We noted, four days ago, the firing of Chattanooga librarian Cameron Williams for being boneheadedly stupid burning library books with which he disagreed. Now comes The Washington Post, with their own article on the subject:
A Black Lives Matter activist was accused of burning books by Trump and Ann Coulter. He was then fired from his job.
By Teo Armus | February 17, 2021 | 3:08 AM EST
From the article title alone — and it should be noted that article titles in newspapers are normally written by the editors, not the article authors — you san tell: grab on to a support bar, because this one leans far to the left!
Cameron “C-Grimey” Williams says his instructions were clear enough: The 35-year-old library staffer was supposed to comb through the shelves of his branch in Chattanooga, Tenn., looking for books that were damaged, outdated or untruthful.
We noted Mr Williams’ appearance in the previous article; I can see from where his ‘street name’ of “C-Grimey” comes.
Let me be clear here: I would never hire, for any position involving public contact, anyone who looked like that. Nor would I ever hire anyone with any connection to #BlackLivesMatter. If someone cannot have decent, respectable grooming habits, nope, he doesn’t get hired. And having anyone on your payroll who you know is involved with attempting to defund or harm the police, who has a basically racist attitude — racist from any direction! — is something you do not want. It’s like hiring someone with any sort of “social justice” degree, such as Women’s and Gender Studies; such people are walking, talking discrimination lawsuits waiting to happen. You take their résumés, interview them if you must, and then quietly choose another candidate. The library was hiring someone to help people find books, not someone to push his political opinions on patrons.
One point the Post article does not mention is that the library met with the Chattanooga city attorney about this, before taking the decision to terminate Mr Williams. One would assume that the city attorney would have been very careful in advising the library on the legalities. More, the Post article states that, “Before his firing, (Mr Williams) was the only Black man on a staff of about 80 people, he said.” Note that verbiage: Mr Williams was the only black man on the staff; it does not mean he was the only black person employed there. Library personnel tend to be heavily female. Was this poor writing by the Post article author, poor reporting in failing to clarify the situation, or just laziness in taking Mr Williams’ word for it?The branch managers told employees they could bring home any weeded-out titles, he said. But Williams, a rapper who helped organize demonstrations against police brutality last year, reportedly had other plans for the books he picked out.
After nabbing Ann Coulter’s “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)” and Donald Trump’s “Crippled America,” he allegedly set them on fire in his backyard in December, live-streaming the blaze on Instagram, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Last week, the library fired him over the alleged incident, saying that he’d broken the rules by “improperly removing items from the Library’s collections.”
That point should have been caught by whichever Washington Post editor reviewed the story. At least I assume the normal practice of editorial review; perhaps such an assumption isn’t a wise one?
Mr Williams provided this picture to the Post. In it, he is shown in what appears to be the library stacks. He’s also wearing a black hoodie, something hardly professional, and a Black Lives Matter facemask. Was he projecting a politicized image while working at the library?There’s some rather delicious irony when we see the Post publishing sympathetic articles about book-burners. Some things are just not good looks.
The Post’s story is an example of absolutely horrible journalism . . . which seems to be a 21th century trend. We should not be able to discern the writer’s biases by reading what is supposed to be a straight news article, but they are there for all to see. This is what happens when you hire the #woke.