She's very approachable in this ad and I think the "I am not a witch" statement is brilliant. All of us Americans (who were raised in America and not in Indonesia, say) read about the Salem witch trials when we were grade school kids. As high schoolers we all had to read "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller. The idea of witch burning is as repellent to us as slavery and Jim Crow laws. O'Donnell's opponents = witch burners. What a brilliant subliminal message.

You're certainly not talking about banning books here, but keeping books out of children's hands in school libraries. To allow inappropriate reading material in schools is the same as keeping a child from seeing an "R" or "X" rated movie. We have these barriers for a reason. Perhaps the best idea would be to have a sticker or rating for these books that tell parents, teachers and librarians what is in them, and allow parents to approve them before their child can read them. Do you think there should be a warning sticker on "The Lovely Bones", or should eleven year old girls be reading about a graphic rape and murder of a little girl without any warning? As a parent I discovered to my horror that my twelve year old son was assigned to read a book with a homosexual gang rape and a scene containing a graphic "butt plug insertion" of the main character. I found it impossible to get this book out of the library, or even to get the teachers to acknowledge anything was wrong with letting my child read this material. At last I asked for a minor thing -- a warning sticker or notice to let parents know their children were being exposed to this kind of material. ( I was rejected. Of course.) You put your children's reading choices in the hands of teachers and librarians at your peril. Ban books? From public libraries and bookstores, never. From school libraries? You betcha.

The article was worthless but the comments are pure gold.