Banned Books Week (here too) is Sept. 27 through Oct. 4. The week has a special significance this year, thanks to John Fossil Fool McCain's selection of a would-be "Christo"fascist book-banner as his running mate. (Above is a photo of an actual wingnut book burning by an Assemblies of God Church in 2001, by the way. Pentecostal Palin attended an Assemblies of God Church in Alaska for years. Below is a photo of an actual Nazi book burning, for comparison.)
Sarah Fahrenheit 451 Palin,
poster bitch for Banned Books Week
Ya know, I'm not thrilled to see wingnut media out there. It dismays me to see wingnut propaganda hit amazon.com's bestseller lists. I hate seeing anti-Michael Moore DVDs in the DVD rental establishments in the red county of California in which my boyfriend lives. (Michael Moore stands up for the little guy, yet he's a veritable Satan, according to the mouth-breathing wingnuts, who are like chickens voting for Colonel Sanders.) It kills me to see used wingnut books in the left-leaning used bookstores in my neighborhood.
But, entirely unlike the anti-democratic, anti-free-speech, totalitarian, "Christo"fascist wingnuts, I'd never seriously consider that media that I find offensive should not be available to others because I find it offensive.
While the Repugnicans' "free-market" worship is complete and utter bullshit in the age of corporatocracy and monopoly, I believe in the marketplace of ideas. A free marketplace of ideas, where, at least in theory, good ideas thrive and bad ideas die.
But again, the wingnuts, such as Sarah One Heartbeat Away Palin-Quayle, are not troubled by such conscience.
Reports The Associated Press:
The McCain campaign is defending Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's much-criticized inquiry into banning books at her hometown library, saying her questions were only hypothetical.
Shortly after taking office in 1996 as mayor of Wasilla, a city of about 7,000 people, Palin asked the city's head librarian about banning books. Later, the librarian was notified by Palin that she was being fired, although Palin backed off under pressure.
Palin's alleged attempt at book-banning has been a matter of intense interest since Republican presidential nominee John McCain named her as his running mate last month.
Taylor Griffin, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, said Thursday that Palin asked the head librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, on three occasions how she would react to attempts at banning books. He said the questions, in the fall of 1996, were hypothetical and entirely appropriate. He said a patron had asked the library to remove a title the year before and the mayor wanted to understand how such disputes were handled.
Records on the city's Web site, however, do not show any books were challenged in Wasilla in the 10 years before Palin took office.
Palin notified Emmons she would be fired in January 1997 because the mayor didn't feel she had the librarian's "full support." Emmons was reinstated the next day after public outcry, according to newspaper reports at the time.
Still, one longtime library staffer recalls that the run-in made everyone fear for their jobs.
"Mayor Palin gave us some terrible moments and some rather gut-wrenching moments, particularly when Mary Ellen said she was going to have to leave," said Cathy Petrie, who managed the children's collection at the time.
Recent outrage has been fueled by Wasilla housewife Anne Kilkenny, whose 2,400-word critique of Palin's legacy as mayor is widely posted on the Internet. [You can read Kilkenny's first-hand, up-close-and-personal account of life with Pentecostal Palin here.] Kilkenny described Palin's actions as "out-and-out censorship."
But the McCain campaign, in a statement, said the charge "is categorically false ... Governor Sarah Palin has never asked anyone to ban a book, period."
[No -- she just tried to initiate book-banning, but failed only because of the public outcry. You know, it's the thought that counts. It speaks volumes of Pentecostal Palin's character. (Volumes that she would have banned, of course...)]
Emmons, a former Alaska Library Association president who now goes by Mary Ellen Baker, did not return calls seeking comment.
According to the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman newspaper, Emmons did not mince words when Palin asked her "how I would deal with her saying a book can't be in the library" on Oct. 28, 1996, in a week when the mayor had asked department heads for letters of resignation.
"She asked me if I would object to censorship, and I replied 'Yup'," Emmons told a reporter. "And I told her it would not be just me. This was a constitutional question, and the American Civil Liberties Union would get involved, too."
The Rev. Howard Bess, a liberal Christian preacher in the nearby town of Palmer, said the church Palin and her family attended until 2002, the Wasilla Assembly of God, was pushing to remove his book from local bookstores.
Emmons told him that year that several copies of Pastor, I Am Gay had disappeared from the library shelves, Bess said.
"Sarah brought pressure on the library about things she didn't like," Bess said. "To believe that my book was not targeted in this is a joke." ...
Jim Rettig, a University of Richmond librarian who heads the Chicago-based American Library Association, suggested that lingering quarrel raises issues that are still relevant as librarians prepare to celebrate Banned Books Week later this month.
"Librarians are very committed to the principles of the First Amendment of the Constitution and that means we don't allow one individual or a group of people to dictate what people can or cannot read," he said. "Most librarians if they got that sort of a question would be curious as to what the intent of the questioner was."
The McInsane campaign claims that when she was the mayor of the rinky-dink town in Alaska, Pentecostal Palin asked the town's head librarian not once, not twice, but three times how the librarian felt about book-banning.
But, we are to believe, Pentecostal Palin was asking the question only "hypothetically."
BULLSHIT.
That's what you call another yet another colossal fucking LIE from the Repugnicans.
You don't ask a librarian a "hypothetical" question about book-banning three fucking times -- and then attempt to fire the librarian not because of actual job-performance issues, but because you don't have her "full support."
Clearly, Pentecostal Palin wanted the librarian to ban books as directed -- Palin's repeated "hypothetical" questioning was intimidation, was political bullying -- and Pentecostal Palin attempted to fire the librarian when the librarian refused.
One nice thing about the Repugnicans' lying through their fucking fangs about Pentecostal Palin's full intent as mayor to ban books from the town library is that the Repugnicans are acknowledging that banning books is wrong. Otherwise, they would feel no need to lie about it.
Also, because the Repugnicans are downplaying the fact that Sarah One Heartbeat Away Palin is a Pentecostal, and Pentecostals are crazy, dangerous motherfuckers -- they believe that they can "speak in tongues" and they want Armageddon to occur because they believe that they are "saved" and that those of us who are sane are doomed to hell -- the Repugnicans are, in a roundabout way, admitting that there is indeed something seriously fucking wrong with Pentecostals. Otherwise, they'd have no reason to downplay the fact that Sarah Palin-Quayle is a fucking Pentecostal.
I am one American who wouldn't sit idly by while a President Palin turned back the clock, destroying the freedoms for which countless Americans died. I am one American who refuses to go back any further into the Dark Age than the Repugnicans already have dragged us.
If the "Christo"fascists want a fight, if they want another civil war, I, for one true American, say: Bring it on.
P.S. Here is Ted Rall's take on the topic:
Rall indicates on his blog that he meant the 'toon to communicate "how Sarah Palin has instantaneously turned into the most polarizing and divisive American political figure since George W. Bush." Yup. And it's interesting how Nazis see nothing wrong whatsofuckingever with other Nazis, yet we non-Nazis are repulsed and horrified by Nazis, as Rall's 'toon captures. And his 'toon also captures the blue state-red state divide, I think, and it occurs to me again how full of shit are those who claim that there is no blue state-red state divide (yes, even Barack Obama is chock full o' it when he makes that claim).
9:25:52 AM 
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