Sarah Palin’s prank call

In all the furore over the BBC Radio 2 prank call from Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross to Fawlty Towers’ actor Andrew Sachs, a brighter type of prank call was played on Sarah Palin by two Quebec DJs Marc Antoine Audette and Sebastian Trudel Audette.

The Masked Avengers, as they are known, phoned Sarah Palin pretending to be Nicholas Sarkozy.

‘Nicholas Sarkozy’ talked to Sarah Palin about hunting, killing baby seals and his wife being so hot in bed! And from his house he could see Belgium!

A transcript of the prank call can be found at Daily Kos.

Eventually the Masked Avengers owned up it was a prank.

It was a prank call in a much better spirit than Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross’ effort to Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs. For Jonathan Ross to tell a 78-year old grandfather that Russell Brand had ‘f**ked his granddaughter’ was in poor taste. Even if the grand-daughter, Georgina Baillie, is in a Burlesque group called The Satanic Sluts.

I don’t so much blame Brand and Ross for their call; sometimes comedy does go over the edge.

I blame the producers putting the show on air. Even after Andrew Sachs complained to the BBC that the call was offensive, it was still put on air.

If the call was pulled from the show and Sachs given a personal apology then all of this hoopla wouldn’t have begun.

Now Russell Brand has resigned, the Radio 2 controller Lesley Douglas has resigned, and Jonathan Ross has a 12 week suspension.

Jonathan Ross is an experienced broadcaster and one of the BBC highest earners. His indiscretion, I felt, was worse than Russell Brand’s. Does his £18 million contract intimidate radio producers?

That’s the only thing I can think of why this call was aired.

Brand and Ross may have overstepped the mark. But they were doing their job. The producer wasn’t.

The BBC have now lost Brand and may still lose Ross.

They could probably do worse than give the Masked Avengers a shot.

They can see satire from their house.

Russell Brand and George Bush

Only a couple of days after I suggested Sarah Palin might be forgiven for putting Russell Brand’s My Booky Wook on to her pile of books for her book banning / burning, now Russell Brand has really upset the Republicans.

At the MTV Video Music awards Brand joked that George W. Bush was a ‘retarded cowboy’.

He then came out to urge support for Obama.

“Some people, I think they’re called racists, say America is not ready for a black president.

“But I know America to be a forward thinking country because otherwise why would you have let that retard and cowboy fella be president for eight years?

“We were very impressed. We thought it was nice of you to let him have a go, because, in England, he wouldn’t be trusted with a pair of scissors.”

He then rounded on Sarah Palin’s situation with her pregnant teenage daughter.

Speaking of Palin’s daughter’s boyfriend, Levi Johnston, Brand said: “That is the safe sex message of all time. Use a condom or become a Republican!”

That’s surely going to drive Palin to strike the match on My Booky Wook!

Now its revealed that MTV had forced Brand into telling lower key jokes!

He revealed: “I had JOHN McCAIN gags pulled. And they asked me to tone down the gags about SARAH PALIN.

“I wanted to say she was forcing her teenage daughter to have a baby because she is so anti-abortion.

“But also, as a Republican, she is pro-execution so she is going to give her the electric chair for being a little sl*t. They weren’t keen on that one.”

Nevertheless, MTV now want him to host the 2009 awards.

Sarah Palin’s burning issue

A row has broken out over which books Sarah Palin actually wants to ban.

This is due to a story resurfacing that on becoming Mayor of Wassilla in Alaska, Sarah asked the librarian if she could ban some books in the local library:

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. Emmons, now Mary Ellen Baker, is on vacation from her current job in Fairbanks and did not return e-mail or telephone messages left for her Wednesday.

When the matter came up for the second time in October 1996, during a City Council meeting, Anne Kilkenny, a Wasilla housewife who often attends council meetings, was there.

Like many Alaskans, Kilkenny calls the governor by her first name.

“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.’”

The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, refused the ban and a few months later Sarah Palin tried to fire her for lack of support.

After a public outcry in Alaska, Palin was instead forced to keep Mary Ellen in her post.

Mary Ellen decided to resign in 1999. “[Palin] essentially forced Mary Ellen out,” says June Pinnell-Stephens, chair of the Alaska Library Association Intellectual Freedom Committee and a friend of Mary Ellen Baker’s [Emmons]. “She all but fired her.”

Well it obviously wasn’t for the want of trying!

Some bloggers have a list of banned books but in all the blogs I have read the list actually comes from a site naming banned books – at one time or another – in America.

No-one as yet has come up with a definitive list of books Sarah Palin would like banned.

We know Sarah Palin is a creationist. So it doesn’t take a lot of guesswork to deduce that Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution would be one of the books. Or anything by Richard Dawkins.

We know that America is no stranger to book burning either. Even the Harry Potter books have gone up in flames.

Its incredible in this day and age that people will want to burn books just because they disagree with their premise or theories. Its almost as if the Enlightenment never happened.

“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.” – Heinrich Heine. The Nazis burned his books among others in 1933.

Of course if these religious fundamentalists like Sarah Palin actually burned some of the books that were left in Travelodge hotels then we’d probably complain less about it!

Top ten books left in Travelodge hotels:-

1. Prezza: Pulling No Punches by John Prescott
2. My Booky Wook by Russell Brand
3. Speaking For Myself by Cherie Blair
4. Don’t You Know Who I Am by Piers Morgan?
5. Angel Uncovered and Crystal by Katie Price
6. You and Your Money by Alvin Hall
7. Lessons in Heartbreak by Cathy Kelly
8. Blind Faith by Ben Elton
9. On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
10. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

I mean if it was just the thrill of burning books then there wouldn’t be too many complaints if John Prescott and Russell Brands’ books were in the pile, surely? I mean apart from environmental concerns anyway! Not that the environment bothers Sarah Palin in any case.

But no. Its always The Catcher in the Rye and Catch 22 and the rest, isn’t it?

Once the argument for one book to be burned is made, its easier for religious fundamentalists to carry on burning others. That’s why even John Prescott’s Prezza: Pulling No Punches deserves to be spared.

At least until the first bad winter anyway!