It hasn’t been a good week for the American Booksellers Association.
An organization that, in saner times, might actually stand for free expression and the exchange of ideas on policy and culture apologized not once but twice for promoting books that conservatives have embraced.
The ABA’s first mistake, as the radical leftists see it, was promoting Wall Street Journal reporter Abigail Shrier’s book “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” which takes a hard and thorough look at the rise of transgenderism among teenage girls.
In a tweet, the 121-year-old group apologized for even hinting that Shrier’s work might be worth reading.
“This is a serious, violent incident that goes against ABA’s ends policies, values, and everything we believe and support,” the ABA said in a tweet.
“We apologize to our trans members and to the trans community for this terrible incident and the pain we caused them. We also apologize to the LGBTQIA+ community at large, and to our bookselling community.”
Violent?
The firm went on to pledge that it is “committed to engaging in the critical dialogue needed to inform concrete steps to address the harm we caused.”
Harm?
But that “harm” came after another “harmful” incident when the ABA included in an email the cover image of a conservative political book with a book of romance fiction stories written by a batch of black women.
The books shared the same title, “Blackout.”
The difference is that the image the ABA originally included was of a book by a “right-wing extremist,” according to a statement by ABA CEO Allison Hill.
That “extremist” is Candace Owens, a black woman.
“We traumatized and endangered members of the trans community. We erased Black authors, conflated Black authors, and put the authors in danger through forced association. We further marginalized communities we want to support,” Hill said.
Danger?
“These were egregious, harmful acts that caused violence and pain,” Hill said, without offering ay proof that anyone was actually injured because the ABA promoted two books.
In her lengthy statement, Hill added, “The process to inform those steps will include listening to impacted members; conferring with members of ABA’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee; institutionalizing more of our diversity, equity, and inclusion work; revising our internal procedures and checks and balances; discussing with our team the impact of this violence on our members and our colleagues; changing the submission, vetting, and distribution process for the box mailing program; automating some of our online content to eliminate unconscious bias; reviewing all of our programs and communication; and more.”
“Though we know the harm these actions caused is obvious to those impacted and many others, we will also share resources that speak to why these acts are violent.”
Please do, because all of this “harm,” violence, and “danger” is lost on those of us afflicted with common sense.
The irony of this tripe is that Hill concludes her nauseating mea culpa by noting, “These incidents are unacceptable and have reminded me how vigilant ABA must be to live up to this commitment, and what is at stake for our members and our community when we don’t.”
The “commitment” she was referring to appeared in the sentence before that one. It is a “commitment” to among other liberal buzzwords “inclusion” and “representation.”
Yes, the ABA, whose job is to promote books, is all for diversity, inclusion, representation, equity – so long as it’s not conservative women, including a black one, promoting conservative ideas.
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