On Palin: Traps for the Unweary

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I’ve got a couple posts over at The Faculty Lounge explaining why I don’t support Sarah Palin.   (coupled with the video Ann’s got below!!)   Here’s one:

Thoughts on Palin: Religious Politics and Book Bans

Banned_booksReligious beliefs apparently played a significant role in shaping Sara Palin’s political agenda as Mayor of Wassila, Alaska, including her attempt to ban library books that she considered socially or morally objectionable, or that contained “inappropriate language.”   Politico, Time Magazine, and The New York Times each picked up the story this week.

It is unclear which books she found so offensive, but she reportedly asked the local library director outright if she “could live with censorship of library books.”   Palin later dismissed the conversation as a “rhetorical exercise” and apparently did not push the ban from there.

I don’t know . . . if all of this is true, wouldn’t that make her both irrational and ineffective?

I thought of uploading Palin’s picture next to the banned books to draw readers to the content and reinforce my underlying point: book banning is bad, Palin wants to ban books, don’t vote for Sarah Palin.

But I chose not to, knowing that Palin’s picture is more likely to inspire this conclusion: Palin is a woman, Palin wants to ban books, don’t vote for women.

Society has so little practice in viewing women as individuals, its difficult to imagine that our criticism of Palin won’t be interpreted in outside circles, at least subconsciously, as an indictment against female politicians generally – or women generally for that matter. And her picture,  a visual reminder that yes, in fact, she is a woman, would only reinforce those generalizations.

Heck, picture or no picture, I already called out Palin for being irrational and wonder now whether I’ve fallen into the very trap I sought to avoid.

-Kathleen A. Bergin

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0 Responses to On Palin: Traps for the Unweary

  1. thebewilderness says:

    I think it is in keeping with abstinence only sex education.
    It does seem irrational to ban information.
    Unless you are an authoritarian who thinks that you, and those like you are the only ones who can be trusted with the information. An authoritarian who thinks that information is power and you, and those like you are the only ones who should be permitted to exercise power.
    Most authoritarians do think that.
    That is what makes them irrational.