Book Banning Uber Alles
Posted on September 5th, 2008 by D. Aristophanes
When you lived in a box, this is the post that happens. On the heels of hte* linkiest link-p0st in the history of the 1nt3rt00bz, I only have one question:
What books did Sarah Palin want banned from the Wasilla, Alaska public library?
Seriously, we need to know this. The country needs to know this. Let’s take bets. Mine:
– Catcher in the Rye
– Huckleberry Finn
– Moby Dick
– Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot
– This Boy’s Life
*hte is the new teh
– Confederacy of Dunces
– Lolita
and it’s an easy one, but:
– Harry Potter
what I’ve heard is that the questionable un-Alaskan literature was related to the dangerous teachings of some Chuck Darwin…
My money says Judy Blume’s name is connected to the case.
“!00 hairstyles to make your man want you”
The Origin of Species;
The Koran;
and that book by Matthew Lesko that tells you how to get free money from the government, because she wanted to hog it all to herself.
Tropic of Cancer?
Anything too sciencey.
Basic biology texts and factual information about puberty, procreation and birth control.
Shit, forgot these were supposed to be joke answers.
I’m fairly certain Henry Miller wouldn’t have survived the Palin purge, although perhaps an intrepid young Costanza could have squirreled away a copy of Tropic of Cancer.
Call of the Wild or White Fang would be fucking hilarious, btw
Curses!
Secession from the United States: Not That Great An Idea, Actually.
It’s a famous text, very disliked amongst certain quarters.
Not that I would imply anything about Alaska’s Mayor’s opinion on the subject.
Well, obviously “Huckleberry Finn” because it would sound too much like “Huckabee Fan” to the marginally literate.
Harry Potter for sure. Fundies hate witches.
“Our Bodies, Ourselves”
The one about the true story of the gay penguins at the central park zoo.
“And Tango Makes Three”
There is no way Palin would let kids know that God made gay animals, especially ones as cute as penguins.
To comment on an above selection, I don’t think Lolita was on the list. Palin has shown America that she is accepting of underage girls sleeping around with older guys.
Any book by Michael Moore.
Because he’s FAT!
My additions to Palin’s banned list:
“In The Night Kitchen,” Sendak. Nudity, dough.
“Where the Sidewalk Ends, Silverstein. Jewish, Jew.
“Make Way For Ducklings,” McCloskey. Sympathetic portrayal of game fowl, Massachusetts.
“The Little Prince,” Exupery. Sympathetic portrayal of game mammal, France.
“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” Blume. Uncertainty about God’s presence, disturbing lesbian subtext.
Silent Spring- Rachel Carson
Cosmos- Carl Sagan
Bewitched Annuals
Rupert Annuals (It’s a goddam talking bear!)
An Inconvenient Truth- Al Gore
The Manchurian Candidate
“All The President’s Men”
anything on mathematics, because everybody knows the letters in the Greek alphabet promote homosexuality
“Rand McNally’s Countries That Are Not The United States”
“Big Book of Baby Names: Sensible Edition”
globes and non-Mercator maps which deceptively portray Alaska as being smaller than Africa
Our Bodies, Ourselves
White Fang
Morris the Moose
Sadly, it’s been done before.
And done.
And done.
She’s not the least bit original about her fascism, so I’ll just throw this list up.
Add to that anything about banking, because it might say something about early withdrawal.
——————————
Also, on this lovely page,
http://barrycrimmins.com/index.php?page=news&display=1340
which has a couple of the better one liners on the general subject, there is this picture,
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/2225/crimmins13403sj3.jpg
which got me ta thinkin.
I was sure I’d seen something like it before, but where? That self-satisfied smirk that screams “I just did something totally wrong, and nobody can do shit about it”. Hmmm.
Oh yeah. I know.
http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/1539/parisdn2.jpg
So yeah, after going wayyyy out on a limb to cast Obama as Paris, who do they go and put in as their VP pick?
Oy. If I’d thought about it, I probably could have figured it out months ago.
‘Have you read Marx?’
‘Only where I sit down.’
The Bible. Filled with dirty parts, doncha know…
OTbawesome,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RN5xbWtNSU
Awkwarrrrrrd
Full list has been leaked:
Sarah Palin Banned Books List
My Pet Goat
Election by Tom Perrotta.
Palin is Tracy Flick as a grown woman. And with that creepy beehive hairdo.
What, no love for Dawkins or Hitchens? For shame Sadly, for shame.
OT, but about MooseMom: I’m surprised there isn’t a separate thread about the blogger who started the draft Palin movement, who Colbert interviewed last night.
He appeared developmently disabled and/or Seriously Stupid – and I really mean that objectively. He is 21 and was wearing a bolo tie, so I guess he didn’t go to Mens Wearhouse like they did with Levi.
