See below for more information from NY Times piece to be published on Sunday, 9/13/08.
Perhaps it is fitting that the ALA's annual Banned Books Week is coming up so soon - September 27-October 4, 2008. Held every year at the end of September, its intent is to call attention to the need to protect the freedom to read.
BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.
I did my graduate work in Library Science and was our school librarian for many years. According to numerous sources, including an article in Time, today,
"... 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. That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.I find this disturbing in the extreme. We were taught in library school that you should be willing to be fired in order to preserve intellectual freedom.
As any librarian, public or school, can tell you, people seeking to dictate what should and should not be read (based upon their own criteria only) are more common than you might expect. I imagine that Red can corroborate this fact. I found myself in frequent battles with not only parents but outsiders as well, who wished to impose their values and morals on everyone's children. They were often influential and well known people in the community. Books like Huckleberry Finn (racism) and of course Harry Potter (teaching witchcraft) were questioned but you might be surprised at other books which are challenged. If you are interested, you can find a complete list of the top 100 challenged books from 1990-2000, here.
If someone in power would feel it his or her duty to "protect" people from what they might read I would find that repugnant and antithetical to everything we, as a free nation, stand for. Such people seek to implement their own agenda and simply cut off any access to critical thinking and intellectual freedom.
Let us not forget that bookburing has been the hallmark of repressive and fascist regimes since books were invented. If you can't read about it you won't be able to garner any new ideas will you?
All the easier to control you.
Update as of 9/13/08
According to a piece to be published in Sunday's (9/14/08) New York Times, Ms. Palin did have a specific book in mind when she inquired about how to remove a book from the library:
Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship.But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book "Daddy's Roommate" on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.
"Sarah said she didn't need to read that stuff," Ms. Chase said. "It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn't even read it."
The entire NY Times piece can be read here. Don't miss it; it's pretty explosive.
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Comments
I'm dying to know what books are at issue here -- but you're right, it won't really matter which titles were targeted, but that any were. Really hope this story gets fleshed out quickly.
1. Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
2. "The Chocolate War" by Robert Cormier
3. Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
4. "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck
5. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou
6. "Fallen Angels" by Walter Dean Myers
7. "It's Perfectly Normal" by Robie Harris
8. Scary Stories series by Alvin Schwartz
9. Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey
10. "Forever" by Judy Blume
CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS?!?
First, start with a picture of Nazis burning books, labelled "Nazi Book Burning." Then, say (paraphrasing), "But, I'm not comparing anyone to Nazis."
Then have a sentence that starts with "The fact that Ms. Palin allegedly...". Accuse someone of anything and it's is fact that is alleged. That doesn't make it valid.
Then, provide no links to any story actually alleging the behavior.
Then, close with another picture of Nazis burning books and dutifully mention the word fascism.
Best of all, make the cover of Open Salon!
Better yet, a headline (Did Palin Ban Books?) that isn't even what the article is about!
Seriously, I am perfectly willing to learn facts about Palin that I would disagree with. I am all for free speech. This is just not a good approach to foster that.
Even if there is only a grain of truth to this...it's disturbing.
We know a girl that had religion forced upon her and she was banned by her mother from ready Harry Potter in her early teens. No big surprise she has battled drugs and is now unmarried and pregnant with her second child. She is only nineteen.
Links to a scource or two would be nice.
I find stories like this to be very dangerous - it creates an inflammatory response but the target is totally speculative. Personally I prefer to see stories like this not be brought to a boil until there is real information about the behaviors at issue.
If you're still here... BBW would make a great open call later this month. Perhaps invite readers/writers to write about one of their favorite banned books? It could be quite an event!
Stein [ed: John Stein, the previous mayor of Wasilla] 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." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.
The other is Politico:
Palin Asked City Librarian About Censoring Books, Insisted It Was ‘Rhetorical.’ In 1996, according to the Frontiersman, Wasilla’s library director Mary Ellen Emmons said Palin asked her outright if she could live with censorship of library books. Emmons said, “This is different than a normal book-selection procedure or a book-challenge policy. … She was asking me how I would deal with her saying a book can’t be in the library.” Palin said in response, “Many issues were discussed, both rhetorical and realistic in nature.” [Frontiersman, 12/18/96]
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1837918,00.html
I'll go on record as saying I would like inflammatory posts such as this one to be a bit better sourced, too. The Nazi book burning pics invokes Godwin's Law before even a single comment is written.
I am interested to learn more about the banned books episode -- she seems to be more than a little bit of a control freak. Thanks, SS!
I do not recall the Nazi images on the post earlier, however. Sierra, were those added in?
As to the images I used, I realize they were inflammatory and got in the way of my message. They were merely examples of fairly recent banning and destruction of books in the last century. I also ran across accounts of biblioclasm from ancient China, the destruction of Mayan codes by the Spanish, in Pennsylvania and in Kasmir in 2001.
Taking away the right to read is the first step towards defining how a population will be expected to think. Intellectual freedom is dangerous to the despot. I hope we never go there and that's why we must always rally behind this most important freedom: Free people read freely.
While this post cannot prove or disprove the allegation that Palin sought to ban books from the Wasilla library, it does offer a very good primer on WHY BANNING BOOKS IS BAD.
This is important: because if this allegation is confirmed, there will be palenty of spin about what her intentions were and why it's overblown.
And just btw: if these allegations are proven to be false and she didn't really fire a librarian over it, etc: is anyone reassured by someone who would respond to such allegations with "it was rhetorical"?
WTF does that mean? I should feel better about someone who talks about books being banned like it's a good idea?
The problem is, when your 'learning' comes from unsubstantiated and spun fear mongering like this article, you are bound to merely confirm your 'first impressions.'
