Sarah Palin's book ban list and Chris Hedges on "American Fascists"
When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.
Sinclair Lewis, 1935
Below is a list of the books Sarah Palin tried to have banned from the
Wasilla, Alaska Library. When I was in Anchorage two years ago,
residents of Wasilla I met described the place as a growing,
more-and-more suburban community north of Anchorage. In her speech,
Palin called the area "the valley." Mayor Palin would seem to be a
strong force in the suburbanization of the village of Wasilla. When
the Wasilla librarian refused to trash these books, Mayor Palin tried
to have her fired. This caused a stir in Wasilla which then turned
into a drive to protect the librarian. Some of my favorite examples of
American literature are on this list. This is the act of a patriotic
American? No, this is the act of a religious fundamentalist trying to
squeeze herself into the role of a mythic frontier American. The
attempt to ban American literary masterpieces like Catcher In The Rye,
Grapes Of Wrath, To Kill A Mockingbird, Death Of A Salesman, Leaves Of
Grass, As I Lay Dying, Huckleberry Finn, Catch 22 and Tarzan indicates,
flags and Bible citations aside, her ascendance to national power would
be downright un-American. In the realm of Rovian political marketing
and the unfolding effort to win the Presidency not with ideas but with
a cult of personality, McCain is the humiliated warrior ready to "go to
the gates of hell" to preserve American exceptionalism and Sarah Palin
is his fascist "bride," a mythic frontier mom able to shoot, gut and
cook a moose while nurturing her family who has said publicly our war
in Iraq is supported by God and people should pray to God to get the
Alaska gas pipeline approved.
This is a pivotal moment in American history, and we all need to expose
this cult of personality for what it is, a cynical sham. Please pass
this on far and wide.
John Grant
This list is taken from the official minutes of the Wasilla Library Board.
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 Geoffrey 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 Potter and 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
My 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
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
VFP31 Annual Banquet Speaker Chris Hedges wrote the book on people like Sarah Palin.
It's called American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
--- Post removed at author's request ---
Dear John,
I read banned books! May we all have choice,to execise our free will. I thank you for posting this.....and listing the name of the person who shares this information. I distrust and discount as rumor unsigned opinion pieces. I allow her her beliefs,but do not want her to decide anything for me!
Love,Mary
And Bless Mommy,
And Bless Daddy,
And please dear God,
will I go to hell if I oppose
the crusador Sarah Palin???
Haaahahahaha
I have another Ra sessions Law of One reference to this phenomenon (whatta surprise, huh). About 700,000 years ago (according to Ra) the entities on a planet called Maldek in our solar system, very much like you and me, were at a very similar place in their species' history. They had the capability for the kind of war that could destroy their planet and they were delusional in much the same way that the neo cons and John McCain and Sarah Palin, etc. ad nauseum are, in that they actually believed that they were of the Service to Others persuasion, but were arrogant, full of pride and definitely bent toward STS (like all of the right wing nut jobs we are watching daily right now). They had a war on that planet that destroyed it, making it uninhabitable for 3rd density life forms. Some of them (in time/space spirit form, however that works) actually came to Earth to harmlessly work out their karma, by request, in 2nd density bodies we would know as primates.
Think about that the next time you look into the eyes of a majestic Ape.....
--- Post removed at author's request ---
Apparently this is a bogus list and email. You might want to let people know that this is not true.
See:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/palin/bannedbooks.asp
Dear Cirq,
Thank you for exposing this hoax! May I welcome you to the team? Hope you enjoy yourself here. Many different ideas and people here. Welcome.
Love,Mary
Thanks for the tip!!!!
Just one more very good reason, whether true or false, to not get too unbalanced by the BS du jour and allow transient details that have absolutely nothing to do with anything real, as history will soon reveal....
Elizabeth! I so feel for you! That must being turning your stomach on so many levels concerning your parents being duped, and then later to possibly find out the truth as they are entering a SS fixed income. Let me see if I can be of some assistance by sharing the little mini vision I had last night while watching Sarah be welcomed back upon landing in Alaska. We have had two terms of GW Bush that have turned most of our stomachs for just about the whole duration. Being against those like Bush has gotten us nowhere but feeling ill and a bit desperate at times.
As I watched Sarah walk off the plane and be greeted by her peeps, I could see the opportunity we may have been collectively, as STO types striving for victory, missing like the forest for the trees. The Confederation Guardians of this planet can "see" (by electromagnetic vibration) when some entity is trying to get through and they are always hailed and then immersed in a blessing of Love/Light. According to the claims made by Ra in the Law of One, this creates an unassailable block on all devious activity and makes said entity or entities have to adhere to Unity, the Law of One, for they are also part of this One Unity. Ra said to resist this blessing would be akin to one of us deciding to keep walking as we are approaching a brick wall and run right into it - the brick wall wins every time! Its not even a fair fight, LOL.
So I wish to make a suggestion that we all begin to surround McCain and Palin with this same blessing, so that even if they win, they will have to submit to the power of Unity, the same Unity they are part of. If we keep denying that because we are dissappointed with their behavior, we do little more than lose our power and continue to feel upset.
Lets give it a try and turn a lose/lose into a win/win/win. What have we got to lose!!! Absolutely nothing because nothing can be taken away from inviolate sacred Unity - it is and shall remain unassailable - just waiting for us to agree with the very real truth that even John McCain and Sarah Palin are a very real and sustained part of this Unity.
this is how we are going to realize our true power and real strength, by covering them and ALL with the same Love and Light that our Guardians have been utilizing for eons. How can we ask John and Sarah to wake up to the truth if we won't???
Let the real work begin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you for the welcoming comments Mary and Chris.
I was very fired up by this list and actually reserved the domain name "sarahbanned.com" to start an online bookstore of all the books in the banned list. I sent the list out to my 90+ friends and several of them wrote me back to let me know it was a hoax (it was good to hear from them-- people often don't respond to my correct stories :-).
I realized that my wanting the list to be true made me gullible in this case-- it would have been too easy to expose Palin's censorship, anti-free-press streak.
As I wrote my friends list, "If just the Harry Potter fans
of America stand up against the McCain-Palin ticket, they'll go down in
flames. Don't get me wrong. Mugglism is a proud
tradition and heritage for those who chose it, and I fully support
everyone's right to be a Muggle and practice Mugglism, but when
intolerant Muggles try to deny others' right to be Magical and
practice Magic, then I have to put my foot down..."
So, it was fun while it lasted. :-)
Dear Ones,
I have a friend who bought and donated books on other religions for her local elementary school.......to add to the young bible books. They were pleased to add them. We should all be able to choose any or no religion. Choice is so important.I guess that we must allow every one a choice,even if we believe it wrong.
Elizabeth, Your parents want to believe what the republican ticket wants them to believe. It would be so much easier to believe what we are told..........but here we are looking for our own answers. I wish for Obama to suceed,but am preparing to smile anyway if McCain wins. I will not succumb to despair! We will be a smarter braver country soon. Otherwise good people cannot stay hypnotized forever. Spread LOVE,honesty,and integrity. Eyes,ears,hearts and minds will open. I believe this!
Love,Mary