Thanks for referencing this poem:

Philip Larkin - "This Be The Verse"

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don't have any kids yourself.

"on shutting down talk radio"?

This charge is as nutty as anything the author decries emanating from wingnutdom.

Let's see, BRD is an illness, which has no connection whatsoever to a president who lied, promoted torture, invaded a country illegally, damaged our standing in the world, damaged the environment both actively and passively, alienated our allies, weakend civil liberties, ran up our deficit, and disgraced the office of the President in ways far more damaging than Bill Clinton?

We weren't deranged, we were justifiably outraged.

Have NYT writers been told to lace their coverage with negatives? Today's article by Helene Cooper accused Obama of "lecturing" and first presented Michelle Obama's touching the Queen as a gaffe, then admitting the Queen initiated it. The UK press was far more positive.

I don't know if the coverage is racist, more DC-centric and perhaps ageist. The Clintons got lots of negative coverage implying that were rubes early on. Ditto the Carters. Yet somehow the media presented Bush early on as model of decorum, which we now know was a crock. Maybe it's all about their being Democrats.

Well, I just heard the craziest response to Obama's Europe trip yet: on Hardball a wingnut talking head insisted that when Obama uses the word "respect" he means "submission." Submission to Sharia! I'm not kidding. This guy, Frank Gaffney, either believes or pretends to believe that the President plans to submit to Islamic law. In case you're wondering, "respect" was code.

Tell me the family didn't think "Mercedes" was a plural.

Please.

"By comparison, it's widely held there are very real differences between a heterosexual couple and a homosexual couple in regards to procreation and child rearing, and that it's relevant to marriage."

Yes, and for centuries is was widely held in the U.S. that blacks were inferior to whites, hence segregation even after the abolition of slavery.

These widely held beliefs are complete and utter nonsense, merely an excuse for prejudice. The Iowa court in its ruling demolished all these "widely held beliefs" as completely unsubstantiated by evidence.

Each of the shallow, weak arguments is tackled by the court and relevant quotations can be found here:

http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/10226/iowa-court-eviscerates-rightwing-talking-points

So you have children and your life is over? You "live vicariously through them"? I think this man needs a therapist. I'm sure his kids do.

What's going on at Amazon isn't just ghettoization of gay titles but also ghettoization of gay authors.

Yes, my book "Coming Out of Shame," written for the LGBT community and its allies, is de-ranked, but so is my nineteenth book, "My Germany," a memoir about my parents' encounters with Germany and Germans in the Holocaust and my own lifelong, complex relationship with that country, where three of my books are now available in German and where I've done book tours and a research trip.

http://www.levraphael.com/mygermany.html

While I'm gay and weave my search for identity into the multiple stories told in "My Germany," it's not especially gay and it's certainly not "adult" (in terms of erotic content).

Amazon readers tagging it have figured that out:

holocaust(8)

lev raphael(8)

memoir(8)

germany(7)

jewish(7)

judaica(6)

gay and lesbian(4)

travelogues(2)

gay(1)

Amazon? Clueless.

You wouldn't think that if you were an author and your books slipped off search or category best seller lists.

I love the false syllogism that's popping up all over, including here. Amazon is based in Seattle, therefore everyone who works there is liberal and gay-friendly? Is that part of the interview process? Do borderline hirees have to do HR workshops to bring them up to par on GLBT issues?

I believe the error.

IT friends told me that they thought the hacker "Weev" was blowing smoke, and I never thought that amazon hated gays, just that someone malicious there went rogue and did this as a shot in the culture wars.

That so many readers, authors, folks in publishing were outraged was a sign both of how marginalized many GLBT people feel, how powerful amazon is in the marketplace, and how tenuous conditions are in publishing right now.

Silver lining: how often do this many blogs and news sites talk about books?

I asked that question of the friend who sent me the Mark Probst blogpost at the epicenter of amazon's failstorm, and she sent me this blogpost by a publisher:

http://rnash.com/article/amazonfail-a-straight-white-male-publisher-on-glitches-and-ham-fisted-error/

For all those who said, "Give 'em a break, they were on vacation," it's clear amazonians were working on this right away. It's 2009--people don't have to go into the office to handle programming errors.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archives/166384.asp

It's also clear that they failed massively PR-wise in not going public right away and letting customers know there was a coding error that was being corrected. Like politicians, they let bad PR build and build. In the absence of information, suppositions run wild.

The Washington Post reports even more bad planning from the D.C. teabaggers:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/15/AR2009041500943.html?hpid=topnews

For years, I used to subscribe to the daily NYT and the weekly Washington Post, but I gave up on both papers for one big reason: I hated their complicity with Bush over the war. I thought both papers did a lousy job of covering the buildup to the war and even Bush himself. So I refused to support them when they were undermining good journalism.