In the midst of today’s Times exposé of Sarah Palin’s career-long campaign to make local and state government more like high school, I learned that
for years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.
“People would bring books back censored,” recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin’s predecessor. “Pages would get marked up or torn out.”
Librarians, does this happen in your libraries often? If so, you should totally write about it on your blogs. What is the best vigilante censorship you’ve seen yet?
That was my exact thought upon reading the article myself: “This woman ran government like a high school clique.” In many ways, It was a high school clique!
by JH—Sep 14, 03:35 PM
If she were vice president, I wonder how long she’d make it without either leak or breaching protocol like John Ashcroft announcing “persons of interest” from Russia or doing something extraordinarily ethically suspect? My guess is about six weeks.
by greg—Sep 14, 03:44 PM
Haters.
by kl—Sep 14, 04:10 PM
I’ve never seen vigilante censorship. Sorry.
by JAW—Sep 14, 05:31 PM
Maybe you’re not spending enough time in the right sections of the library!
by greg—Sep 14, 05:32 PM
I haven’t experienced it personally, but you get a lot of stories about this sort of thing.
by laura—Sep 14, 07:12 PM
I’m not a librarian yet. However, there were at least two times living in Waco where I checked out a book and certain sections were marked out. One of those was “The Chocolate War” a frequently challenged book.
by Scott Freeman—Sep 14, 07:58 PM