Sarah Palin: Bonus Round
We keep this up, and people are gonna think that us C-F folk hate conservatives.
Which, uh… anyway…
On the heels of every other fuckup Republican VP pick Sarah Palin has on her so far there’s a much lesser known scandal lurking in the shadows. One which, I think, says more about her character then most other stories out there. Many talk about her daughter, but you can’t necessarily hold that against Palin. This, on the other hand…
Apparently, during her time as mayor of Wasilla, Palin went about poking at the idea of getting books banned, even going as far as firing a librarian and then reversing the action when residents of the town became outraged. More, after I get on my fireman uniform.
Here’s the thing: I love books. Ask anyone who knows me, I’ll drone on about my book collection, the book I’m reading, and books I want. Books are the lifeblood of society. I could, theoretically, do without games and maybe, possibly, kinda-sorta, without the internet, as long as I had books.
Palin is religious. I get that. I respect her right to believe whatever the hell she wants. I’d never impede anyone else’s belief system, because that just ain’t kosher. But Palin has gone beyond all rights afforded to a person based on religious and moral standing. There is no excuse, whatsoever, for attempting to get a book banned for strictly religious reasons, period. I don’t give a fuck what your church says; there’s another one out there that doesn’t bat an eye at it. The moment you begin fucking with my pulped friends is the moment you cease being one of mine.
I could understand if we were talking about, say, The Tyke’s Guide to Racial Purity. Or Getting Attention from Mommy with Fire. Or certainly The Complete NAMBLA Guide to Pleasing Daddy. I’d totally go after getting such hypothetical tomes banned from a library because there are certain things which are inappropriate regardless of religious beliefs. And, frankly, I think any library carrying those books would be trying too hard to hit the junior racist, pyromaniac, and pedophile-in-the-making crowds. But the moment someone tries to get King & King removed because OH EM GEE THAR GAY LAWLZ, that person needs to be de-barked.
I don’t know what books Palin had in mind. Really, it doesn’t matter, because I’m betting the list is something I’d look at and want to kill myself when I realized I live in a world with someone that has an issue with nothing. The point is that she’s embarking on a horridly slippery slope. It started with books; does she need more power to fuck up? Do we really want to take the chance of her deciding that books, the oldest form of communication and entertainment, just aren’t enough for the Ban-Hammer?
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In the high school I went to, there were some books in the library that were pretty blatantly hate propaganda. Given that, I can’t honestly say that I can make an opinion on her interest in banning books without a better idea of which books she wanted to ban and why. I will agree that it is /likely/ that it is religiously motivated censorship, but the sad truth of the matter is that we can’t actually be certain.
Agreed. As for banning books in general, I’m against it, even with the crazy wingnut hate stuff which somehow trickles into libraries and schools. We need something to point and laugh at, holding up as further examples of just how dire the human condition has become. Once we remove anything objectionable from sight, we start to lose more and more examples for why rational thought and common sense are good things.
Like with movies. If you never see a bad film, it’s harder to appreciate the truly great ones. The darker, reprehensible aspects of humanity will always exist, so there’s no use pretending otherwise. Better to get it out in the open for all to see and (hopefully) learn from.
All I really have to say in regards to us knowing what books she had in mind is that, while true that she never got far enough to actually list ‘em, I have yet to hear of any book banning I’ve actually agreed with. People never seem to go after the bad bad bad books; it’s always about going after books based on it not agreeing with a worldview of how the world works(Harry Potter books) or portraying a lifestyle of some sort that the person finds objectionable(King & King being the prime example).
Could she have been trying to ban something that was really, honestly, truly horrible? Aye. But the chances of that happening, and the clusterfuck surrounding it, suggests to me that they were otherwise benign books that she took an issue with for reasons above and beyond the lowest common denominator of basic morality.