Ginny Maziarka Shoots Herself in the Foot

Professor Mark Peterson has an op-ed in the Daily News, providing some sarcasm and irony to the current state of the library fiasco. Peterson suggests that there's another book that Ginny Maziarka and her comrades need to banish, a book described by Peterson as "arguably, the single greatest cause of spiritual distress and physical bloodshed in Western histor": the New and Old Testaments of the Christian Bible.

Ginny, being a good Christian, doesn't take kindly to someone bad-mouthing her Bible. So, she highlights a couple of phrases from Peterson's commentary, and proceeds to call him a liar. Problem is, the things he said are true, and we have Ginny's own words to prove it.

Let's take a look at two instances in Ginny's post:

1:

Peterson says: "Let’s recap: a local group of fundamentalist Christians asks that a number of books be removed from the library’s shelves on completely unconstitutional grounds."

Ginny replies (all caps red, of course): "LIE. NO BOOKS WERE ASKED TO BE REMOVED FROM THE LIBRARY SHELVES."

But Peterson is correct that this all started with Ginny's request to have books removed from the library altogether. She outlines her group's initial demands in this blog post, noting that " We further asked for the removal of any book in the youth section of our library, i.e., children’s, young adult/YA Zone, that contains perverse and pornographic language" (her emphasis).

Ginny repeats her call for banning books here: " We also told him that we are requesting a "ban" on the The Perks of a Wallflower book." (her emphasis). And if you can sit through this video, at minute 23:38 Ginny repeats her desire to have books removed as the first solution, if only it weren't for the pesky ALA (emphasis mine):

And, again, personally, if [the books] could be moved, I'd be great with that. But, the American Library Association has a lot more power than you or me. And since that's not really going to be a possible option, I guess then this [reclassification] is what we're going to have to ask.

So, Peterson is right to characterize the starting point of this entire episode with a request to have books removed from library shelves. To you, Ginny, I say: LIE.

2:

Peterson points out a connection between Ginny and Julaine Appling: "Julaine Appling, whose Wisconsin Family Council seminars provided the Maziarkas with the organizing skills..."

Ginny replies, with her typical detailed commentary: "OUTRIGHT LIE."

But Ginny did take training seminars sponsored by the Wisconsin Family Council and with the American Majority, and offshoot of the Sam Adams Alliance, who is dedicated to "training, inspiring, and empowering people to utilize new media tools (blogging, twitter, wikis) to advance economic freedom and individual liberty.". She blogged about it here, and even tweeted her excitement about the training sessions here and here.

So, again, Peterson appears correct in noting that Ginny benefited from training seminars hosted by WFC. Your denial, Ginny, is an OUTRIGHT LIE.