Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Sarah Palin, Censor? (+updates)

Drip, drip, drip.......

The unflattering aspects of Sarah Palin's biography are like a leaky faucet. (But with 7 houses to take care of, perhaps McCain knows how to call a plumber.)

Here's the latest scoop from Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish at theatlantic.com.

The following excerpt is from the comments section on the Washington Independent posted by Anne Kilkenny. a resident of Wasilla, Alaska.

While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin's attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

Caveat: All I found in the Anchorage Daily News was this story from 1997, "Wasilla keeps librarian, but police chief is out". (Excerpt: Palin said she asked Emmons if she would support efforts to merge the library and museum operations. Emmons said she would, according to Palin.")

Even after checking BadgerLink's Newspaper Archives, I didn't find any published accounts of Palin's book-banning effort. For now, I have to give McCain's current running mate the benefit of the doubt. And even if the story is true, it would be among the least of her problems.

FYI. The Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman is Wasilla's "hometown" newspaper. No corroboration here, either.

Anyone else out there doing some detective work?

UPDATE
Michele McKnelly forwarded this link and excerpt from Time magazine's website: "Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." Theabout banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for notgiving "full support" to the mayor."

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