29 Comments

1. Jamie Irons:

Roger,

You’re missing the point here: Sarah Palin would have censored — or, more likely, burned — the Harry Potter books if they’d been available.

I know this because my infallible instincts tell me when a person is a fascist, or a Republican (same thing, right?), or might once have thought of doing something of which I don’t approve.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to field dress a mØØse.

Jamie Irons

Sep 7, 2008 - 8:47 am 2. Godzilla:

After reading the Lingren article the salient point seems obvious, though unstated: Palin’s inquiry about censorsing books occurred 11 years ago, and WERE NOT repeated. This obviously implies that she has lerned her lesson.

Sep 7, 2008 - 9:46 am 3. Godzilla:

Damn, preview is definitely missed.

Sep 7, 2008 - 9:47 am 4. rkb:

IIUC the inquiry came after a constituent asked whether it could be done. Palin took that consituent’s question to the librarian, got the answer ‘no’ and presumably reported it back to the voter who asked.

Sounds like a responsible local official to me. And just as a reality check: does this woman strike you as one who deals with tough challenges by trying to edit them out?

Sep 7, 2008 - 9:48 am 5. Ex-Alaskan:

Roger, I would take this with a huge grain of salt. I used tolive in Alaska and these allegations have been peddled against her ever since she ran for Lt. Governor. I think her 80%+ approval ratings in the state speaks for itself on the validity of these attacks.

The attacks on Palin are however getting more and more ridiculous. No wonder since she now is the most popular poltician in America. She is extremely effective and likable and that scares the Left to death. Ask yourself this: Why doesn’t McCain “dispatch” attackers on Joe Biden like Obama is doing on Palin? Because Biden is horrible VP pick while Palin is a gamechanger.

Sep 7, 2008 - 9:49 am 6. Godzilla:

Speaking of the attacks on Palin getting more rediculous, I haven’t kept up on the latest Kos-inspired accusations, but it won’t be long before it’ll be claimed that she had Trig JUST for the purpose of furthering her career. Then, after that one blows up in their faces, it’ll be that Track joined the army because she forced him to to make her look good. lol

Sep 7, 2008 - 10:46 am 7. New Yorker:

My sister-in-law was a librarian in a Philadelphia suburb a few years ago. Anytime a patron complained about the appropriateness of a book, it was removed from circulation. She said that was the norm among librarians.

Librarians also censor in other ways. They are the ones selecting books in the first place, a form of censorship.

Censorship in this context is difficult to define.

Sep 7, 2008 - 10:50 am 8. fred:

My concerns about censorship are about likely Democratic efforts to (a) bring back the “fairness doctrine” and, (b)regulate the internet. Both would be serious threats with a President Obama and Pelosi/Reid led congress.

Sep 7, 2008 - 10:50 am 9. AlanC:

Roger, two points:

1) Having a public library NOT buy or shelve certain books is not censorship unless the only books allowed are those in the library. Do you really think that the library DOESN’T make choices about what to stock or not? Given the well known liberal bent of the ALA it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that most conservative authors are banned. E.G. My own public library subscribes to The Nation, but not to National Review.

This is a doubly bogus charge as she never asked for a single book to be withdrawn.

2) Re: sex ed. What she objected to and would not support was EXPLICIT sexual education in the schools. I suggest you look at the content of some “sex-ed” courses that are in some schools. They probably could be used unedited in Penthouse. There is a difference between contraceptive knowledge and explicit sex-ed.

Cheers.

Sep 7, 2008 - 10:54 am 10. Sandy P:

YEA! We save that explicit stuff for college courses and degrees!

Sep 7, 2008 - 11:26 am 11. Dr. Weevil:

Just to be a devil’s advocate here, if I had teenagers who were reading Mein Kampf or The Turner Diaries or just about any work of the Marquis de Sade at the Public Library, I might well ask them to be removed from the shelves, and I don’t think a library that complied would be practicing censorship. Those who removed Little Black Sambo from library shelves 30+ years back probably didn’t think of themselves as censors. After all, anyone with the money can still buy all these books from Amazon at reasonable prices, with no interference from the government, though teenagers living at home might want to be careful about what titles they order on-line.

