Guess who (-threatened to fire-) fired her town librarian for not letting her ban books...?

[Addendum: According to the New York Times article from this morning (Sept. 3), she actually did fire her, then re-hired her due to public outcry/support from town residents.  The NY Times' columnists have also picked up on this incident and are set to make the most of it.]    
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If you've been following my serious posts lately, you won't need three guesses. 

Time magazine article on Sarah Palin's time as mayor up in her niche of Alaska.....apparently she wanted to use her authority as mayor to ban books at the local library:

 

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." The 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 not giving "full support" to the mayor.

Here's the full article.  It implies that she's turned from hardline social conservative to "maverick" (damn, that word's gonna be radioactive for years...), but I don't buy it in this case.  Honestly, with McCain promising a "pro-life Presidency" and the moon to the Religious Right, do you think that Sarah Palin could resist using her sway over national policy to push for banning and censorship to be normalized, when we don't even have a federal-level National Librarian for her to go head-to-head with?

I read about this just earlier this morning over at the Dark Christianity LJ comm -- they keep a pretty close weather-eye out for theocratic attempts to take over the secular government, and are a good resource for looking up anything in the "dominionist"/extreme fundamentalist line.  I.e., the kind of people who like to ban/burn anything that doesn't agree with their interpretation of the Bible. 

And it's at times like this that I'm reminded just how much librarians are the guardians of civilization and free speech.  Just the right season, too, as we're heading up to Banned Books Week, which runs from September 27 through October 4 this year.

Anyhow, figured that perhaps the librarians, bookworms and civil liberties lovers around here might want to....hmm, prepare something special for the occasion.  I'm certainly in a good mood to be making some political noise....>:)

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