El Segundo has once again demonstrated that it is one of the most ridiculous places on the planet. As David Kipen reports on KCRW’s Overbooked, the El Segundo City Council has rejected a request from the library to name two meeting rooms after Agatha Christie and Jack London. The reasons? Christie isn’t American and London, by way of being a socialist, isn’t American enough.

Councilman John Gaines was the man who made the first objection. Mayor Kelly McDowell was the whiz kid who considered Jack London too politically charged. “I don’t want to make a political statement by naming a room, period,” said Gaines. “I don’t want to use one whose politics, in my view, weren’t in line with American ideals.”

Well, if foreigners are unacceptable, why is one area of the library named the Matsui International, Inc. Meeting Room? Matsui International, Inc. was founded in 1911, a subsidiary of Matsui Shikiso Chemical Co., Ltd., which is located at Address 64, Kamikazan, Sakuradani-cho, Yamashina-ku, Kyoto 607, Japan.

(via Moby Lives)