Sep 7, 2008 - 11:52 am 12. Mike_K:

Remember that the librarian story was from one source and there is NO PAPER TRAIL on this. It could be a disgruntled bureaucrat as I think I saw that the librarian was replaced. It may never have happened.

Sep 7, 2008 - 12:32 pm 13. Darryl Gillikin:

I love it. First, the meme was, “Oh, she’s a hypocrite! She’s for abstinence only sex education, and her daughter gets knocked up!” Now, seeing how that hasn’t worked, it’s, “Wait! She’s really pro-contraceptives! See that, religions right-wing nutjobs? How well do you REALLY know her?”

Has the MSM really gotten this much more transparent in recent years? Or was I just so stupid in my youth that I didn’t see through it all then?

Sep 7, 2008 - 1:22 pm 14. srlucado:

Is this the best her critics can come up with?

“Sure, our guy took drugs, pushed opposition candidates off the ballot, hangs out with hate-mongers, and has been in cahoots with sleazeballs of every stripe, but that’s *nothing* compared to their VP – there’s a rumor from one person that she tried to have a book removed from a library! What a Nazi!”

Pathetic.

Scott

Sep 7, 2008 - 1:59 pm 15. Godzilla:

Maybe it was just today, but the television shots of Obama’s appearance today, when he was up on a stage, showed a sparse crowd, heavily tilted toward their early twenties I’d guess. If that crowd is is the new norm for Obabma, then his electorate is dwindling. The way the wind is blowing now, if I were a democrat politician, I don’t know is I’d want to be palling around with Obama anymore, or campaigning for him. He was so clearly wrong on the surge…in fact, his whole campaign started on the strength of a failed war. How long will it be before the rest of the dems start claiming that they knew the surge would work…knew it all along…”Yeah, yeah, we knew the surge would work all along…we were just a little surprise by how much.” Obama’s already hedging toward that play…though it won’t fool anybody. When anything ever works in politics, you know that sooner or later the dems will claim that they helped it.

Sep 7, 2008 - 3:13 pm 16. Terrye:

I live in the country about a mile from a small town. And believe it or not we do not have an erotica section at our town library.

I doubt very much if Palin is out to burn or censor books, but if their library is funded as ours is by local contributions and taxes then it might be that limited resources will not be used to buy books the locals would almost certainly find offensive. I am just guessing here, but I imagine the whole censorship thing is just nonsense.

Sep 7, 2008 - 3:19 pm 17. Elroy Jetson:

Palin may have asked the librarian what her views were of banned books because the librarian was banning them (maybe conservative ones)?
She could have been responding as mayor to people who complained about what was lacking on the shelves.

Sep 7, 2008 - 4:28 pm 18. Roy Lofquist:

As to ordering books from Amazon:

A little while ago my friend got interested in Ebay. He had a ship’s wheel that had been kicking around for years so he put that up for auction. Sure enough it sold pretty quickly – to a guy in Alaska. So he packed it up and took it to the post office to ship – urk!! he got $50 for the wheel and the PO wanted $150 to ship it. It took us about a week to find a way to ship it to Alaska so he’d only lose $20 on the deal. No more EBay for him.

I wonder if the Amazon free shipping for orders over $25 extends to Alaska.

Sep 7, 2008 - 4:38 pm 19. Lightnin' Hopkins:

This ginned-up nonsense reminds me of something I read from the late, great Cathy Seipp several years ago. She was in City Lights – of all bookstores – in SF, and asked the clerk if and when they might have the latest book by Oriana Fallaci (now also deceased and greatly missed). The snotty clerk shot back that they didn’t “sell books written by fascists.” The mind-numbing irony of a place once famous for supporting controversial writers and their works refusing to sell a book on political grounds was not lost on Cathy (or her readers).

As Roger often points out, the reactionaries are now found on the left.

