I try to keep “who to vote for” politics pretty well off of this blog and prefer to discuss politics in general and better and worse strategies for promoting libraries in whatever political climate we happen to be in. People acutely interested in high level politics in the US who also work in libraries may be interested in this Time magazine article about Sarah Palin. I was very interested in this paragraph.
[Former Wasilla mayor] Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for not giving “full support” to the mayor.
Usually I’m just happy to see libraries even mentioned in national level politics, but not like this. Mary Ellen Baker resigned from her library director job in 1999.
15 Comments on Sarah Palin, VP nominee, last added: 9/3/2008
Display Comments
Add a Comment
Yeah, I’m not so comfortable with this…
I don’t know, I kinda like seeing libraries mentioned this way too …not so much for what it meant to the Wasilla Public Library, but what it tells the rest of us about a potential future … as an HR-ish friend of mine always said — “past behaviour is usually a pretty good predictor of future behavior.” Cheers.
[...] a book banner. I hadn’t seen (or to be honest looked for) any evidence of this until Jessamyn posted about it at librarian.net, with a link to a Time magazine article: Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject [...]
Thank you for posting this, I was wondering if anyone would. Librarians go out of our way to be politically neutral, even when we should express outrage or, at the very least, *concern* over such matters.
rcn
San Francisco Bay Area
[...] from http://www.librarian.net/stax/2366/sarah-palin-vp-nominee/ « Librarian fired for book on unsavory patrons | [...]
[...] mayor she talked to the town librarian about banning books she found [...]
We’ve learned that the woman McCain calls a reform-minded Washington outsider supported the construction of Alaska’s infamously wasteful “bridge to nowhere.” In 2006, Palin campaigned for it. She also sought hundreds of millions of federal dollars for other pork barrel projects.
We’ve learned that as mayor, Palin raised sales taxes for pet projects. That’s not uncommon, but it’s not something a conservative reformer does. We’ve learned she recently hired a private attorney to defend herself in an investigation over whether she abused the power of her office to fire a state police official who refused to dismiss her former brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper. We’ve learned she is linked to the Alaska Independence Party, a group that wants Alaskans to be able to vote on whether or not to secede from the United States. We’ve learned that this so-called family values candidate tried to hide the fact that her teenage daughter is five months pregnant, out of wedlock.
Amid all these disturbing facts, it’s easy to forget that she is totally unqualified to for the position that John McCain has given her.
[...] Sarah [does not HEART] Polar Bears and Librarians. [...]
Does anyone have any idea which books, specifically, Palin tried to ban? Not that it matters - book banning is appalling regardless - but I’m curious and thought that perhaps someone here might know or have the contacts to find out.
I wonder what books were banned? I bet someone will turn up the list.
In the school district in Texas where I went to high school in the 1980s, there was an organization called the Committee of Concerned Citizens, who gave the district the list of books to ban every year.
I wonder if Palin was part of such an organization, or if she had a standard list from her church?
The specific book list would be so interesting.
This is the list of books Palin tried to have banned. As many of you will notice it is a hit parade for book burners. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner Blubber by Judy Blume Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson Canterbury Tales by Chaucer Carrie by Stephen King Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Christine by Stephen King Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau Cujo by Stephen King Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller Decameron by Boccaccio East of Eden by John Steinbeck Fallen Angels by Walter Myers Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes Forever by Judy Blume Grendel by John Champlin Gardner Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling Have to Go by Robert Munsch Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou Impressions edited by Jack Booth In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Lord of the Flies by William Golding Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein Lysistrata by Aristophanes More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier My House by Nikki Giovanni My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara Night Chills by Dean Koontz Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Ordinary People by Judith Guest Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz Separate Peace by John Knowles Silas Marner by George Eliot Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain The Bastard by John Jakes The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier The Color Purple by Alice Walker The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks The Living Bible by William C. Bower The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman The Pigman by Paul Zindel The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders The Shining by Stephen King The Witches by Roald Dahl The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth
Andrew, can you please tell us what your source is for this list? Thanks in advance!
[...] I came across a disturbing post by an American librarian on her blog librarian.net. She discusses an incident in the past poliitcal life of the Republican candidate for Vice President, Sarah Palin. I try to keep “who to vote for” politics pretty well off of this blog and prefer to discuss [...]
[...] News, August 1997, which has been making the rounds on the web (for instance, as well as this, and Jessamyn has discussed the library implications): Opal Toomey, Esther West and Ann Meyers don’t seem like politically [...]
You folks have to get the facts first, and from an unbiased source, before you transmit pure fiction on your blogs.