Palin's hit list

UPDATE: Yeah, but it feels true.

This has been going around the web, and I thought it bears repeating. Just when you thought the Republicans couldn't get any worse, and that the culture wars were reasonably demilitarized, along comes this book banner in buckskins to stir the pot:

"Browse 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 tried to fire her. The story was reported in
Time Magazine and the list comes from the librarian.net website.

"I'm sure you'll find your own personal favorites among the classics
Palin wanted to protect the good people of Wasilla from, but the
ones that jumped out at me were the four Stephen King novels (way
to go Stephen, John Steinbeck only got three titles on the list),
that notorious piece of communist pornography "My Friend Flicka,"
the usual assortment of Harry Potter books, works by Shakespeare,
Walt Whitman, Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Twain (always fun to see those
two names together), Arthur Miller, and Aristophanes, as well as
"Our Bodies, Ourselves" (insert your own Bristol Palin joke here),
and the infamous one-two punch of depravity: "To Kill a
Mockingbird" and "Little Red Riding Hood." But the cherry on the
sundae, the topper, is Sarah Palin's passionate, religious mission
to clear the shelves of the Wasilia Public Library of that ultimate
evil tome: "Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary." That's
the one with "equality," "free speech" and "justice" in it.

Go over to your book case and take down one of the books you'll
find on the list (I know you've got a couple) and give it a read in
honor of the founding fathers. Then tell me I'm not the only voter
who doesn't want this woman within thirty feet of the United States
Constitution."

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 Dahl
> Lady 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 (is Palin the Nurse Ratched of the Republicans?)
> 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 Schwartz
> Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
> Separate Peace by John Knowles
> Silas Marner by George Eliot
> Slaughterhouse-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 John Steinbeck
> 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

The usual suspects (Judy Blume, etc.) are present and accounted for. The witch books were obvious no-nos. Anything dealing with teenage sexuality was clearly verboten in the Palin household; that abstinence really works! There are a few puzzlers: The Devil's Alternative is a red-meat Cold War-era spy novel, and not about demons, which would indicate that Palin was going on titles alone. Denisovich? What could be more anti-Russkie than that? (Remember: as Sarah says, Alaska and Russia are right next to one another.) In this topsy-turvy context, where the dictionary is fair game for the pyre, the inclusion of Little Red Riding Hood makes sense, if one looks at the presumptive VP as a wolf in hockey mom clothing.