The capper is when Colbert asked him about the start of a political movement out of a dorm room being a big deal.
He responded that no, it was actually out of his mother’s basement.
……..
I am starting – just starting mind you – to think maybe the Matrix movies have a point.
I’m kinda hoping she’s just a great lover of literature and wanted to ban really, really shitty authors such as:
Iain Banks,
Lee Child,
Piers Anthony
Dan Brown.
Not because of their content, just because they suck. However, in all likelihood I’m gonna go for:
The God Delusion by Dawkins
God is Not Great by Hitchens
Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett
The Illuminatus! Trilogy by R A Wilson and Robert Shea
Fear and Loathing by Hunter S Thompson
Any book by Isaac Asmimov
Any book by Nietzsche
The Religious Case Against Belief by James P. Carse
Empire by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt
OK, I’ll stop listing now, otherwise this will turn into “what books have I read in the past year which would make a member of the religious right freak out and spazz all over the place”.
Oh, Piers Anthony had some good ones, in among all the bullshit books he wrote. At least, I thought the early “Cluster” series was pretty good, and also, “On a Pale Horse” was pretty good. He does seem to have a distressing habit of starting a series with a good idea, and then writing it straight into the ground in the sequels.
Her criteria was books with bad language so … anything written for anyone over the age of 10.
At the end of the day, let us hope this serves as a warning for people holding elected office everywhere: Don’t be a dick because one day a crazy old man might make you the center of international attention.
Very probably Harry Potter. Fundies think it’s evil.
Please let it be Harry Potter. Please.
The fact is, librarians insist that we must have books that are bad in libraries because, why? Why must we be offended? Why waste taxpayer money on books we don’t like or want?
Here in the heartland, libraries respect the will of the people and do not purchase books that are unamerican or unchristian. They do not get uppity and are good public servants who remove books that are no good at our request. This way we ensure that the community has a collection of books that reflect our values. After all, we could close them down — and maybe we should just buy our own books anyway and let the market decide.
There will NEVER be a new “teh”!
The thing about Piers Anthony that pissed me off was his Heinlein syndrome. Every single fucking female character had perky breasts and little brain, and that just annoyed the hell out of me – it was like the guy was 13 and sniggering to himself in the bra section of the store.
Eeeuuuurrrch.
I can’t believe she’s even heard of most of these books. She doesn’t strike me as a reader.
“Confederates In The Attic” by David Horowitz
Because its such an uplifting story of righteous smoldering resentment, racial murder and how what may to some sound like a good idea, but is actually just very stupid.
It sounds more like Palin didn’t really care about any specific books, she just wanted to know if she could DICTATE what information people had available to them.
Our Bodies, Our Selves
The Veganomicon
really, really shitty authors such as:
Iain Banks,
Must… not… rise… to bait…
http://www.electoral-vote.com/
North Dakota looking a bit blue today. North Dakota.
Judy Blume – that’s one snappy tomato. Decades later, I can’t hack her POV teen angst. Also, her skull should have been shattered with an ash club studded with flint for rolling over on her teenaged clients “in disguised, dramatized form”. But then again, maybe she shouldn’t.
Daniel M. Pinkwater – Martian Jews FTW. Harlan “Remember when I didn’t suck? Trick question!” Ellison will be swept off the kitchen floor and out the back door ten minutes after he hits the wall, but “The Boy from Mars” will never die, like Joe Hill.
“Huckleberry Finn” – the great American novel, period. Nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger. It’s okay to hate them, and even to string them up occasionally, but you never ever say the word if your ancestors won the American Civil War. If anyone was confused about whether Alaska was north of the Mason-Dixon line, this infallible tell should clear it up. In the land of cotton, nobody bothers blowing smoke up anyone’s ass about racial tolerance. Quick: name three black hockey stars. Puck, Penalty and Toothless, right?
Diana Wynn Jones, or if you’re late to the party, Harry Potter. Someday the five-class system will suffocate on its own waste. Someday Earth will fall into the swelling red-giant Sun. Who knows which one will happen first. In the meantime, plagiarism is A-O-K as long as you seize the high ground and focus on raking in the mad cash money.
Yeah, yeah, Catcher in the Rye. Blah. Probably Slaughterhouse Five as well. Catcher in the Rye is handicapped because it doesn’t piss away a hundred pages of free-association before getting down to poisoning young minds. Slaughterhouse Five is like The Jungle – dog-ear the good bits and skip the rest. Not that Catcher in the Rye doesn’t suck, but at least it’s amusing like the kid in homeroom who pinches one nostril shut and blows snot out of the other.
The list is up somewhere but I can’t remember where I saw it. Might have been on Balloon Juice. There were about a dozen books. A Clockwork Orange was one of them. I’ll try to find it…
Shorter Mister Leonard P:
“Mmmmmmm. My post was so link-a-licious it simply MUST be fattening.
