There have been a couple of articles including one from the New York Times briefly mentioning the incident, but now the Anchorage Daily News has published a more detailed article covering Palin's apparent advocacy of banning public library books right after she got elected the Mayor of Wasilla.
WASILLA -- 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...
In December 1996, Emmons told her hometown newspaper, the Frontiersman, that Palin three times asked her -- starting before she was sworn in -- about possibly removing objectionable books from the library if the need arose.
Emmons told the Frontiersman she flatly refused to consider any kind of censorship. Emmons, now Mary Ellen Baker, is on vacation from her current job in Fairbanks and did not return e-mail or telephone messages left for her Wednesday.
When the matter came up for the second time in October 1996, during a City Council meeting, Anne Kilkenny, a Wasilla housewife who often attends council meetings, was there.
Like many Alaskans, Kilkenny calls the governor by her first name.
"Sarah said to Mary Ellen, 'What would your response be if I asked you to remove some books from the collection?" Kilkenny said.
"I was shocked. Mary Ellen sat up straight and said something along the line of, 'The books in the Wasilla Library collection were selected on the basis of national selection criteria for libraries of this size, and I would absolutely resist all efforts to ban books.'"
While we don't know if specific books were ever mentioned by Sarah Palin in these conservations, somehow I don't think this was brought up on three seperate occasions purely as a hypothetical question. This doesn't exactly convey it was merely one book that Palin viewed as exceptionally objectionable that she was looking at banning either.
Wow, amazing, the stories about Sarah Palin are in the mega thread rather then covering the forum because everyone thinks each and every article is individually special.
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Wow, amazing, the stories about Sarah Palin are in the mega thread rather then covering the forum because everyone thinks each and every article is individually special.
I thought this article with far more details and the information that book banning was brought up three times in conversations with the librarian was significant enough to start its own its own thread. (Previously it had only been established that the subject had been brought up once.)
At least to me its a particularly troubling incident given what it potentially conveys about the views of Sarah Palin.
In the long run as the Vice-Presidential candidate I would expect allot of news to come up about Palin, and I wouldn't expect absolutely every story to all stick to one thread. (There have already been a few notable exceptions.) Obviously the moderators can decide if this particular conversation should be merged.
Post it back to the older existing thread then Omega
Thread locked as duplicate
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
