Palin the book banner
The New York Times is reporting tonight that presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, shortly after becoming mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996, approached the town librarian about banning certain books from the public library, then fired the librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, after Emmons pledged to resist all censorship. Public outcry forced Palin to rescind the firing and back off from removing books that offended her fundamentalist religious beliefs.
This is scary stuff, and it is time to face the fact that Palin is a religious zealot. The article describes how she defeated the incumbent mayor by introducing wedge issues like abortion and guns to municipal elections that had been folksy affairs about real local issues up till then. Even worse, she said that Wasilla would have its "first Christian mayor," a slap at the more casual religious beliefs of the incumbent mayor.
People wonder why the press and bloggers are being so hard on Palin. This is why. I said a few minutes ago that I thought her membership in the secessionist Alaska Independence Party would ultimately be the most damaging thing to come out about her. I take that back. I can't imagine John McCain wants to run with a woman who sought to ban books and fired the town librarian. This is something that goes to the worst fears of many moderates and liberals, and not a few real conservatives.
We in central Pennsylvania have the example of the Dover Area School Board to show what can happen when religious zealots take over government. In 2005, they tried to introduce so-called Intelligent Design to the high school biology curriculum in Dover as a challenge to evolution and in violation of the Constitutional separation of church and state. They lost utterly when they were sued in Federal court by angry parents, and were defeated for re-election, but they cost local taxpayers a million dollars in legal fees and tore the community apart.
Palin can do a lot more damage to America as vice president, or, God forbid, as president, than the Dover Area School Board could. She will be the running mate of a 72-year-old man with a history of skin cancer who won't let his doctors fully and freely discuss his medical history. He was a prisoner-of-war under brutal conditions, an experience that has shortened the lives of other prisoners held in similar conditions. The chance of Palin succeeding to the presidency is much, much higher than it has been for any other vice president.
We have every right to question every aspect of her life.