Forget Bristol, THIS Is What To Call Palin Out On!

We can debate ourselves in circles about whether or not she's a fraud, a hypocrite, etc. But it turns out that Sarah Palin goes FAR beyond being your run-of-the-mill Christian Rightist. No, she's someone who would be more at home in Salem, Massachusetts circa the 17th century:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

I'll never understand conservatives who defend book bannings. Wouldn't the mayor of a town telling the library which books they can and cannot stock be a perfect example of the government trying to override personal liberty? And shouldn't it be the job of the parents, not the government, to determine what their kids read? Personal responsibility and all!

You have to wonder what First Lady Laura Bush, a former librarian, thinks of this. But she sold her soul a long time ago so I guess we'll never really know.

I would really love to know which books she tried to ban. In the meantime, here are some of my favorite books from the American Library Association's list of frequently challenged books:

• To Kill a Mockingbird
• The Catcher in the Rye
• The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn
• The Golden Compass (and the rest of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy)
  
• The Harry Potter series (I stood in line at midnight for books 4-7 and I'm not ashamed of that fact)
• Go Ask Alice
• Of Mice and Men
• The Giver (Seriously? That was challenged? WHY?!)
• The Handmaid's Tale (a story in which women are banned from reading. Oh, the irony)

People like Sarah Palin would tell you that these books contain profanity, sex, alcohol, drugs, violence, people revolting against the system, and child wizards. And they do. But they're also some of the greatest works of American literature (except for the Dark Materials and Harry Potter series, which are British). Banning such books are not attempts to create a better environment for children. They're an attempt at social control, pure and simple.

I fear what this woman would do with access to the Library of Congress. Would she replace all the priceless works of literature with copies of the King James Bible and Dr. Seuss books?

Oh, wait. Dr. Seuss once threatened to sue an anti-choice group for using the line "A person's a person, no matter how small" from Horton Hears A Who in a press release. So he's out. Baby killer!