*preens self*
I’m going to bed. Don’t ridicule me while I’m not around to defend myself.
kthxbai
Alaska Über Alles!
There were about a dozen books. A Clockwork Orange was one of them.
Well, that’s totally understandable….what with all those futuristic punks hanging around the Wasilla Korova Milk Bar, Palin didn’t want them getting any ideas…
08:30 am : S&P futures vs fair value: -13.70. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -17.80. Stocks are on track to open the session sharply lower after the latest batch of employment data. Nonfarm payrolls fell 84,000 during August, bringing the unemployment to 6.1%, according to the latest government statistics. Payrolls were expected to decline 75,000 after shedding 60,000 jobs in July. The unemployment rate was expected to be unchanged at 5.7%. Manufacturing payrolls fell 61,000, which is more than the 35,000 decline widely expected by economists.
My Friends. Stop Whining.
“Why I want to fuck Ronald Reagan” by the great and ,alas,soon to be late J.G. Ballard.
Hopefully he might have the time, energy and inspiration to pen something on Palin/McCain. He’d have a crashing Vietnam pilot and Palin’s ambition to plunder ANWAR to fuel Autogeddon to riff off. Nader might get a role too.
“The Assassination of the American Republic Considered as a Downhill Snowmobile Race”
Jefferson Bible.
Clockwork Orange? How about Ulysses while you are at it.
Lets find someone to do some McCain/Palin slash fiction, get it printed and bound at Lulu, and donate it to the Wasilla library.
Mr. Anthony does seem to have issues with women that go even beyond the usual male Sci-fi author issues with women.
When you live in a box. John McCain.
Stephen King from “The Tommyknockers” forward.
Sarah Palin just hates it when people who obviously have talent phone it in.
And on fivethirtyeight.com, they have Montana starting to look a little blue.
Mon-home-of-the-Freeman-Ted-fucking-Kazynski-and-“Rugged”-tana! O_o
Primary Colours. Too truthful.
The Women’s Room. In fact, anything by Marilyn French.
The Poisonwood Bible and, yup, anything by Kingsolver. Too many real black people with real feelings.
You can keep Uncle Tom, tho’.
Retrieved my copy of “The Atrocity Exhibition”, heres an excerpt from “Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan” :
Subjects were required to construct the optimum auto-disaster victim by placing a replica of Reagan’s head on the unretouched photographs of crash fatalities. In 82% of cases massive rear-end collisions were selected with a preference for expressed fecal matter and rectal haemorrhages…
…It is hoped to construct a rectal modulus of Reagan and the auto-disaster of maximised audience arousal.
The Grapes of Wrath. Too elitist.
“Sexual Personae,” not for political or religious reasons, but because Palin wants to save bicurious sophomores from having to look back in regret at the way they got suckered in by purple yet empty prose
I was going to say Brave New World. For some reason, that one bothers book banning nuts more than 1984 and Fahrenheit 451.
Bloody Hell. Steinbeck? Twain?
Why does she hate America?
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
I’m actually kinda shocked at this one. I remember this one was used a few times in my English classes growing up, and we discussed the grueling conditions of being under Stalinist commie rule.
Webster’s Ninth Collegiate Dictionary? Is that the version where they put back in some of the dirty words? God forbid some child learn what those words actually mean.
Any book that used any binding besides staples.
Every single fucking female character had perky breasts and little brain, and that just annoyed the hell out of me – it was like the Republican Convention.
Fixed.
Leaves of Grass? That book is all about loving America from coast to coast. It’s as American as purple mountain majesty and amber waves of grain. Why does Sarah Palin hate America?
Apparently, that long list is just a copy of books that have actually been banned (as opposed to just challenged or proposed to be banned) at one point or another in the US.
http://www.adlerbooks.com/banned.html
No one has come up with a confirmed list, and being that this occurred over ten years ago, it’s not likely that such a list is circulating or that anyone (including Palin herself) can remember exactly what was on the list.
The fact is, if books are banned, why are they for sale or in libraries?
Like pushing illegal drugs, promoting banned books is terrorism/
And, liberals want to ban all guns, but get upset when we want to ban a handful books for well-reasoned reasons. Hippocrits.
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
Zoinks!
The Truth said, September 5, 2008 at 15:25:
As a service to you liberals, I looked for this list. Apparently these are books Palin inquired about banning; no books were actually removed.
The Truth said, September 5, 2008 at 15:40:
Liberals, that list can’t be confirmed anywhere. Are you sure there really is such a list?
Also, ‘The Three Faces of Eve,’ troofy. You should read it, you nut.
Palin has shown America that she is accepting of underage girls sleeping around with older guys.
She has this last week, but I think that before it became a newly-minted article of faith among the Fundies, she probably wasn’t all that enthused about its being “promoted”.
And on fivethirtyeight.com, they have Montana starting to look a little blue.
