The Sarah Palin I Knew By ANNE KILKENNY

[Judi Lynn]

September 10, 2008

The Sarah Palin I Knew
Letters from Wasilla
By ANNE KILKENNY

As I write, it has been more than a week since the email (See below) I wrote to friends and family about Sarah Palin began to ping-pong around the country. In that time I’ve received over 9,600 emails. I’ve lost track of the number of journalists -- maybe 3 dozen? -- who have challenged me to provide sources to substantiate all that I mentioned in it. I have cooperated fully with everyone, providing all the information anyone has requested, and offering all the help I could.

It is a strange thing to have your words echo back to you from around the world. If I were to write my email today, I would make the following changes.

1) If I could change one word, it would be the word “hate”. I said Sarah Palin hated me. That was inappropriate. I should have said that Sarah knows that she lost my support when she sought to remove books that she didn’t like from the library.

One of the great things that America has given the world is the tradition of irenic debate: the understanding that we can agree to disagree, that there is a difference between disagreeing and disliking. I failed to demonstrate that important concept when I used the word “hate”. Sarah has always been polite and gracious to me in public. I don’t know how she feels about me, and it was inappropriate for me to use that ugly word to describe her feelings.

2) I wrote: “While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed.”

I should NOT have written “. . . because the Librarian refused . . . “ . I should have written “ . . . .after the Librarian refused. . . . “

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/kilkenny09102008.html