"You give a group of romance writers a couple of drinks and they'll admit it is pornography"

Roxanne Rhoads tells us how Erotica was insulted in Writer's Digest (NWS):

Mr. Vaughn interviewed a romance agent for information about the romance genre, a Steven Axelrod who supposedly has been a romance agent for over 30 years. (Obviously not a very good one if he knows nothing of the hot, hot, hot market of erotica). Axelrod is quoted as saying "You give a group of romance writers a couple of drinks and they'll admit it is pornography," he says. "It's hard to see it as true romance, and it has a very limited audience- they can't seem to grow it. Very few good storytellers seem to be staking their careers there."

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High-Five Fridays #7

1) A Dress A Day shows you there IS such a thing as bad publicity, which is so right-on regarding poor email releases & contact that many of you who have been so horridly pitched will find yourself saying, "OMG, yes!"

That link was found at 2) bits and bobbins, where she re-caps the "don't"s for you.

3) While we're at it, check out Pop Tart's rants about bad companies ~ are you guilty of these things?

4) Mark Glaser on the ever-blurring distinctions between bloggers and journalists.

5) This Month In SEO brings you more than SEO ~ readers here know I personally ponder everything but SEO and there's plenty to ponder in this post.

PS I'm still down-for-the-count with a cold; hence my silence here (and elsewhere). I only note this here for those who wondered ~ and literally 'here' at the bottom because I hate posts which start off that way and 'click away' asap. *wink*

Want to give your own high-fives? Find out how to give your High-Five Fridays here!

The purpose of this meme is to give high-fives to 5 people, posts, blogs and/or websites you've admired during the week. I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 5 high-fives on Friday. Trackbacks, pings, linky widgets, comment links accepted!

Visiting fellow High-Fivers is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your High-Fives in others comments (please note if NWS).

Find more High-Five Friday folks here!

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High-Five Fridays #4

#1 Sex Tourism / Sex Travel -- Adventures of an Average Joe (NWS):

I've been a dedicated sex tourist since 2003. In other words, I love fucking foreign hookers, especially in Brazil. Not that I like paying for sex. But the working girls I've met have blown me away. It's a long way from my conservative roots as a yeshiva boy and later an advocate for tougher anti-crime laws. I'd always considered the idea of paying for sex repellent. At least until my first trip to Rio de Janeiro. It turned my world upside down.

(Via Violet Blue (NWS).)

#2 It's stupid and I'm not having it: Sara voices what I've heard from several of you, that declaring your blog 'adult' in blogger (as mentioned here) is horrible.

#3 MSNBC's Chelsea comment angers Clinton: Don't use the phrase "pimped out" regarding anyone's daughter. (Via Spin Thicket.)

#4 PR's Glass Ceiling: "Because approximately 90 percent male leadership seems just wrong." Amen.

#5 Marketing Lessons from School Lunch -- which reminds me a bit of my pudding cups. Maybe I'm just hungry. (Also via Spin Thicket.)

Want to give your own high-fives? Find out how to give your High-Five Fridays here!

The purpose of this meme is to give high-fives to 5 people, posts, blogs and/or websites you've admired during the week. I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 5 high-fives on Friday. Trackbacks, pings, linky widgets, comment links accepted!

Visiting fellow High-Fivers is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your High-Fives in others comments (please note if NWS).

Find more High-Five Friday folks here!

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A Midsleeper's Wet Dream Becomes Marketing Nightmare

'Everyone' is talking about Woolworths pulling the Lolita bed; The Marketing Whore is someone, so she'll talk about it too.

The Lolita Midsleeper beds were designed for six-year-old girls and this unfortunate name ('Lolita', not 'Midsleeper' which I find dreadful ~ but I'm not British, so what do I know) has resulted in upsetting parents.



The main complaint seems to be that the name 'Lolita' on a bed implies that the youth which sleeps upon it is of little virtue ~ or will be perceived as such by others. This due to, in case you didn't know, "Lolita", the 1955 novel by Vladimir Nabokov, in which the narrator becomes sexually obsessed and then sexually involved with his 12-year-old stepdaughter when she seduces him. The icing on the cake is Lolita is not a virgin at that time either.

