Stable door? Check

Above, the graphic from Sarah Palin's 'Take Back the 20' campaign. U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords is in the left column, fourth from the top. Since the shooting Palin – or the person who runs her Twitter account – has been deleting tweets such as this one.

When Palin was Mayor of Wasilla she enquired about censoring library books:

Back in 1996, when she first became mayor, Sarah Palin asked the city librarian if she would be all right with censoring library books should she be asked to do so.

In December 1996, Emmons told her hometown newspaper, the Frontiersman, that Palin three times asked her -- starting before she was sworn in -- about possibly removing objectionable books from the library if the need arose.

Emmons told the Frontiersman she flatly refused to consider any kind of censorship [...]

"Sarah said to Mary Ellen, 'What would your response be if I asked you to remove some books from the collection?" Kilkenny said.

"I was shocked. Mary Ellen sat up straight and said something along the line of, 'The books in the Wasilla Library collection were selected on the basis of national selection criteria for libraries of this size, and I would absolutely resist all efforts to ban books.'"

Palin didn't mention specific books at that meeting, Kilkenny said [...] A few months later, the librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, got a letter from Palin telling her she was going to be fired.

Earlier this week, Montgomery English professor Alan Gribben announced he was publishing a censored version of Huckleberry Finn:

"I found myself right out of graduate school at Berkeley not wanting to pronounce that word when I was teaching either 'Huckleberry Finn' or 'Tom Sawyer,' " he said. "And I don't think I'm alone.... I'm by no means sanitizing Mark Twain," Mr. Gribben said. "The sharp social critiques are in there. The humor is intact. I just had the idea to get us away from obsessing about this one word, and just let the stories stand alone."

Surely feeling uncomfortable about 'that word' is one of the things the book has to teach us? If Quentin Tarantino and Chuck D. can use the n- word, so can Mark Twain. Conversely, feeling uncomfortable about something you or your campaign operatives have tweeted, or posted, or the metaphors you've employed to whip up people's feelings can demonstrate that you're having second thoughts about it – or even, possibly, that you're thinking about it for the very first time.

In the wake of John Lennon's murder in 1980 there were calls to ban the book that shooter Mark Chapman was carrying in his pocket – predictably, Catcher in the Rye, but it could have just as easily been Naked Lunch or On The Road. In that instance I thought it was mad to blame the book and not the gun, so it would be hypocritical to blame Palin for the incident in Arizona. However, words have an effect, which is precisely why we use them – or choose not to. Speech should be free: it will never be free from meaning.

Postscript: The FBI is investigating the links:

The FBI director, Robert Mueller, who travelled to Tucson, Arizona, to take charge of the investigation, said that one focus of the inquiry is whether far-right organisations and websites played a role.

"The ubiquitous nature of the internet means that not only threats, but hate speech and other inciteful speech is much more readily available to individuals than quite clearly it was eight or 10 or 15 years ago," he said.

Investigators are exploring suspected links between Loughner and an online publication known for its strongly anti-immigrant stance, American Renaissance. It has denied any links to the accused killer.

Full story here.

PPS: Sarah Palin's Facebook page operators have been censoring – and not censoring – posts in disturbing ways.

For Lowell and Kurt, too late

Long day. I don't like enjoy much about London at the moment but Saturday's pleasure is walking down to Camden to pick up the International Herald Tribune (IHT) and then walking back up to the Lord Palmerston for a big rioja and a slow read to burn off the demons. The IHT is the international (sic) edition of the New York Times and I buy it most days. Especially with the vino.

Today's edition included a review / feature on Kurt Vonnegut. Recommended. Kurt and Mark Twain are my two favourite authors in the whole wide world. Twain I don't read so much now but Vonnegut got me. He wrote short fiction and he was workmanlike, and constantly pissed off, and he loved people even after Dresden. Go figure. In George Plimpton's Truman Capote biography, Kurt talks about Capote coming round to swim in his pool at the height of the author's self-inflicted troubles. Kurt's account is flat as a board and as kind as casting an actress in a low light.

Soundtrack: Willing, by Lowell George. I don't know where I first heard Little Feat or Zappa. I still don't think either are very good, but they were there. Can't hang a man for that.

Lowell is Inara's dad. Inara's a peach. She's half of The Bird and The Bee, shown here covering 'I Can't Go For That' and later covering 'Psycho Killer' in white gloves.