As a religious conservative, I wouldn't want tax money spent on books for our children that were inappropriate, and asking the Librarian how that is accomplished is hardly a ban.
Part of the problem is that some of the materials that come out from the far left on sexuality are really beyond the pale, and really NOT appropriate, unless you want your children sexually active at a young age (as opposed to educated).
You can believe that liberal organizations who are in the tank for Obama (just ask Hillary) will gobble up and regurgitate such crap for the unthinking masses, esp. the liberals who trust them as 'objective.' If the NYT, Time, or NBC run headlines against Palin, I would take them with a grain of salt and find better sources, or look up their supposed sources. Odds are, it's all finely filtered and spun for you.
And, respectfully, would you mind sourcing your contention that Ms. Baker was not fired and "retired her job (sic)" three years
later?
Also, could you tell me who you propose should be in charge of deeming what is and is not appropriate? And, are you sure that it was only children's books that are challenged? Again, I think you would be surprised.
Perhaps you'd like ME to tell YOU what you should read or not read. Seems only fair since are so generously offering to do that favor for me.
"Part of the problem is that some of the materials that come out from the far left on sexuality are really beyond the pale"
could you be more specific - which materials? Also, how are they tied to the far left?
Regarding the media - what sources do you trust?
Thanks -
This appears to be hit and run commenting at its finest!
As well, it made me really angry when country radio tried to ruin the Dixie Chicks by keeping their songs off the air.
No one is served when unpopular points of view are silenced.
Many of my friends are librarians -- I even loved one once. Some of my friends are married to them. Their job is far more difficult than one can imagine -- they have some secret ritual they go through so even the most left and most right wing see that their job is to present a balanced view of our world --
This is not about right or left, right or wrong -- it is about access to information. There are those who, with disgust, purchase a Holy Q'uran to sit on a shelf, and then spend countless dollars replacing it as it is defiled by infidels -- and the same is true of other Holy Books --
Some books are for children, others for adults, and some precocious children might be required to have parental OK's for the books they check out -- at thirteen I was reading books on nuclear fusion and fission to not be terrified of nuclear weapons -- I told myself that ignorance was the root of my fear.
Seems I was wrong. So I could check out books about something as obscene as nuclear war and tactics, and yet, THE sexist sentence I read was the last sentence in a mystery novel while sitting in a hotel loby in France or Italy about ten -- "Their lips met, their bodies met."
almost fifty years later I remember that sentence - pornographic -- hardly. life changing, for me, yeah. And so that book should be banned?
We all have different ideas, that is what makes us so strong -- OUR powerful image of book burnings are the Nazi's -- but Pol Pot put Hitler to shame -- as did Mao in the Cultural Revolution.
Hitler was but a child when it came to oppression. However many learned well from him -- and as he may have taken one step -- it was not the first -- Formation-Reformation was not a fun time to live either.
So -- for a bit my mother was a school nurse -- and our house was FULL of pamphlets about reaching puberty, STD's, pictures reasonably graphic -- and, looking back, I would wonder if those were Godless Pornographic tracts that lead our generation down the roads and byways of perdition. With pamphlets like that, no wonder we lost the Vietnam war, no wonder we had riots in Chicago -- no wonder HIV appeared -- Gods Holy and Vengeful Revenge for a world of perverts!
You guys, it's NOT ABOUT RIGHT AND LEFT -- it's about access to information -- and what information is accessible.
We ALL want most people to agree with us, to validate us, but THANK GOD THEY DON'T!
When I was doing a couple of my stints at school, there was a drain dead center between to towers of the university library. When I'd get stuck at 3AM and the library was closed, I'd get on my bicycle and go down and stand on top of that drain -- dead center between the accumulated Knowledge of Humankind -- and just suck in the Power and Energy -- I wish it was a hippie thing -- but it was so real it was nearly palpable.
When, after a day of dead end searching, I could go there and try to find an answer -- all pre web, and mostly pre net -- computers were the IBM 360 -- all terminals were 'dumb' -- and we didn't have any anyway. And then I'd go home and go the 'the GREAT LIBRARY IN THE SKY' where I'd be shown knowledge that I woke up knowing but looking in my notes had no source for. Frustration.
And sometimes, even now, I cry when I think about the destruction of the Great Libraries at Carthage and Alexandria. The Islamics didn't care WHAT the book or map was, if it came into port, it was copied by scribes and returned. Offensive to some Imam who thinks he spoke for Prophet Mohammad? Ok, copy it and put it on the shelf.
Dissatisfaction is a sure sigh of growth.
The point is, demons are everywhere -- and the best way to fight them is by holding up a book, it works better than garlic, trust me.
Want to take over the world? The first thing you do is kill everyone on this list, our families and everyone we know. Right or Left -- we have something that destroys governments: Knowledge and the ability to use it.
SS was right on in her original post -- she just used a very modern and vivid metaphor for a current reality the asking of how to ban a book while in office may or may not have been on a personal agenda -- I've often asked unpopular questions for others. Somehow I divine this is not the case in this instance.
Google Banned Book week and you'll get about a half a million hits.
It sure boils blood on both sides.
Me? I don't mind seeing a Q'uran next to a Bible or a Catholic Bible next to a Protestant one. In fact, It brings a quiet joy to my heart.
And, sometimes a melancholy sadness when I know that I can tell the difference between Catholic torture and Protestant torture.
Feeling uncomfortable is a sure sign of thought. -- pg --
Disturbing, but not surprising. Readers generally would be unwilling to censor books; whereas, non-readers might very easily. This reminds me of the character Tom in The Great Gatsby. Somewhere it talks about where Tom has only read one book in his life, some sort of history or political book, from which his entire world view emanates. Maybe Palin is like Tom.
I know I gave you a hard time over your first draft of this; thanks for continuing to update it. It's an important story.