While the beds of ill repute were shown on the Woolworths' site, they were not an actual Woolworths product; this apparently caused part of the confusion in the handling of the complaints, as one of the upset parents received the following reply from Woolworths:

- they say they will 'pass my letter onto the buying dept' but also state
"Our aim is to attract a broad customer base of all ages and we make every effort to stock items, which appeal to the whole family. However, we also have to respond to customer demands and follow current trends. "

That one customer service kid hadn't heard of the book, or the two films, is a bit surprising... But it only gets worse as eventually that complaint, or another like it, was passed along and higher-ups confessed:

"What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either," a spokesman told newspapers.

"We had to look it up on (online encyclopaedia) Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now."

It seems to me that someone should have known... I mean eBay and plenty of other sites actually forbid the word 'Lolita' from appearing in listings & profiles (at least for specific categories) and also police word combinations and content, just in case it would appear that you are trying to market to and profit from pedophiles.

Anyway, the product's been pulled and the world is safe from tramp-making beds.

The bad news is that selling Bratz dolls and thongs to little girls is just fine. As a culture we've decided that marketing to and profiting from turning girls (and boys) into sexually active preteens is fine and dandy. Not only do parents buy into it, they actually buy this stuff.

I just don't get that.

The good news is that there finally is a marketing horror story to put in textbooks ~ even if it's not based on literal translation.

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Sexy Performing Arts, Anyone?

The Nonprofit Finance Fund has announced a grant of more than $15 million from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to launch a national initiative called Leading for the Future: Innovative Support for Artistic Excellence.

The initiative will support up to ten leading dance, jazz, theater, and presenting organizations with grants of $800,000 to $1.8 million, plus technical and advisory assistance, in support of new programmatic, financial, and operational approaches designed to enhance their effectiveness, adapt to complex trends affecting the performing arts, and demonstrate what works to the broader performing arts field.

The largest performing arts grant in DDCF history is part of the foundation's new strategy in arts programming. While the foundation will maintain its commitment to contemporary dance, jazz, and presenting, as well as its national scope and strategy of awarding large, multiyear grants, it hopes to increase the flexibility of how its funds are used and will focus on bold new strategies and a holistic approach to how arts organizations operate.

"We hope that the approach of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation will inspire others in the field," said NFF president Clara Miller. "Since the focus here is on innovation and experimentation at the 'enterprise level' of the arts, we hope we'll learn — and demonstrate — something valuable to all. DDCF's flexible use of funds, its approach of partnering with organizations pursuing new financial and operating approaches, and its focus on the role of transformational capital makes this initiative a truly important breakthrough."

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Can I Get An Amen?

Editorial: Porn prosecution is a waste of time:

Some citizens of Staunton may not like an adult video store. But it is a legal business.

Staunton Prosecutor Raymond Robertson is wasting time and taxpayers' money pursuing obscenity charges against an adult video store.

Obscenity cases are notoriously difficult to prosecute. Landmark court cases have made the definition of obscenity exceptionally -- and appropriately -- narrow.

To be considered criminally obscene, material must meet several tests, including a lack of any "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value."

In addition, it must be found to violate contemporary community standards.

The best approach, then, to the opening of After Hours Video in Staunton would have been to leave it alone. If it manages to stay in business, then it obviously isn't violating community standards.

Let me repeat this gem: "If it manages to stay in business, then it obviously isn't violating community standards."

As Steven Colbert would say, let the free market speak.

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Beware Branding Marks

The New Deal: Band as Brand:

Though [Paramore's] success is in large part due to smart pop songwriting and a fashion-forward frontwoman, music executives and talent managers also cite Paramore as a promising example of a rising new model for developing talent, one in which artists share not just revenue from their album sales but concert, merchandise and other earnings with their label in exchange for more comprehensive career support.

If the concept takes hold, it will alter not only the way music companies make money but the way new talent is groomed, and perhaps even the kind of acts that are offered contracts in the first place.

Commonly known as “multiple rights” or “360” deals, the new pacts emerged in an early iteration with the deal that Robbie Williams, the British pop singer signed with EMI in 2002. They are now used by all the major record labels and even a few independents.

