Saturday, September 06, 2008

SARAH PALIN'S BOOK CLUB



I said I wouldn't mention her this weekend, but this is damned important. The following comes from Anthony Ausgang via Elf Hellion…

“Let's spend a few moments browsing the list of books Mayor Sarah Palin tried to get town librarian Mary Ellen Baker to ban in the lovely, all-American town of Wasilla , Alaska . When Baker refused to remove the books from the shelves, Palin threatened to fire her. The story was reported in Time Magazine and the list comes from the librarian.net website.”

SARAH PALIN'S BOOK CLUB
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter20and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald DahlLady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
M y Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin SchwartzScary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughte rhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John20Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth

But I’m truly bummed none of my books made the list. Persecution envy?




39 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary"? WTF? Is the bitch afraid of big words?

Anonymous said...

And what did Tarzan do to offend her?

Your driver said...

Not to defend Palin, but comparing your enemies to the Nazis is kind of tired. She's evil enough in her own right. Keep the list. Find a new book censorship picture. I'll have to admit that I was deeply shocked, because the first two books were big adolescent faves of mine. Who knew Palin had such good taste in book banning?

Mick said...

I'm not finding a new picture, comrade. And I'm not comparing her to Nazis. She ain't nothing but Dr. Goebbels in drag. This is how it starts.

Anonymous said...

I don't think Farren takes kindly to being told what to do on his own blog.

Anonymous said...

You know what he's like. He'll prpbably think he's being censored.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, but the list is not legit guys.

The librarian's site Mick linked to says as much. It was pursued by people commenting on the site and traced to a list of all books ever banned at one time or another in the US. Bad enough, when you think about it, but Palin can't take credit.

Here's the website the list actually came from:
http://www.adlerbooks.com/banned.html

Leftcoastcat said...

Fuckin' Eh! The only thing missing is Fahrenheit 451. The suppression of ideas is a important step in the mental model of fascism, less "confusion" for the impressionable proletariate. Lord forbid they think for themselves.

Heinrich Himmler is smiling in his grave, and I'm not happy about it, not one little bit.

Anonymous said...

The list is not legit? It's the list that Palin would have worked from if she had been allowed to censor the local library. Let's all be real liberal and let the bitch off the hook on a detail. This is swiftboating nack at them.

Anonymous said...

Lefty - You're missing the point. "Would have" means nothing. Kass correctly fact checked the accusation and determined that the list is internet misinfo. She's not defending Palin or book banning or "letting her off the hook." If we claim to have a handle on the truth, we have to be accurate. It's that simple. As for "swiftboating," while we need tough campaigning and quick responses, let's not sink to their level.

Anonymous said...

Well I certainly won't vote for her, she didn't include my favourite, er sorry, that evil book with the horrific illustrations and the sexually graphic, amoral abnormal contents: "It's Perfectly Normal:Changing bodies, Growing Up, Sex..."

Anonymous said...

Thanks, munz.

Definitely not defending the bitch (hell, I was the first on Doc40 to call her that, for which Mick actually thanked me) and a couple of posts back I was blasted for referring to the Palin/McCain ticket as a horrorshow. Can't win, huh?

I'm thinking that all this hot-under-the-collar, reptilian brain reaction, here and elsewhere, both pro and con, is exactly why she was chosen (and my bet is it wasn't McCain who did the choosing either; it was someone much more brilliant.)

Eliciting response on this level (and it doesn't matter if it's good or bad) is what marketing/advertising thrives on, and as Mark pointed out some posts back it's also what Republican campaigning thrives on. Forget issues.

The list looked suspicious to me. Way too literate for Palin. So I followed-up. When this sort of thing takes off, after the disinformation is "bought" it then gets "exposed" and a bunch of other stuff gets discredited and goes down the drain with it, stuff that may be true. So why help them. She's nasty enough as it is.

Mick said...

What would you all do if I told you I made this list up. (I didn't but for the sake of arguement...) It would be hurray-for-our-side disinformation. And you would all be blowing it for me. This is not a newspaper of record. It's a down and dirty blog which publishes anything that amuses me. In this I am totally without scruples. From the Crowley/Wilde School.

I am also quite perverted and deviant enough to happily sink to their level if it achieves victory. But I don't expect anyone else to do the same. Just call it my sacrifice. But I do wish the rest of you would wise up. All that's being achieved here is a massive waste of energy on a nit-picking clusterfuck. Nobody fact-checks Doc40 just like nobody fact-checked Krassner in 1967 when he published LBJ fucking JFK's bullet wounds in The Realist and claimed it was censored William Manchester. We just laughed and LBJ resigned. The slogan is WORK TO THE LIZARD BRAIN. (I am the Lizard King, I can do...etc.)

I take the phrase "do your worst" very literally.

I also very literally stoned.

Hasta La Victoria Siempre!

Benjamin Owens said...

Munz...

"Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it." -- As quoted in Bruce Lee : Fighting Spirit (1994) by Bruce Thomas (1994), p.44

Mick said...

