The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin XXII: "Harry Potter"

10 Nov 2008 04:27 pm

There were indeed some silly emails going around early in the fall campaign claiming that Sarah Palin had tried to ban Harry Potter books when she was mayor of Wasilla. This blog did not claim it, but I did note that she fired the town's librarian. Here's Wiki's verdict on the whole fooferaw:

According to Laura Chase of Wasilla, and former Wasilla mayor John Stein, Palin as city councilwoman mentioned to her colleagues in 1995 that she saw the book Daddy's Roommate in the public library and did not think that it belonged there. Chase later became Palin's campaign manager for mayor in 1996, when Palin defeated John Stein, but the two had a falling out and Chase is now a vocal critic of Palin. City of Wasilla Library records indicate that there was never a request for the library to remove the book and that no books were ever censored or banned. The McCain-Palin campaign says that Palin was not advocating censorship.

Here's Palin's rebuttal of the charges:

"The banning books issue... easily disproved when it was reported that I tried to ban Harry Potter, and it hadn't even been written when I was the mayor."

The first Harry Potter was indeed published in 1998, and Palin was Wasilla mayor from 1996 - 2002. And no actual response to the actual serious allegation.

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