[LAW-LIB:56594] RE: Sarah Palin and Libraries

From: Leslie Germaine (lgermaine43@gmail.com)
Date: Sat Sep 06 2008 - 08:20:04 PDT

  • Next message: Jim Milles: "[LAW-LIB:56595] RE: Sarah Palin and Libraries"

    Palin Derangement Syndrome (PDS) strikes again. This time it's hysterical
    librarians and their readers on the Internet disseminating a bogus list of
    books Gov. Sarah Palin supposedly banned in 1996. Looks like some of these
    library people failed reading comprehension. Take a look at the list below
    and you'll find books Gov. Palin supposedly tried to ban…*that hadn't even
    been published yet.* Example: The Harry Potter books, the first of which
    wasn't published until 1998.

    The smear merchants who continue to circulate the list also failed to do a
    simple Google search, which would have showed them that the bogus Sarah
    Palin Banned Book List is almost an exact copy-and-paste reproduction of a
    generic list of "Books Banned at One Time or Another in the United
    States"<http://www.lib.fit.edu/pubs/librarydisplays/bannedbooks/website.htm>that
    has been floating around the Internet for years. STACLU
    <http://www.stoptheaclu.com/archives/2008/09/05/official-obama-website-repeats-fake-banned-book-list-and-embellishes-the-story/>notes
    that the official Obama campaign
    website<http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/markbrickman/gG5rK5/commentary>is
    also perpetuating the fraud. And it's spread to
    craigslist <http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/rnr/827266307.html>, where some
    unhinged user is posting images likening Palin to Hitler. Here
    <http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/rnr/826509077.html>it is again.

    The person who first spread the Palin smear is identified as "Andrew
    Aucoin,"
    <http://www.librarian.net/stax/2366/sarah-palin-vp-nominee/#comment-119807>a
    commenter on the blog of librarian Jessamyn
    West. <http://www.librarian.net/stax/2366/sarah-palin-vp-nominee/> West has
    done the right thing in keeping the bogus comment up and pointing out in her
    main post that *"there appears to be no truth to the claim made by the
    commenter, and no further documentation or support for this has turned up."*

    It's a fake. Not true. Total B.S. A lie.

    If it gets sent to you by a moonbat friend or family member, set 'em all
    straight. Fight the smears. They've only just begun.

    The bogus Sarah Palin Banned Books List:

    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
    >

    >From the Anchorage Daily
    News<http://www.adn.com/sarah-palin/story/515512.html>story that
    inflamed P.D.S.:

    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.
    >
    > It all happened 12 years ago and the controversy long ago disappeared into
    > musty files. Until this week. Under intense national scrutiny, the issue has
    > returned to dog her. It has been mentioned in news stories in Time Magazine
    > and The New York Times and is spreading like a virus through the
    > blogosphere.
    >
    > The stories are all suggestive, but facts are hard to come by. Did Palin
    > actually ban books at the Wasilla Public Library?
    >
    > …*Were any books censored banned? June Pinell-Stephens, chairwoman of the
    > Alaska Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee since 1984,
    > checked her files Wednesday and came up empty-handed.*
    >
    > *Pinell-Stephens also had no record of any phone conversations with Emmons
    > about the issue back then. Emmons was president of the Alaska Library
    > Association at the time.*
    >

    Yes Janet, knowledge IS power!

    ___
    Leslie

    On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 3:37 PM, Long, Janet <JLong@apslaw.com> wrote:

    > Thank you Paula. No matter your political affiliation, knowledge is
    > power. Thanks for bringing this information to light.
    > Janet Long
    > Providence, RI
    >
    > -----Original Message-----
    > *From:* owner-law-lib@ucdavis.edu [mailto:owner-law-lib@ucdavis.edu] *On
    > Behalf Of *Library
    > *Sent:* Thursday, September 04, 2008 1:54 PM
    > *To:* law-lib@ucdavis.edu
    > *Subject:* [LAW-LIB:56536] Sarah Palin and Libraries
    >
    > I know this isn't the place for partisan politics and I'm not going to
    > discuss what I think of Sarah Palin's positions on abortion or foreign
    > policy or whether polar bears belong on the Endangered Species Act. But she
    > did try to censor books in the Wasilla Public Library and she did try to
    > fire the librarian for not agreeing to do so. And she did support a bill in
    > the legislature that would have forced librarians to tell parents what books
    > their children had checked out of the library.
    >
    > I thought, as librarians, you might want to know her position on libraries
    > and censorship.
    > There is a well documented anti-Palin librarian's web site that discusses
    > this. issues:http://librariansagainstpalin.wordpress.com/
    >
    > Paula Lichtenberg, Librarian
    > Keker & Van Nest LLP, San Francisco
    >
    >

    -- 
    Leslie Germaine
    



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