I was hoping that you had a sense of duty towards seeing truth prevail over deceit, elevated discussion of facts prevail over exchanged accusations of political smears, so I hoped you would be self-motivated to take the necessary extra step in THAT spirit.

I do, and I think I took the necessary steps as I outlined in this post. You clearly disagree.

Alas, this is what happened — if you go back and read subsequent comments to that blog post of yours, you see all sorts of people are (unfairly) citing YOUR BLOG as part of some vast unfounded smear campaign against Palin. The fact she inquired seriously about banning books at all, was quickly lost in the “outrage” of people that your blog page contained a clearly inaccurate information, with no clear (easy to find) refutation in it. As I wrote you on 9/5 (my son’s birthday too, by the way), I’d seen this before (e.g. the falsified document in the Bush Natl Guard story obscured a lot of valid information and points), and I knew what would happen next.

You ask where your responsibility begins and ends. Unfortunately, like many people in life, you must be responsible not only for your actions, but others who you somehow enable (whether it be parent with kids, mangers with employees, principals with teachers, etc). If someone you are responsible for makes an error, you have to address it. Just as when you accept a job to be a principal, or decide to become a parent, I believe when you choose to host a blog, you accept some responsibility for whether ANY content on it contributes or detracts from truth in societal debate. Again, I did not ask you to censor at all, I just asked you to make your already-existing disclaimer more prominent, because I knew many people were never seeing it. This is not that different than a principal having to make an official censure of a teacher committing an ethical violation: it’s not enough to just make the statement of censure, it must be done in a way that people actually are likely to HEAR it.

For what it’s worth. Even if you don’t agree with all that, I was actually not appealing to you legalistic interpretation of “responsibility” anyway — I was hoping that you had a sense of duty towards seeing truth prevail over deceit, elevated discussion of facts prevail over exchanged accusations of political smears, so I hoped you would be self-motivated to take the necessary extra step in THAT spirit. That seems to be very akin to the mission of libraries. So I hoped the whole discussion of “responsibility” would never have to come up.

“But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.

“Sarah said she didn’t need to read that stuff,” Ms. Chase said. “It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn’t even read it.”

“I’m still proud of Sarah,” she added, “but she scares the bejeebers out of me.”

It’s disappointing that neither the “Librarians against Palin” website nor the “Librarians for Palin” website identify the people running them. The “for” website looks more like Astroturf than grassroots.

http://www.cityofwasilla.com/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=516

Happy belated birthday!

I was so impressed with the way you touched on the issue from the get go. Rather than jump to a conclusion, you presented information clearly and without bias. It’s unfortunate that so many made a snap judgment based on very little evidence and not a lot of fact checking. In a class I’m taking, we are encouraged to share news items on current events which affect the library and information science field and I chose to link to your original post because I appreciated the fair way that you presented the issue.

Before I forget, Happy Birthday!