In connection w/ an earlier post, About Sarah Palin and Book Banning ( Archived) (30)

Palin pressured Wasilla librarian
She wanted to know if books would be pulled.

WASILLA -- Back in 1996, when she first became mayor, Sarah Palin asked the city librarian if she would be all right with censoring library books should she be asked to do so.

According to news coverage at the time, the librarian said she would definitely not be all right with it. A few months later, the librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, got a letter from Palin telling her she was going to be fired. The censorship issue was not mentioned as a reason for the firing. The letter just said the new mayor felt Emmons didn't fully support her and had to go.

Emmons had been city librarian for seven years and was well liked. After a wave of public support for her, Palin relented and let Emmons keep her job.

It all happened 12 years ago and the controversy long ago disappeared into musty files. Until this week. Under intense national scrutiny, the issue has returned to dog her. It has been mentioned in news stories in Time Magazine and The New York Times and is spreading like a virus through the blogosphere.

The stories are all suggestive, but facts are hard to come by. Did Palin actually ban books at the Wasilla Public Library?

In December 1996, Emmons told her hometown newspaper, the Frontiersman, that Palin three times asked her -- starting before she was sworn in -- about possibly removing objectionable books from the library if the need arose.

Emmons told the Frontiersman she flatly refused to consider any kind of censorship. Emmons, now Mary Ellen Baker, is on vacation from her current job in Fairbanks and did not return e-mail or telephone messages left for her Wednesday.

When the matter came up for the second time in October 1996, during a City Council meeting, Anne Kilkenny, a Wasilla housewife who often attends council meetings, was there.

Like many Alaskans, Kilkenny calls the governor by her first name.

"Sarah said to Mary Ellen, 'What would your response be if I asked you to remove some books from the collection?" Kilkenny said.

"I was shocked. Mary Ellen sat up straight and said something along the line of, 'The books in the Wasilla Library collection were selected on the basis of national selection criteria for libraries of this size, and I would absolutely resist all efforts to ban books.'"

Palin didn't mention specific books at that meeting, Kilkenny said.

Palin herself, questioned at the time, called her inquiries rhetorical and simply part of a policy discussion with a department head "about understanding and following administration agendas," according to the Frontiersman article.

Were any books censored banned? June Pinell-Stephens, chairwoman of the Alaska Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee since 1984, checked her files Wednesday and came up empty-handed.

Pinell-Stephens also had no record of any phone conversations with Emmons about the issue back then. Emmons was president of the Alaska Library Association at the time.Books may not have been pulled from library shelves, but there were other repercussions for Emmons.

Four days before the exchange at the City Council, Emmons got a letter from Palin asking for her resignation. Similar letters went to police chief Irl Stambaugh, public works director Jack Felton and finance director Duane Dvorak. John Cooper, a fifth director, resigned after Palin eliminated his job overseeing the city museum.

Palin told the Daily News back then the letters were just a test of loyalty as she took on the mayor's job, which she'd won from three-term mayor John Stein in a hard-fought election. Stein had hired many of the department heads. Both Emmons and Stambaugh had publicly supported him against Palin.

Emmons survived the loyalty test and a second one a few months later. She resigned in August 1999, two months before Palin was voted in for a second mayoral term.

Palin might have become a household name in the last week, but Kilkenny, who is not a Palin fan, is on her own small path to Internet fame. She sent out an e-mail earlier this week to friends and family answering, from her perspective, the question Outsiders are asking any Alaskan they know: "Who is this Sarah Palin?"

Kilkenny's e-mail got bounced through cyberspace and ended up on news blogs. Now the small-town mom and housewife is scheduling interviews with national news media and got her name on the front page of The New York Times, even if it was misspelled.

OTHER INFO:
By RINDI WHITE
rwhite@adn.com

Published: September 4th, 2008 01:49 AM
Last Modified: September 4th, 2008 06:36 PM



I just wanted to point this out. I know some people were angery about the possibility of this being a spoof and all, but it seems to be very much try. The only thing that appears to be false about my prior post is that some of the books were not even published at the time that Palin was in office. Maybe the author figured she'd have banned them, or was looking for more support. But there was still an attempt to ban or remove books from the public Library.

"Sarah said to Mary Ellen, 'What would your response be if I asked you to remove some books from the collection?"

Palin herself, questioned at the time, called her inquiries rhetorical and simply part of a policy discussion with a department head "about understanding and following administration agendas,"


It was a question. There was never any attempt made to remove books or a list of books!!!


We have no idea of the depth of the conversation with Palin and the department head. The explaination was very brief. Administrations are given questions to ask people. Just the same as asking American soldiers, "Would you shoot American citizens if asked to?"

Asking the question has nothing to do with committing the act!

The act was never committed or even suggested.

This is how the internet gets a bad name. A genuine issue: Sarah Palin's willingness to have books banned from a public library (possibly over the head of the librarian) is distorted by someone adding in a list of books obtained randomly from somewhere else!

Then the whole lot is put out as fact. Then other people tell you that Obama is a Muslim.....because they were told so on the web.....by some random person who read it somewhere else....etc etc.

Actually Ann Coulter has said it publicly

And you believe that ??

You don’t ask unless you are contemplating doing something , JMO

she is not a serious commentator. only those who enjoy hate for its own sake would pay any attention to her.