From: Nancegar at aol.com <Nancegar>
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2008 10:52:22 EDT

Although I understand and appreciate the "rule" about keeping politics out of CCBC discussions, I agree wholeheartedly that incidents of library censorship, regardless of whether they're perpetrated by political candidates and officials or private citizens, are relevant to those of us who read and contribute to the CCBC listserv. I guess we've just found out how hard it sometimes is to separate the two--but given the several book-related professions represented by CCBC subscribers, I'd vote for allowing censorship discussions regardless of any political overtones. But perhaps in those cases in which there are such overtones, it would indeed be wise to avoid any appearance of campaigning overtly for or against any of the political figures involved. Given the fact that most (all? almost all?) of us are anti-censorship, our views pro or con those political figures are likely to be obvious anyway--but it would be too bad and I think a mistake to ignore discussing any censorship situation that had political overtones.

I do think, though, that the Sara Palin situation is a more than usually questionable one given that she's actively running for office and since the censorship situation in which she was involved occurred some time ago. For that reason, it was perhaps a good idea that we were reminded of the "rule." Unless I missed it, though, I don't think that anyone participating in the discussion openly advocated voting one way or the other.

Nancy Garden


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Received on Sun 07 Sep 2008 09:52:22 AM CDT