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Mel Gibson Posters Stay Put in SchaumburgThe Schaumburg Township (Ill.) District Library board voted unanimously September 19 to allow three Mel Gibson posters to remain displayed in the library. In August, a library patron had requested the removal of an American Library Association Read poster, first released in 2000, that depicts the Hollywood icon holding a copy of George Orwell’s 1984.The initial anonymous complaint presumably stemmed from Gibson’s July 28 arrest in Malibu, California, on a misdemeanor charge of drunk driving, to which Gibson pleaded no contest. According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department police report, the inebriated actor made several anti-Semitic remarks. Gibson, star of such popular films as the Lethal Weapon series and director of the 2004 blockbuster The Passion of the Christ, released a statement five days later insisting he is not a bigot and offering to reach out to the Jewish community. After library director Michael Madden responded to the written complaint, a second patron visited him, expressing displeasure over the wording of Madden’s response. “The second patron was upset because I didn’t [explicitly] mention anti-Semitism, so I changed my answer to include [the term],” Madden told American Libraries. “The patron thought it was inappropriate to hang the poster, that it was like hanging a poster of Hitler in the library.” Madden was surprised by the complaints because the controversial poster hangs in the library’s less-used east entrance—in August, the east entrance admitted 5,535 patrons, while the west entrance drew 85,445. The east entrance, says Madden, “is a long corridor and, to make it more interesting, we have all these posters up.” There are currently two other images of Gibson in the library. One features the actor portraying Scottish warrior William Wallace in the Oscar-winning 1995 film Braveheart, and hangs above the audio-visual department as part of a permanent mural. The other is part of a photo collage of entertainers constructed by library staff. Patrons feel conflicted about the issue. Schaumburg resident Sharon Reese told the September 14 Chicago Tribune, “I’m not offended, but I do look at it and think, ’Hey, there’s the guy who hates people because they’re Jews.’” Patron Gerald Hayes told the Tribune, “I don’t agree with what [Gibson] said, not only because he’s wrong historically. But I’m very much against censorship because it goes right to the heart of the Constitution.” “The board devoted all of four minutes to this issue, out of a three-hour meeting,” Madden told AL. “I recommended that the poster remain and all seven members affirmed it, including the Jewish member of our board.” Posted September 22, 2006. |
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