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Sunday, September 14, 2008

Palin Fired the Librarian

Public lending libraries are one of the bedrocks of American freedom. Benjamin Franklin founded the first one in this country. They invite everyone to read what they want, to explore and sample views that may be new to them, at no charge. We may not like some books in any library, but that's actually part of the point. Maybe we'll understand a political opponent a little better, find something of interest in a boring subject, when a book we weren't looking forward crops up on a shelf.

Rumors are all over the Internet about Sarah Palin banning books in the Wasilla library. The rumors are not true.

But what Palin did as Mayor is in some ways much worse than banning a book. She fired the librarian, after several conversations with the librarian about tastes in books.

The New York Times tells the story:

Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question.

Anne Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin’s first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. “They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her,” Ms. Kilkenny said.

The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to “resist all efforts at censorship,” Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support. Ms. Emmons, who left her job and Wasilla a couple of years later, declined to comment for this article.


A town librarian fired by the Mayor because the Mayor found some books "morally or socially objectionable".

I want to ask any Republican readers I have, or anyone at all thinking of voting for McCain/Palin - are you not at least a little bothered by this? That someone who will be just one step away from the Presidency has such a benighted view of democracy, of the role of books in our lives and culture, that she would stoop to firing a librarian over the moral content of books? Honestly, can you live with that?

It seems to me that this goes way beyond lack of experience, or differences on foreign or domestic policy. It goes to the heart of our American experiment in democracy, literacy, and freedom. It's no coincidence at all that the first public library in America was founded by one of our greatest Founding Fathers.

I know the Obama campaign is thinking let's stop talking about Palin, and focus on McCain. But this firing of a librarian by Sarah Palin was aimed at one of the very foundations of America, and should not be forgotten.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree that books should not be removed from libraries when the books can only be seen by, and are intended for adults. Children fall into a different category and I don't know if Palin wanted to ban books for children or adults.
Nevertheless, censorship exists in another way -- by never allowing a book into the library in the first place. For example, would liberals support a book entering the library that they viewed as critical of Martin Luther King or outright racist? In fact, I bet they would try to have it removed if it was already in there. I remember when the NAACP wanted to ban a book from a school in Fairfax, VA because they deemed it offensive to blacks. Would Obabma and Biden support placing an anti-black book in a public library? I doubt it. Some books are more equal than others.

Anonymous said...

I'm not so sure about that. From what i have understood, books tend to end up in public library's whether or not they are "good" or "bad". It just happens that some are shown off, and others are placed in hard to find areas. On the other hand, I'm not very knowledgeable on the workings of public libraries. Yet, with the internet, it seems utterly pointless to ban books based on content (or for any other reason) when anything they say can be found just as easily with a mouse and keyboard.

Anonymous said...

I'm just saying that some books are more equal than others. My question is actually rhetorical. There is NO WAY Biden or Obama would support adding an anti-black or anti-Martin Luther King book to a library. Some liberals are genuinely consistent and principled in this regard. But many others only decry censorship when it's done by conservatives. I didn't see the ACLU condeming the NAACP when they tried to ban Huck Finn.

Paul Levinson said...

The ACLU has gone to bat for Huck Finn hundreds of times. Here's an example- http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/censorship/11038prs19991201.html

If they didn't stand up to the NAACP over its call to ban Huck Finn, then shame on the ACLU.

But that has nothing whatsoever to do with your unsupported assumption that Biden or Obama would call for removal of any book from any library.

If they did, I would condemn just as strongly as I have Sarah Palin - even more so.

And I would still vote for Obama - since, unlike McCain, at least Obama saw the error of the Iraq war from the very beginning (as you know, McCain still supports it).

Anonymous said...

Good link from the ACLU. Thanks. I didn't say that Obama would support removing a book; I said he wouldn't support adding one that was anti-black. There's a difference there, especially a political difference, between removing and refusing to add.
Obama is correct on this godawful war.

Paul Levinson said...

Yes, he is - and that opposition to the war makes Obama nearly unique.

About books: my problem with Palin, to get back to the point of my blog post, is that she fired the librarian, after talking to her about the possibility of removing certain books.

That kind of de facto censorship is far more dangerous to our freedom than not supporting adding a book in the first place (since such a book could still find a place in the library, if the librarian disagreed with that advice).

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