The bogus Sarah Palin Banned Books List (Michelle Malkin debunks yet another Palin smear)

MichelleMalkin.com ^ | September 6, 2008 | Michelle Malkin

[Stoat]

The bogus Sarah Palin Banned Books List

By Michelle Malkin  •  September 6, 2008 12:01 AM

Photoshop: David Lunde

Palin Derangement Syndrome 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” that has been floating around the Internet for years. STACLU notes that the official Obama campaign website is also perpetuating the fraud. And it’s spread to craigslist, where some unhinged user is posting images likening Palin to Hitler. Here it is again.

The person who first spread the Palin smear is identified as “Andrew Aucoin,” a commenter on the blog of librarian Jessamyn West. 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 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.

[screaminsunshine]

Why would Jane want to ban Tarzan?

[snowtigger]

The truth is that all librarians censor what we read almost daily. No library, or almost no library can hold every book written. Someone (the librarian?) has to decide which books are acceptable in their particular library.

This must,by necessity, ban most books. There simply isn't shelf space. The result will always reflect the personal view of the deciding body.

[Proverbs 3-5]

Why am I not surprised that Snopes has not commented on this hoax... My guess is if it had been a falsehood about BO they'd have put the lie to rest quickly...

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

?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.”

That does seem odd though???????

[Paisan]

Strange, Maya Angelou is on the list. Her books don’t need to be banned. They’re so bad they ban themselves.

[Mercat]

The Harry Potter books hadn’t been published in 1996.

[oyez]

nor Naked Lunch.

Somebody is dreaming out of their you know what.

[freelancer]

This must,by necessity, ban most books. There simply isn't shelf space. The result will always reflect the personal view of the deciding body.

Re: banned books. Some are banned, some are "challenged" meaning someone tried to have them banned. The list is long and some of the reasons for banning a book may seem silly. Some of the books on the list in this latest attempt at creating a Palin scandal were banned a long time ago or in far away countries.

Re: librarians as censors. While it's true that there is a limit to shelving space in any library, the librarians who do the purchasing select according to the interests/needs/demands of the population they serve. If the book you seek is not in the collection of your library (whether it's an academic library or a very small public library), the librarian will get it for you through inter-library loan or, at the very least, let you know where it can be found. A librarian does not censor information, they make it accessible.

[steve8714]

What about “Pat the Bunny”?

[BuffaloJack]

Anyone with half a brain would recognize this a a RAT perpetrated hoax by the time they got down to the 7th or 8th entry. For the most part, these are literary masterpieces by some of the most talented authors who ever lived. Only a liberal would have any work of Mark Twain on a banned book list.

[scooby321]

GOP has all the babes now....

[Red in Blue PA]

I just sent it to snopes.

[Proverbs 3-5]

Good job by you. Lets see how fast they react...

[DogBarkTree]

SARAH KILLS WOLVES FROM AIRPLANES! It just keeps getting better and better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T85cOGc8L0

[Paradox]

I call BS on this thing, and I’ll tell you why. No sane person would go to a librarian and ask them to “censor” book. Now I’ll bet she MIGHT have asked about removing a book that was questionable. Perhaps there was grumblings about some of the books available in the library, so the mayor, doing her job for the people, asked the librarian about removing books. The librarian says no, mayor says ok, librarian gets snippy about it (liberals, you know..), holds a grudge and gets an attitude with the Mayor, becomes uncooperative about doing anything, mayor decides to cut the librarian off, people insist librarian stays, mayor, doing the work of the people, lets librarian stay on the job. Or something like that. More plausible than a mayor coming in and say “Sorry hun, were coming in to BURN some of your books!”

[FrankR]

That list is bogus...”The Audacity of Hope” is not on the list.

[Eleutherios]

If only it was desperation!

I regret that these standard tactics of the Left
are effective.
I’ve heard from a dear friend, who was greatly heartened by the Palin pick,
but who emailed me in great shock about this.

I think i’ve debunked it so that he can regain his morale
... but not everyone who reads the slime
asks me or you for the truth.

[sonic109]

Why DID Palin call and ask a librarian if she would be ok with banning some books? Am I missing something here ?

[Spok]

And yet Obama’s efforts to have the DJ at WGN in Chicago arrested for airing an unfavorable story during the Democrats convention raises not an eyebrow in the MSM.

[Skooz]

bump