Sunday, September 7

Palin's Banned Books List

I LOVE this attack on Sarah Palin:

According to the Boston Globe, for instance: "Back in 1996, when she first became mayor, Sarah Palin asked the city librarian if she would be all right with censoring library books should she be asked to do so.

According to news coverage at the time, the librarian said she would definitely not be all right with it. A few months later, the librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, got a letter from Palin telling her she was going to be fired. The censorship issue was not mentioned as a reason for the firing. The letter just said the new mayor felt Emmons didn’t fully support her and had to go.

Emmons had been city librarian for seven years and was well liked. After a wave of public support for her, Palin relented and let Emmons keep her job." Notice that the Globe doesn't cite a source, just reports this as fact. The news media has not been truthful lately -- we need more than this to give the report credibility.

Any mother who doesn't like the idea of her children having easy access to books that promote lesbianism, fornication, homosexuality, irresponsibility and vocabularies limited to "age appropriate" language and cuss words can certainly sympathize with her feelings IF, indeed, she did wish to remove some books. Even much of the "literature" taught in schools today is third-rate, with contrived plots, questionable history, and unseemly characters.

However, the reason Palin might have wanted Emmons fired had nothing to do with banning books. What it had to do with was the fact that Emmons was not a political supporter of Palin. Many a city, state, or Federal employee has lost a job when the other party came into power. That's simply standard procedure.

But the fascinating thing in this case is the shallowness of the smear against Palin. The list of books she supposedly wanted banned (and there is no valid list because she only asked if it was possible to remove some books from shelves) is the "Books Banned at One Time or Another" list. Never mind that some of them (like the Harry Potter books) hadn't even been published at the time.

Come on, Libs. Can't you do better than that?

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