While I post this as a bit of marketing news, I also can't help but wonder what this really means for the word 'artist'. Music is an industry, a business, and certainly celeb status helps push product (both their own product, music, and the products of others), I wonder what this means for those of us who want music. Real music, not 'a brand'.

It wasn't that long ago that 'world music' had appeal for some of these very reasons ~ we wanted music for music's sake, not some commercialized glut.

Admittedly, the panache of posh persons has always been a regular in the marketing and making of damn near anything and everything; but this open move towards acts signing these 360 deals seems to be counter-productive to the current age of transparency... Now we the consumers know what companies, acts and performers are the least artistic. For it's not about the music, getting it out there, but some sort of success measuring stick which must include marketability beyond the main product. In other words, bands are not to be signed unless they are great cash-cows ~ selling more than CDs to music lovers, but shoes, shampoo and heaven knows what else.

In the case of established artists, like Madonna, this is not so shocking. But what of the new artists? Who won't be signed because they either have no track record of being able to push other (non-musical) products at us or are viewed as not being able to reach such commercial status. Shouldn't recording artists be judged solely for their ability to sell records?

In an age of cynical consumers, such transparency could bite the hand that pretends to feed. I know when I see its be-jeweled fingers pushing, I'll certainly be suspicious.

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Q & A The Marketing Whore Way

Like a Magic 8-Ball!

Q: Can anyone be surprised that the adult entertainment industry, historically proven to take on any all technological advancements, would appear in/at a document posting service?

A: Apparently so.

Q: Does spam really work?

A: What would you say?. (PS: Thanks, Sara, for the link!)

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ACLU Scores Victory In New York

According to Yahoo! News & the AP:

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero said the government orders must be subject to meaningful judicial review and that the recently rewritten Patriot Act "offends the fundamental constitutional principles of checks and balances and separation of powers."

For those of us who still give a damn about our inalienable rights this is a reason to say, "Hip Hip Whore-Ay!"

More at Reuters.

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SEO Talk That's Fun & Educational

You know I'm not much for SEO (I don't think it's spam, I just believe in content more than key words etc.), but darn if Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land doesn't capture my attention. Who wouldn't love a post (The Promise & Reality Of Mixing The Social Graph With Search Engines) which kicks off thus:

I'm having a bad day. Aside from my desktop crashing, we get another spate of "let's blame SEO" to start my morning off. Robert Scoble uses that theme as a launching pad for a series of videos on how Facebook potentially could be a killer search engine -- regardless of the fact he seems to have no clue that "social graph" or social networking mixing has been tried and abandoned with search. Having watched his videos, which have sparked much discussion, I'll do some debunking, some educating for those who want more history of what's been done in the area, plus I'll swing around to that New York Times article today that ascribes super-ranking powers to SEO. Plus, I'll use the F-word along the way. I said it was a bad day.

Educational and enjoyable ~ grab a cup of whatever it is you drink, and read.

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If I Had A Million Dollars

Fleshbot says:

Teh internets are buzzing today with news about Zivity, a porny social networking site that's been likened to everything from MySpace to Playboy to Digg to Suicide Girls. If you're a regular reader of this site, you might be saying "Why is that news?" There must be half a dozen or more sites out there that have already tried to build a smuty website around the basic principles of Web 2.0—user-generated content, web-socializing, and community voting. So what makes this one special? It might have something to do with the $1 million it managed to sweet talk away from some high-powered Silicon Valley venture capitalists.

Just another thing to note in the the Web Poo Point Doh (remember, that's copyrighted!) hype.

If I had a million dollars, to spend or invest, that would not be my choice. I would even consider buying y'all each a green dress (but not a real green dress, that's cruel).

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Tips From The DC Madam

I can't believe I forgot to post Radical Vixen's Interview With Deborah Jeane Palfrey, AKA The DC Madam!

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Still Right After All These Years: Content Is King

Nearly half of Internet users' time online is now spent with content, emarket report says:

Internet users now spend nearly half of their online time visiting content, according to the Online Publishers Association's "Internet Activity Index," conducted by Nielsen//NetRatings.

