Would somebody dig for me the titles of the books Mayor Sarah Palin wanted to Ban?
I suppose it should be noted that Lyndon Johnson did much the same to his college’s student body government, turning a rather apolitical small governing body into a highly partisan affair (and crushing enemies and creating factional disputes for their own sake) — a sign of ambitions outreaching the actual office, used for the sake of staking out higher ground where these tactics will come in handy, and a sign of a thirst for blood and gamesmanship for its own sake. But this is a rather depressing indictment on the “Culture Warrior” Mayor of Wasilla, a veerer of some misguided national politics writ small.
But in the first major race of her career — the 1996 campaign for mayor of her hometown, Wasilla — Palin was a far more conventional politician. In fact, according to some who were involved in that fight, Palin was a highly polarizing political figure who brought partisan politics and hot-button social issues like abortion and gun control into a mayoral race that had traditionally been contested like a friendly intramural contest among neighbors. […]
Four years later, she took on her former workout buddy in a race that quickly became contentious. In Stein’s view, Palin’s main transgression was injecting big-time politics into a small-town local race. “It was always a nonpartisan job,” he says. “But with her, the state GOP came in and started affecting the race.” While Palin often describes that race as having been a fight against the old boys’ club, Stein says she made sure the campaign hinged on issues like gun owners’ rights and her opposition to abortion (Stein is pro-choice). “It got to the extent that — I don’t remember who it was now — but some national antiabortion outfit sent little pink cards to voters in Wasilla endorsing her,” he says.
Vicki Naegele was the managing editor of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman at the time. “[Stein] figured he was just going to run your average, friendly small-town race,” she recalls, “but it turned into something much different than that.” Naegele held the same conservative Christian beliefs as Palin but didn’t think they had any place in local politics.
“I just thought, That’s ridiculous, she should concentrate on roads, not abortion,” says Naegele.
The echoes are alive and kicking at this week’s Republican National Convention, which has veered sharply right and is tonally a “Take Down the Media” and “Rally Around Palin” affair, skipping toward Fred Thompson’s comments and I see myself a little sickened. The Republicans have staked their ground — the curious relation with John McCain over the past decade has been called off, from their end, and I start to gather that this response over news interjections into various fracuses over Palin (assembled legitimate matters included) becomes a stake to “Rally Around the Flag”, but also a sort of insulating factor.
In the meantime, this bottom lines a few things:
Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving “full support” to the mayor.
Oh. So, she’s one of THOSE Small-town mayors, a particular type of noxious breed. It is curious to compare the way the “Nanny State” imposes itself in small towns versus big cities. Here we get these weird Stalinist advertisements in the newspaper proclaiming the joys of the coming Smoke-Bar Ban. There, it’s an item of vindictiveness against the head Librarian over a dust-off over, like, Catcher in the Rye — leading through into a dust-off over the Rap and the Heavy Metal. Or they  I think a bit of digging is in order to find out which books Mayor Sarah Palin wanted to ban. Unfortunately the time-line procures the most politically potent and damaging possibility — ie, Harry Potter — what with all its wizardy and devil-worshipping, and it’ll probably be rather obscure and not terribly notable items.
The problem is always that if you give a little man a little power, they will think they are powerful.