Monday, September 08, 2008

Palin's book banning request: A smear

Last week while I was at the Republican National Convention, a liberal friend sent me a text message about how he heard that while mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin wanted to ban books. I didn't know how to respond at then, but I do now.

Well, it's a smear.

From a McCain-Palin campaign e-mail:

When first elected, Mayor Palin asked a rhetorical question of the Wasilla Library Director about the library's book-challenge policy. It was a rhetorical question -- nothing more. As Mayor Palin said at the time, she was merely asking questions about administration policies (the book-challenge policy being pertinent because of the local debate at the time) and that she had no materials in mind when she asked the questions. After these rhetorical questions, no other action was ever taken by her office.

There is a list of books, including some from the Harry Potter series, that has gone viral via an e-mail. It is fake. Rumor killer site (although they do verify a few once in a while) Snopes puts this list in its thick false file. Snopes explains that this is a catch-all list of books that others have suggested banning over the decades. As for Harry Potter, the first from that series came out in 1998, but Palin's inquiry occurred in 1996.

Oops.

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5 comments:

Mylegacy said...

Sarah believes the world is 6,000 years old. She is against choice even in the cases of rape and incest, she asks that we “respect” her daughters “decision” BUT would see that judges are appointed that would REFUSE to allow my daughter the right to “choose.” She believes the war is a challenge from “God.” She wants “God” to support her choice for a pipeline in Alaska.

The woman is not STUPID she is just OUTRAGIOUSLY IGNORANT. Surely, America has had enough of ignorant.

Marathon Pundit said...

This woman seems to be helping McCain a lot.

Greybeard said...

Wow.
Take a deep breath, my.

Now...
please indicate to me, since Congress is the body that passes laws, how Palin will do what you suggest.
Thanks ahead of time for educating me.

Anonymous said...

The list of books was BS - an embellishment on the story by some anonymous internet troll.

The factual story however was that Palin did ask the librarian about book banning - which she now admits, and after the librarian told her "no way", Palin tried to fire the librarian. It was only because there was great pushback in the community, in favor of the popular librarian, that this plan was abandonded.

Greybeard said...

Palin did not try to fire the librarian over the censorship issue.
She DID try to fire her a month or so later over what appears to be another corruption issue. The librarian was politically involved with the lying Police Chief she fired as Mayor of Wasilla.

Maverick!