Mein Kampf, on the other hand, is found at *City Lights* (as well it should be in a free country, after all – but so should conservative books that liberals find offensive).

So excuse me if I call bull#%*@ on the latest attempt to smear Gov. Palin — recent history has left me wary, even somewhat wise.

Sep 7, 2008 - 6:16 pm 20. RedneckJD:

Read Michelle Malkin on this issue. Palin asked all holdovers from the previous Mayoral administration to resign. As Michelle points out, didn’t Wee Willy Clinton fire all the US Attorneys left from GHWB? (Yes, he did.) These requests included the librarian, who immediately thought “censorship”. Palin let her stay. And the modern facists are from the Left, Liberals, Democratic Party. If you doubt this, read the Jonah Goldberg book.

Sep 7, 2008 - 6:54 pm 21. Godzilla:

Roger, you’re a basketball buff. Here’s a article about the basketball game that Wasilla won for the 1982 state championship. Guess who made the key shot at the end.

1982 Wasilla High School Championship

Sep 7, 2008 - 7:31 pm 22. Lem:

Palin is causing the Obama campaign to inadvertently start a self-destruct sequence of events.

One day it leaks out that Palin will not be invited on the most popular woman’s interest show in America.

The the next they ratchet up the smears against her.

In there a chance that people, in their own minds, may put those together and conclude that somebody is not being fair to the governor?

Sep 7, 2008 - 10:00 pm 23. AlanC:

BTW can someone give me a hand here?

When I was just a wee one my mother used to read to me alot, mostly from those small cardboard covered “Golden Books”.

I only remember two of them as being favorites:

1) The Color Kittens
2) Little Black Sambo

Now my question is “what’s so wrong with LBS that gets everyone in such a state?”
My memory of the book is how a little black kid outsmarts a tiger that’s trying to eat him and winds up with a batch of tiger butter. I always thought of LBS as brave and sharp witted. Aren’t those good things anymore?

Sep 8, 2008 - 5:07 am 24. Nancy:

I served 25 as an elected trustee on a public library board. We were a direct taxing body. The Wasilla Library is a municipal library, funded by the town government and thus thru the Mayors office.

It was a group of citizens who brought to her the Mayor, a list of books they had objections to. Her DUTY as mayor was to bring that to the librarian’s attention.

She never demanded nor asked that they be censored and they were not. The Wasilla library never removed one book from their shelves. She was only doing her job.

It is NOT uncommon for a parent or a group to appear before a governing body with such a request. Any and all such objections or requests have to be turned over to the librarian. It in no way suggests or implies advocating censorship.

It happens all the time and I have yet to know any library removing any legitimately published book from their shelves. And yes there is a list of books that has been around for years of those which at one time or another were objected to. Catcher in the Rye is on there and so too are many others but the list is OLD.

At the library I served, which was in a very cosmopolitan, liberal suburban area, the strongest objections from parents came to the record HOWL.

We never banned it. Since it was a large majority of patrons who objected not just a few from any particular group, what we did was adopt a policy that limited access. Under 18, there was a parental permission slip that had to be signed.

Sure we knew half the teens would probably forge a parental signature but that was the parent’s “problem” not the library. The patrons accepted it as a reasonable alternative. Their only concern was their younger teens. And with the language in it, it may not have been appropriate for young or pre-teens.

My only point is: complaints or objections or even requests on public library material is common. Since public libraries are tax funded, the citizens objections are not just dismissed out of hand. The have a right to ask or make objections and the board –in the Wasilla case it would have been the municipal board, had a duty to bring it to the librarian.

I believe the Librarian has already stated that Mayor Palin made NO demand that any books be censored.

Sep 8, 2008 - 8:45 am 25. Nancy:

Right here on PJMedia:

She ASKED and the answer was NO. She did NOT advocate banning the books. Only doing her job as Mayor addressing citizens objections.

