Liberal Means Never Having to Say Sarah
“I said Going Rogue, not Vogue. No, not Michael Palin, Sarah Palin, the ex-governor of Alaska. Alaska.”
Surprise: Many San Francisco booksellers refusing to carry Palin’s book
“Our customers are thinking people,” said Nathan Embretson, a bookseller at Pendragon Books in Oakland. “They’re not into reading drivel.”
…
“I would expect to take a bath on it,” she said. “The job of a book buyer is to be something of a psychic. You have to know your community. I don’t want to waste a lot of money and shelf space on a book nobody wants.’
Also:
“Anything like that we wouldn’t carry,” said clerk Emily Stackhouse. “We’re a small store and it would probably gross us all out. Some things you carry because of freedom of speech, but a book like that is just gross.”
“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”—except in the case of stuff that is just gross.
Out of curiosity, I found the website of Pendragon Books in Oakland (dba Pegasus Books, it seems) to see what their customers do read. Here’s one of the staff picks:
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance-Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem
…
As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead.
Yes, one sees why they have no time for “drivel”.