Holy shit – Utah’s up to 2% likely for Obama! That’s a new record, AFAIK.
Isn’t “Leaves of Grass” the book teh Clenis gave to Monica Lewinsky? That’s probably why.
Oolon Coluphid’s trilogy of philosophical blockbusters: Where God Went Wrong, Some More Of God’s Greatest Mistakes, and Who Is This God Person Anyway?
More from the kids’ section.
A Kiss for Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik and Maurice Sendak. Too much kissing!
Capybobby by Bill Peet. Capybaras aren’t supposed to be pets. They’re for eating! Just ask my pal, Hugo Chávez.
The Wump World by Bill Peet. As per former Mayor and now Governor Palin’s instructions, the Wasilla public library will reward $150 for every wump front foreleg submitted to any library in the state.
The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf. A bull cannot back out of a bullfight.
Everything by William Steig. He’s too cosmopolitan for this small town, if you know what I mean. Besides, that CDB! is completely indecipherable!
Leaves of Grass? That book is all about loving America from coast to coast. It’s as American as purple mountain majesty and amber waves of grain. Why does Sarah Palin hate America?
Ah, but Google “Leaves of Grass Monica Lewinski” and in a heartbeat, you’ll understand why.
Argh, sorry, MzN. I missed your reply.
If we “let the market decide”, the whole world would be illiterate, except for a few smut-collecting billionaires at the top, who certainly aren’t interested in the literary merits of what they collect.
(BTW, is this troll for real, or is he another of those malfunctioning robots who begin every burst of diarrhea with “the fact is”? He reads like a caricature of a True Believer (TM).)
Goober is obviously not a Wire fan. Another point against him.
After all, we could close them down — and maybe we should just buy our own books anyway and let the market decide.
MORE PORN! WHOOPIE!
“Let the market decide” is the new “I promise I won’t come in your mouth” and “The check is in the mail.”
Goober, you’ve been asked before but failed to respond:
Don’t you have a farting contest over at Ace of Spades to get to?
Enny buk wid wurds mus b birnd..
“The Satanic Verses”- she didn’t know it was about teh mooslims
“Liberal Fascism”- she thought it was a “how to” book
“Gulliver’s Travels”- makes Yahoos look bad
“The Necronomicon”- extradimensional entities refusing to learn English
The Basketball Diaries.
That self-satisfied smirk
A link to Paris Hilton? Dubya is way smirkier, see here and here.
Anything by: Burroughs, Nietzsche, Russell, Shaw, Chomsky, blah blap blag …
Yow! 301?!?
Obama’s Secret Weapon – The Barracuda-Bomb!
Time to open bets on how long before Obama begs Palin to go back on TeeVee & make another one of her SUPER-DUPER-STORMTROOPER speeches. Looks like she’s already fucked her own party out of about 25 seats, & counting – those numbers were dead quiet right up until her sneering doltish mug appeared & began to howl. Her lipstick is looking browner by the day.
It’s like they say: if you fuck the pooch, you get to nurse the pitbull pups.
Helter Skelter
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Origin of the Species
Gormenghast (trilogy)
Dirty Old Man
I have no sources to back this up, but what I’ve heard is that she didn’t have any specific titles when she inquired. She just wanted to know how to go about banning books if the mood should suddenly strike her.
It’s like they say: if you fuck the pooch,
you get to nurse the pitbull pups.it’s going to be a messy divorce.She was attempting to ban books that other people complained about. My guess is that she had no idea what the books were, had never heard of them much less read them, and couldn’t have cared less about whether they were good or bad, offensive or not. She’s a barking dog, not reader of books.
Guys, the list is out: http://www.catsandbeer.com/politics/sarah-palin-banned-books-list.
Ah, Ferdinand. That’s a good catch, that cesspool of pacifist propaganda. I’ll never forget the evening I found that we had a copy of that available, so I decided to read it to the young son. Problem was, when I got to the bullfight where the picadores came out, I compulsively burst into song:
Then the picadors, of course,
Each one on his horse,
I shouted “Ole!” every time one was gored.
[this stupid sotware seems unable to format three lines correctly in succession]
Which led to some explanations, and a playing of the record the next day, and two new Tom Lehrer fans, particularly Big Sister.
But I digress. Harry Potter, sure, because Fundies really do hate them some witches. But for the same reason let me nominate a dark horse:
The Narnia books.
Witches, talking animals, and a monstrous heresy right at the end of the last book.
Think I’m kidding? Then you haven’t run into real christonutters. Kind of a touchstone, in fact, and (if the list really existed today) a good test of whether she’s palin’ next to the super-nuts, or is truly beyond the pale.
“Flowers For Algernon”?
Seriously? Isn’t that a story of a mentally challegned man who’s transformed into a genius?
[…] **Hey! I resemble that remark! […]