Lets hear it for The Dragon!

(A weapon is a gift. Don't look in its mouth. It might go off in your face.)

Your driver said...

Chairman Mick is, once again, right, which is why we, the proletarian masses look to him for leadership. To put it another way, point well taken comrade.

Anonymous said...

It's a forum Mick, we can "waste our energy" any way we want.

I'd buy your point if you had made the list up but you didn't. That's what was brilliant about what Krassner did. Sorry, but no points on that one.

Mick said...

But someone did make it up. We just don't know who. We didn't know it was Krassner at the time, and we didn't care. The wound fucking was presented as true. By dissecting disinformation with a bourgeois-seeming fixation on truth, one merely kills the gag and wastes the good energy of whoever fabricated it.

(We not only have to sink to their level, but play the heart of darkness better and with more wit. You know that, Munz.)

Anonymous said...

I get it. Farren is taking the part of total amorality when engaging the enemy. As does Bruce Lee. Alls fair in love and revolution. But watch Farren, he's tricky.

Anonymous said...

Here's more shit on Palin. Supposedly true as vetted by Snopes.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/kilkenny.asp

Anonymous said...

Interesting. If she's read all these books she must be a very well-read person indeed!

But it does your argument no good calling her a bitch - sticks and stones, you know?

Anonymous said...

Sorry, Mick but we DO know who made the list. The bourgeois-seeming truth of it is it's a totally straight ongoing list of banned books from a site that keeps tabs on these things.

Nothing fabricated, no energy wasted, no gag killed. Had you or someone thought to make a "gag" list, I'd hope for a bit more humor and satire, which is what Krassner achieved (and are you honestly telling me you didn't realize it was Krassner at the time?)

I get the point you're trying to make, but bottom-line, the comparison sucks.

Mick said...

Anything...any damn thing...that damages the enemy is positive.

Anonymous said...

If it's not true, it does no damage to anyone but the person who claimed it was.

This is not LBJ fucking the head wound or LSD in the water supply or the levitation of the Pentagon. This is a dry list connected to a legit URL. There's nary a wit of wit (with the exception of Webster's Dictionary).

Anonymous said...

Mickey - You should know that a right-wing blog is claiming you're a cross-dressing, paint-huffing, goat fucker and I demanded they remove the accusations until they're thoroughly fact checked. Expect contact. If I were you, I'd start thinking of excuses.

Mick said...

But I am a cross-dressing, paint-huffing, goat fucker. And proud of it. And beloved by goats. And I don't need no stinking excuses. (And if I hear any more lameass bleating about fact-checking I shall kill. I run this blog my way. And them as don't like it don't have to log on.)

Anonymous said...

Hey, Munz and Kass, I really wouldn't push this shit any further. The fun just turned tedious.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, let the man do his fucking blog. We enjoy it, and you know he isn't going to take shit down because you don't like it. He isn't going to take shit down period.

ib said...

"And I'm not comparing her to Nazis. She ain't nothing but Dr. Goebbels in drag."

D'you wanna fly that one past me again ?

Anonymous said...

Aww.... c'mon anon, Face in the crowd. I thought people were clamoring for a real forum. Things finally get a bit stirred up and you want to put the lid on.

Maybe this round has run out of steam but I hope we're not gonna go back to everyone kowtowing to Chairman Mick. Preaching to the crowd ain't my idea of fun. Plus, no offense but Mick can take care of himself.

Speaking of..... "them as don't like it" (not that that's what it was about, anyway) aren't "not gonna log on," they're gonna tell you what they think. And if that's not what you want, then yeah.... you better move on to a forum with "approved members" and the works. Keep it nice and safe. But that just don't seem like Doc40 to me.

Anonymous said...

There's safe and there's plain bloody tedious having to have the last word.

Mick said...

ib, I firmly believe that, if not checked, the Team Jesus wing of the Republican Party would institute full blown fascism, flavored with a dash of theocracy.

Mick said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

But with Gucci uniforms, dahling.

Anonymous said...

tsk. why waste time, indeed? why waste time with fake crap when palin is down with lots of REAL shit that sucks and is dangerous?

methinks the doc was duped by the list (hence, "this is damned important"), got called on it, and, instead of admitting as much (from which point all arguments about fighting fire with fire, etc. etc., would still be legit), started bleating on about paul krassner and suddenly defining truth as bourgeois. which is just about as totally wtf as anything i've ever seen on doc40, and i've been here since day one.

nobody ever called for anything to be taken down, and for the record, neither am i ... except possibly for some of the egos around here.

can we all get back to the revolution now?

Benjamin Owens said...

where's that then?

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Your driver said...

Wow, it is a thrill to be part of the hottest controversy to hit Doc. 40. Here's a pretty good feminist video on Whatshername:

http://www.womanist-musings.com/2008/09/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about.html

I will say that they manage to make her look bad enough without dragging the hooked cross into it.

Mick said...

We live in interesting times, bro.