- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Palin’s ‘Banned Books’ List Is a Hoax from NEWSMAX MAGAZINE
After reports surfaced that Sarah Palin had sought to ban books from her local library when she became mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a list of the books she supposedly wanted to ban began appearing on a number of Web sites.
The list included such classics as “Huckleberry Finn,” “Silas Marner,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales.” It even found its way to a blog linked to the My.BarackObama Web site, where it was claimed that the list “comes from the records of the Wasilla library,” and was distributed via e-mail by a Palin foe.
The truth is, Palin never compiled that or any other list of books to be removed from the Wasilla library, various sources have reported.
In fact, several of the books on the list, including four “Harry Potter” books by J.K. Rowling, were not yet published when Palin took over as Wasilla’s mayor in 1996.
It turns out that the list is a reproduction of a generic list of “Books Banned at One Time or Another in the United States,” which has been on the Internet for years, according to conservative pundit Michelle Malkin.
The original source of the hoax is unclear. But the Anchorage Daily News in Alaska reported that when Palin first became mayor in 1996, she asked the city librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, what her response would be if Palin asked her to remove some books from the library’s collection. She did not mention any specific books. Emmons responded by saying she would resist all efforts to ban books.