# Yes, she did ask the librarian if some books could be withdrawn because of being offensive; no, they couldn’t; yes, it was “rhetorical,, at least as was reported contemporaneously in 1996 (and thanks to Cecil Turner@ Just One Minute for this); yes, she did threaten to fire the librarian a month later; no, that wasn’t over the books thing but instead over administrative issues; no, the librarian wasn’t fired either; yes, the librarian was a big supporter of one of her political opponents; yes, the librarian was also a close friend of the chief of police mentioned above; no, this is not the first time in the history of civilization that someone has been threatened with being fired over a political dispute.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/separating-palin-fact-from-palin-fiction/2/

Sep 8, 2008 - 8:54 am 26. Nancy:

I can also speak that public libraries have policies for material acquisition. Staff is relied on to select diverse and balanced material. And any good library will have that.

I do not think you will find Hustler magazine in many public library! And MANY public libraries restrict internet access to pornographic sites.

This is not censorship as much as you have computers visible in libraries to children.

In my 25 years there was never any material removed but there were some books that had restricted access. Meaning they were not kept on the shelf and had to be asked for. That was simply to prevent unsupervised access by YOUNG children.

Public libraries, especially in non-city areas have different circumstances. Parents often dropped their children off while they went shopping. There is no guarantee the children will remain in the children’s section.

Academic libraries would have far different policies. None are going to have a children’s and young adults section, which in smaller libraries is usually not a separate room just an area.

Sep 8, 2008 - 9:12 am 27. HeatherRadish:

AlanC: Heck, in my copy of “Little Black Sambo”, Sambo and his mother were Indian (Asian subcontinent, not North American). It had absolutely adorable illustrations of the tiger wearing Sambo’s clothes and shoes.

Sep 8, 2008 - 11:13 am 28. nodakboy:

Mr. Simon:
I appreciate your unique perspective. Thanks for your blogging.

On censorship: come on: we all believe in censorship (do you want “how to build bombs,” or “how to kill classmates,” or “how to seduce a classmate” or “how to force your teacher to give you an A” or “Debbie Does Dallas” in our public libraries?) , it’s just an argument ( or discussion, we hope) over where to draw the line.
Let’s not use the word censorship as a slogan Look at what she wanted to censor from where and why… Should sixth-graders be instructed on how to use condoms? Good question.
Also, don’t dismiss all anti-contraception ideas as solely the province of “true believers.” There are cogent arguments along these lines.
The bulk of Western thinking on this changed largely due to technology, so the moral issues haven’t changed that much, perhaps.
And there’s a whiff of elitism in it all.
Used a rubber lately, Mr. Simon?
Why not?
Well, that’s my point…Many of the same people urging all the hoi polloi to use condoms would never lower themselves to do the same…
It’s so…oh, je ne don’t know…. declasse……
So listen to the anti-contraception crowd a little: they are much more egalitarian, humane and loving…..
Baby.
Stephen Stills: If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.
Michael Johnson: If you can’t be with the one that you love, why don’t you just wait for the one that you love.
She’ll love you too.”
That’s part of the real world, too, Mr. Simon.

Sep 8, 2008 - 5:04 pm 29. CBDenver:

Regarding the censorship story, as I heard it Palin asked the city librarian if she would be willing to remove books from the library if asked. The librarian was a hold-over from the previous administration and the issue was whether the librarian was willing to be loyal to the new Palin administration.

For most the idea of censorship of any kind is abhorrant, but consider this story from 2005:
http://www.lisnews.org/node/15711

“Sexually explicit Spanish-language comic books are being removed from Denver library shelves and sent to downtown headquarters for inspection, library officials said Thursday.
The books, called fotonovelas, were flagged by talk-radio host Peter Boyles this week.”

As I recall, Denver librarians defended the presence of these pornographic novellas in the public library and fought their removal.

Personally I don’t like my tax dollars being spent on sexually explicit comic books. I would prefer that my public library not spend money on such things. I would have no problem with those books being removed (i.e. “censored”). So we should temper our opposition to censorship with the knowledge that sometimes extremely liberal librarians go too far in deciding what kinds of materials they purchase for library patrons use.

Sep 8, 2008 - 6:45 pm

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