Censorship
June 3, 2009
- June 3, 2009, Trento, Italy I’d been living in Beijing for almost six months on the fifth anniversary of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square Massacre.Our area of Beijing, between People’s University and Peking University (referred to as Ren-da and Bei-da, their Chinese names), had become tense and restrictive in the weeks and days before the anniversary. Then one morning in early May, after ...
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May 3, 2009
- Read my three part blog on the banning of Steve Martin's play, "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" by La Grande High School schoolboard on the Wordcraft of Oregon "Small Ripples" blog at: http://www.wordcraftoforegon.com/blog/
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April 15, 2009
- I am as upset as everyone else is about the entire "amazonfail" plot. Imbroglio. Regarding the "de-ranking" of some 57,000 books, and removing them from lists so that they don't show up when searched for from the main page. thousands of books, just deleted. Amazon referred to this as a "glitch" in a press release and has corrected the problem, but prior emails to ...
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April 13, 2009
- From The Seattle Times: Amazon.com released a statement this afternoon seeking to explain why thousands of books — including many gay- and lesbian-themed titles — were removed from its sales rankings over the weekend. "This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides ...
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April 13, 2009
- I could repeat the chorus of outrage about Amazon.com's new policy of categorizing almost all GLBT literature by GLBT authors as "adult" material (and thereby removing those titles' sales ranking data and excluding them from some book searches, with the effect of marginalizing this category of literature even further). Instead, I'd like to direct you toward the Publisher's Weekly ...
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April 13, 2009
- I wonder when the overlords of Amazon.com (or maybe mere hackers) will realize that my punk wrestling memoir, Beer, Blood and Cornmeal, deals with GLBT themes? I mean it has gay characters and parodies of gay characters. It also has a pic of a man’s wiener reproduced in full color (IE: He Who Cannot Be Named of the Dwarves in all of his public and pubic glory). As of right now my bestselling ...
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April 13, 2009
- I have loved Amazon.com. It's been a fabulous resource for research, out-of-print books, my lovely new Kindle, and even occasionally things like yoga clothes or a hard-to-find hair product. But I pledge, as of today, not to buy anything from Amazon until all issues of censorship have been resolved--as in, removed.Anyone else?
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April 13, 2009
- If you spend much time on the internet, you already know this, and from more knowledgeable sources than this one. But just in case, my dear writers and readers, here's a thumbnail:Amazon.com, in a stunning failure of wisdom, enacted a policy of "deranking" books with "adult" themes. The company sorted out tags indicating erotica or any gay/lesbian content, and removed ...
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April 12, 2009
- In their infinite wisdom, the folks over at Amazon.com have decided that our delicate sensibilities need to be protected from "the gay." Also the lesbian, the transgender, the bisexual, some randomly chosen het romances and the occasional work of pure filth leading to societal collapse like Lady Chatterley's Lover. To enforce this "protection," as of last Friday, they've ...
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March 29, 2009
- Okay, so I watch E!If I didn't, I never would have seen the censored image of Carmen Electra's latest photo shoot. Thankfully, our media - in the interest of not stepping over the obscenity or nudity boundary on TV - was careful to cover the offending part of the picture.No, no - not that one. Using a black bar like that leaves too much to the imagination - you can't quite see the whole ...
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