark, do you know what Orwell said about Fascism? Makes the pap Jonah published in his throw-away book look like the partisan screed it is.
10. BARRASSO | March 20th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Well as a librarian who has busted a guy for viewing child porn I think I can safely say that the firing of this woman makes no sense and no librarian I have ever met would say different. No one I know would say that viewing child porn was protected in any way and no library I have worked at has had a policy that would allow this. I have been assigned as the only male working to follow around library patrons who looked a little creepy, or were hanging around the childrens book section. Every library I have worked at gave protecting children the highest priority. Librarians tend to have a mean streak for individual liberty but none I have met thought that freedom included child porn.
11. GOP4ME | March 20th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Morris,
I am going to bet that you do not have children. I am going to bet that you feel that bringing a new life into the world is wrong since we are over populated already. I am going to bet you support late term abortions.
Otherwise your garbage laden post makes no sense.
As a leftist aren’t you supposed to be compassionate and caring for those that are defenseless? Yet you don’t care that children are being exploited in the most heinous of ways?
I would imagine you, as a typical leftist, are upset with certain products because child labor is used but child porno???? Freedom of speech y’all!
You sir are a reprehensible hypocrite of the first and highest order.
12. JPL | March 20th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
I just re-read my own post above and realize it’s ambiguous, so I want to clarify as follows:
When I wrote that current U.S. law makes it illegal to view child porn even in the privacy of one’s own house, and that this “is fine with me”, I didn’t mean that “viewing child porn in the privacy of one’s own home” is fine with me; what I meant was that the law prohibiting child porn in one’s own home is fine with me.
Hope this clarifies my position. Sorry for the confusion.
13. Michael | March 20th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Hey Mark,
What’s wrong with you? Just because the guy was arrested for breaking the law doesn’t mean he did anything wrong. And how dare that woman do her job and turn him in to authorities? No wonder she got fired. If libraries keep this up the perverts won’t have anywhere to go to use free computers to watch children get molested. Think of the loss to their libidos. They won’t feel good anymore.
14. Cavalor Epthith, Esquire, D.S.V.J. | March 20th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
JPL,
I understoond and in the spirit of clarity I would suggest you go back and review my comment. Like many who are vehement about controlling what other adults all you saw was my support of pornography not the phrase, “The place for legal pornography is in the privacy of one’s own domicile and at that door jamb is the limit that conservative Christians should have on telling adult people what they can and cannot, legally, view.”
15. congressive | March 20th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Appoint Mark Foley to head a commission to investigate, post haste!
Once again, there’s confusion over legal porn and criminal pedophilia. Righties seem to have trouble telling the difference. This is disturbing.
I find pornography psychologically damaging in that it diminishes one’s ability to love, emotionally and carnally, one’s spouse. So can booze. And in the wrong hands, so can religion, if one’s spouse is of a different belief.
The fact that Biesterfeld was a “probationary employee” when she was fired seems suspect.
This rant “Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families, criticized the county library administrators. “The liberals who run the library system in America must stop violating the federal law because they regard child pornography as free speech,” he said.” is just insane. Totally insane. But not surprising.
16. majoriot | March 21st, 2008 at 11:50 am
I myself do not like the idea of this in a public library. But I am also uncomfortable with the idea that a person can be arrested for simply looking at pictures.
By the way, did I miss the mention of the viewer fondling himself? Or is that YOUR freedom of speech at work.
Have to wonder which is more dangerous.
17. Canuckguy | March 21st, 2008 at 6:02 pm
So Mark, is there an update you can give in this case about Brenda? Was justice served and she got her job back?
18. JPL | March 22nd, 2008 at 4:25 pm
“Once again, there’s confusion over legal porn and criminal pedophilia. Righties seem to have trouble telling the difference. This is disturbing.”
No, the only thing disturbing here is the profound ignorance of lefties like Congressive and Cavalor Epthith over the difference between adult porn and child porn under the 1st Amendment as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court. While both Congressive and Epthith are correct that porn involving adults can be EITHER protected or not protected under the 1st Amendment, depending on whether it has redeeming social value as determined by local community standards, child porn involving an actual child (as opposed to a drawing of a child) is NEVER protected under the 1st Amendment, PERIOD, END OF STORY. Congress found that the harm done to children in the MAKING of child porn justifies making it illegal to possess ANY and ALL child porn, NO EXCEPTIONS. More recently the U.S. Supreme Court upheld this law, at least when an actual child (as opposed to a drawing of a child) is involved. Sorry, but when it comes to child porn involving an actual child, there’s no such thing as “redeeming social value” or “community standards.” Instead, the rule is quite simple: if it’s porn, and if it involves an actual child - BINGO - the states and/or Congress can ban it.
Oh, and please don’t come back here with some lame excuse, like, “Oh, but we weren’t TALKING about child porn,” because that just shows how ignorant you are, in that you didn’t realize the significance of this news story lies precisely in the fact that it involves child porn. Somehow everyone else posting here understood that — everyone, that is, except the 2 leftists.
Next time, please do your research before coming here to insult people who are smarter and better informed than you are.
19. Almiranta | March 23rd, 2008 at 1:36 pm
“I thinks (sic) it’s pretty Orwellian that someone can be arrested for viewing a website…” says Morris. Aside from his ignorance of what really IS “Orwellian” as well as of the laws regarding child pornography, his ilk don’t seem to have a problem with other Thought Police actions.
regressive finds any excuse to bring up Foley, which is good because I was going to do so anyway—but in terms of him being found guilty of a Thought Crime.
He didn’t do a single illegal act. But the rabid Left has swarmed on him like jackals, because they have convicted him of THINKING—-who cares of they convicted him of thinking of something they find perfectly acceptable? It’s not about reality, or fairness, or justice, or consistency, it’s about the politics of personal destruction. Which is why regressive finds it OK to bring his name into a discussion of child porn.
Which is, of course, absolutely illegal in any form, in any location, in any venue. It doesn’t matter what a person is thinking when participating in any way in child pornography.
But the rabid Lefties seem hellbent on getting a Thought Police established, so they can actually prosecute and punish people for what they claim they are thinking, a la Larry Craig. They’ve already made some progress with their goofy Hate Crime statutes—where what the perpetrator was THINKING is more important than what he DID.
So, Morris, come out against all Thought Crime statutes and you might, just MIGHT, gain a small amount of credibility to offset you other goofy commentaries.
20. Almiranta | March 23rd, 2008 at 1:45 pm
regressive goes on to claim that the comment (which he characterizes as a “rant”) “…“The liberals who run the library system in America must stop violating the federal law because they regard child pornography as free speech…” as insane. INSANE. His very word, repeated by him, to show us exactly how outraged he is at the very IDEA that people should stop violating federal laws.
According to regressive, the belief that anyone must stop violating a federal law because they don’t agree with it is INSANE.
Or maybe the belief that child porn is illegal is INSANE. Hard to tell with regressive….
I love these Libs. Every time one of them skirts reason or rationale, someone like regressive comes along to show us how they really “think”.