Time spent with content is up 37% over 2003 levels, the OPA claimed. The Index measures time spent with e-commerce, communications, content and search.

"The index indicates that, over the past four years, the primary role of the Internet has shifted from communications to content," OPA president Pam Horan said in a statement. "[The Internet now handles] traditionally offline activities, such as getting news, finding entertainment information or checking the weather."

Which means that content isn't only king, but vital.

The article continues to say:

The association also noted that search is better than before. This lets consumers find what they are looking for more quickly. That reduces time spent on search and increases the amount of time devoted to other activities.

So although the number of searches overall has boomed, the percentage of time spent on searching is still minimal.

If content is consuming so much of Internet users' time, where does that leave search? For those marketing a retail e-commerce site, search still matters.

The American Marketing Association's "Mplanet" survey ranked the online resource consumers were most likely to use first for product information during last year's holiday season in different retail categories. Search engines (43%) and direct visits to company Web sites (29%) were the sources consumers turned to first for product information, regardless of product category.

Newer types of consumer-generated content, such as online social networks, blogs and chat rooms, were less important as a primary source for finding product information.

While I daresay that search function has improved, I still maintain that unique and decent content is the best way to be found in search results.

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House panel approves legal shield for bloggers

ZDNet reports:

A congressional panel on Wednesday voted, against the Bush administration's wishes, to shield journalists including advertising-supported bloggers from having to reveal their confidential sources in many situations.

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Selling Sex, Even Where It's Not Legal

Naturally, Copywrite Ink's post. Selling Sex: Nevada Brothels, caught my eye.

What is Coyote Publishing et. al. v. Heller? It is a lawsuit filed by Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada on behalf of several newspapers, that sought to void two state statutes that prohibited brothel advertising in counties where prostitution is illegal.

...this new ruling, which I have yet to form an opinion about, seems to suggest legal businesses have a right to advertise even where their products or services are illegal.

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Lee Still Awaiting Trial

Gordon Lee, of Gordon Lee's comic shop in Georgia, is scheduled to finally see trial this August.

Lee was busted during Halloween week 2004 for inadvertently passing out at copy of Alternative Comics #2 to a minor. It was one copy out of thousands the shop distributed as part of the town's trick-or-treat event.

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Things To Know: Views & News

Flickr responds and flickr explains moderated settings and boobies are updates to the ongoing saga of flickr "considered harmful" posts by Violet Blue. (It's nearly a damn soap opera, so I may have missed a few posts ~ but she's linked updates and whatnot, so you can try to keep up and follow along at her blog.)

Driving Traffic to a Blog by Blogsbywomen.org (which does allow adult/sex blogs in its directory, so check 'em out if you're a woman with a blog) is worth reading. As a side dish, see their post on Womens Interest in Porn.

The English Courtesan has posted a bit of info on Taking Payment As A Courtesan Or Escort. Even if you're not an escort (nor based in the UK), this is worth a read as she discusses things like privacy along with her thoughts on specific payment processor options.

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Dude, What's Up With Joyscape?

Like virtually everyone who has a link to Joyscape on their blog or website, I've been getting lots of hits from those who are wondering why the site seems to be gone. Quite a few bloggers emailed me to say so, and to ask if I knew what was up with their being down. (Now, I don't know anyone at/with Joyscape, but I'm flattered y'all think I know absolutely everyone everywhere. *wink*)

In reality, the site is not gone. Don't get me wrong, it's got some issues as most of the pages are "connection refused" but you can still search images and movies, as media.joyscape.com is still functioning. (Just not a damn bit of help for the blogs and bloggers.)

So, searchers, now you know. Well, you now know all that I know anyway.

If you want a giggle, check out a non-adult blogger's response to her traffic from those searching for info on Joyscape's problems: Welcome Joyscape Surfers. Now go home. (And while you're there, check out her blog, Blue Gal, as she's actually quite interesting to read.)

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Virtual Marketing, Real Money, And Moral Outrage

Playboy announces it will enter the virtual world of Second Life, and of course folks are talking about it.

