Connecticut Library To Show 'Sicko' After All
By Michael Kelley Jan 26, 2011A weeklong censorship battle that had engulfed the Enfield Public Library (CT) over the cancellation of a screening of the film Sicko by Michael Moore seems to have been resolved.
"I've lost five pounds in a week. I don't recommend it as a diet plan, though," Henry Dutcher, the library's director for 11 years, told LJ. "For library directors, you always know that this is the boogie man who can be at your door, and you just wonder what is going to happen when it comes, and it came to Enfield last week."
After Kevin Fealy, a town resident, along with other members of the Republican Town Committee, complained to the Town Council on January 18 (video here) that he didn't want the town to promote Moore's 2007 critique of the U.S. health care system "on my tax dollars," town councilors and the mayor pressured Dutcher to cancel the film, saying it was not balanced. Dutcher complied.
"The sentiment by the majority is that it's a poor choice and that they should definitely reconsider," Mayor Scott R. Kaupin, a Republican, told the Journal Inquirer at the time. "And if they don't reconsider, then they're going to have the repercussions of the council.
"I mean, in the end, when budget time comes and Mr. Dutcher is asking for funding" for the films, Kaupin told the Inquirer, "he's going to have to answer for it."
Dutcher said that the objections came from a very small minority in the town. "It's got a life of its own, like a teenager, you can only control so much of it," he said.
The cancellation and the threat to withdraw funding drew sharp criticisms from the Connecticut Library Association.
Town manager throws support to library
But Dutcher told LJ today that he had held several discussions with the town manager, Matthew W. Coppler, who Dutcher reports to as a town department head. Dutcher said he had Coppler's support to show Sicko as part a new film series that would begin in about a week. Coppler had imposed a gag order on Dutcher until yesterday, the Inquirer reported.
"The very next morning [after the council meeting] there certainly was a tense time for a little bit as it unfolded," Dutcher said, "but very quickly the manager and I had discussions and it became clear that he was very supportive and had no thought whatsoever that Sicko was not appropriate to show at the library."
Dutcher said he would attempt to "balance" the films that are shown, as the critics have demanded, but that Sicko had to be shown; he said also that he had assurances from Coppler that library policy and the management of the library would not change, and that as director he maintained the authority to make decisions about programming at the library.
"If it turns out that I don't, then it will be addressed," he said. "It will become pretty obvious to the residents of the town, and the support the library has is astronomical," adding that the vast majority of the residents have supported the library's programming choices.
"The way it was presented to Matt [Coppler] was to make sure there's an opportunity for discussion," Kaupin, the mayor, told the Enfield Patch about the settlement. Sicko will be shown at the library eventually, and it should be shown."
Dutcher said "That's a real progression from where we were a week ago."
Some have said seeking balance could create a trap of false equivalencies (do you "balance" Schindler's List with a holocaust denier?), but Dutcher said if that arose he would deal with it.
"One of the things that really influenced me was the television programs where everybody has to yell at everyone else and nobody gets anywhere because nobody listens to one another. People ask, 'Why can't we sit down and work it out?' and that's the method we are attempting here," he said.
