When NOLA.com published Willie Swett’s article about the St. Tammany Parish Library’s search for a new director, it reads like something out of a political thriller: a rogue activist, a secret AI program, and an “embarrassing” job posting that somehow threatened the integrity of an entire parish.
The reality is far more revealing. There do appear to be activists involved in this process, but they aren’t who Swett wants you to believe they are.
How a routine job posting became a scandal
On October 1, the St. Tammany Parish Library Board of Control posted an opening for a new library director. The two-page listing outlined familiar responsibilities: budget oversight, staff leadership, and community engagement. It even included a salary range ($105,000 to $140,000), application instructions, and a clear reporting structure to the Library Board of Control.
In other words, it looked like every other library director job posting in Louisiana. Yet within hours, Parish President Mike Cooper and Councilman Jeff Corbin were calling the posting “unprofessional,” demanding to know who wrote it. By week’s end, they were demanding resignations. However, they never quite said what made the job posting unprofessional, or what they’d change about it. In fact, they never even presented an alternative!
The AI plot twist
According to Swett’s report, Board Chair Chuck Branton had asked local resident Connie Phillips to generate a draft through Perplexity, an artificial intelligence writing tool. Phillips, known for her past involvement in library policy debates, spent a few minutes producing a draft at Branton’s request. The Personnel Committee (comprising Charles Branton, Glenn Baham, and Tamarah Myers) then reviewed, edited, and unanimously adopted the final version on September 29, 2025.
That should have been the end of the story. Instead, Cooper declared the act “an embarrassment,” and Swett’s article treated the use of AI as if it were a breach of public ethics. Ironically, though, nothing in the posting violates any law, policy, or even HR convention. Similar postings across Louisiana omit the same details that critics now call “missing,” and every major library system relies on templates, consultants, or automated tools to streamline language. After all, good candidates are expected to do their own due diligence. The number of branches, employees, and annual budget are all posted right there on the library system’s website.
If anything, the new posting’s ~650 words is a much-needed improvement over the 2018 version‘s ~2,400 words. It’s shorter, clearer, and free of the tourist-brochure prose that promised “golfers and festival-goers” a bright future in St. Tammany. Who approved including that embarrassing fluff in a job description for a library director? Apparently, nobody cares.
The politics behind the outrage
That leaves the obvious question: why the uproar?
In recent years, the St. Tammany Library Board has grown more ideologically diverse. For some, that change has been hard to accept. A board once solely aligned with a single, ideological viewpoint now includes members who represent the broader conservative public that funds it. Even the smallest procedural decision, like how to draft a job ad, becomes a proxy for larger philosophical battles.
The closing paragraphs of Swett’s piece make this dynamic explicit. After quoting Cooper and Corbin’s calls for resignation, the article gives the final word to the St. Tammany Library Alliance. This is the group that has long advocated for “collection diversity” but has openly resisted board diversity and openly opposed age-appropriate standards for children’s materials. The Alliance’s statement repeats, nearly verbatim, the same demand for Branton’s removal.
When officials and advocacy groups share similar talking points, the outrage begins to look like coordinated messaging. In journalism, that’s known as a “tell.”
The real embarrassment
There was no ethical lapse, no mismanagement of public funds, and no policy violation — only a board utilizing modern tools to complete routine work efficiently. Consider that, as of this writing, no one has even suggested an alternative job posting. That includes Mike Cooper, Jeff Corbin, and the Library Alliance. What’s really “embarrassing” is how quickly a standard administrative act became the subject of a political morality play.
The diversity advocates who once celebrated “inclusion” now seem alarmed by the appearance of actual diversity — not of background or race but of thought.
Diversity, but not of thought.
Phyllis Schlafly once said, “Vote for my candidate for the reason of your choice.” In St. Tammany, the new refrain seems to be, “Remove conservatives for the reason of your choice.” How is that an embrace of diversity?
Citizens deserve better than choreographed outrage over a job posting. They deserve a functioning library system — and maybe, next time, a little less drama about who typed the ad.
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