I found this post from Susan Getgood over at Marketing Roadmaps the most interesting:

The porn industry is an early adopter of new technologies. First to video, first to the Web. And now among the first to virtual worlds. In part of course, because it keeps getting kicked out. Pushed out of movie theaters onto video. Filtered out on the Web by products like Cyber Patrol.. But also because it is pretty good at following the money. If the commercial pornographers are there -- if they think the audience will turn up -- virtual worlds absolutely have the potential to deliver returns for more conventional marketers. In fact, I'd bet on it.

I know next to nothing about gaming, including Second Life (me-guesses that since I deal so much with real people everyday, I have no desire to deal with pretend ones in my down-time), but I'm with Susan and the others who agree it's something to watch.

On the other hand, once Playboy moves in, be prepared for some to try to evict them. Even if Second Life is a virtual adult play land, we all know how tolerant adults in the real world are. (And since gaming is huge with kids, tweens and teens, if there's even a whiff of children being exposed, watch out.)

One imagines that as the virtual Playboy Mansion moves in and real profits go up, moral outrage (virtual or not) will ensue.

But then too, watching the adult industry make money, then be told to leave, is always an interesting battle. (I must find it interesting, or, alas, take to my bed with consumption.)

And isn't it strange that the largest outcry comes only when the industry proves profits... Profits mainstream wants, but didn't have the balls & ovaries to make, so they use moral outrage to limit competition for dollars and real estate as they try to follow the model the adult companies used.

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Clothing Number One In Retail Sales Online? Really?

Apparel sales moved into the top spot online, overtaking computers (but excluding travel) for the first time in 2006, according to a report from the National Retail Federation:

According to the first part of The State of Retailing Online 2007, the tenth annual Shop.org study conducted by Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) of 170 retailers, Americans last year spent more online on clothing than they did on computers for the first time in history. The report found the apparel, accessories and footwear category reached $18.3 billion in 2006 and is expected to hit $22.1 billion in 2007. This year, 10 percent of all clothing sales are expected to occur online.

No mention of adult retail sales... You know, porn movies, sex toys... I doubt very much that lingerie, costumes and the like counted as apparel, or pornos counted as DVDs either. Maybe they are...

And then what? The sex toys are then mixed in with travel? I know my vibe takes me places, baby.

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Links To News You Can Use (And Resources Too)

I would be remiss if I did not quickly mention the following:

The lovely Viviane warns us of a Potential Security Problem with Google Mail.

For folks wishing they could add feed from other blogs to their blogs (and websites) here's a free service: RSS Include. Currently you must create one for each feed you wish to use as they do not (yet?) offer a way to put multiple feeds into one display, but it's still a wonderful tool. (Blogger's new features includes such a tool ~ which does not include images as this tools does ~ but blogs not hosted by blogger cannot use those tools.)

For those of you with marketing blogs, Carnival of Capitalists is looking for hosts.

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Surprise! Women Undeniable Majority Of Internet Users

According to eMarketer, women outnumber men online, and it's likely to stay that way:

Not only do females make up the majority of Internet users, but more of the female population goes online. This year, an estimated 66.2% of US females ages 3 and older will use the Internet at least once a month, compared with 64.2% of males, according to eMarketer. By 2011, 72.1% of females are expected to go online, vs. 69.3% of males.

According to their report:

Amid all the excitement online video is causing, marketers must keep one fact in mind: Of the estimated 97 million females online in the US, only 66% of them actually watch videos online, compared with 78% of males who do.

One thing they are quick to note is that women are not less savvy than men when it comes to Internet technology. And they believe that Web 2.0 (aka social networking) will only increase female use.

Why this continual surprise that women are using the Internet? Women outnumber men, so we should outnumber men on the Internet, yes?

But then in more in-depth news coverage of the eMarketer report, both in Reuters and in Sydney Morning Herald, eMarketer's senior analyst, Debra Aho Williamson, makes broader gender claims which seem to make this report more 'surprising.'

I was reminded the early days of the Internet, when many feared that women would never adopt it ~ or at least not in the way males had. This was easily a decade ago, and we're still talking about it? Sheesh. We've gone from ugly Geocities pages to ugly MySpace pages, from FrontPage to blogging, and from static html to all sorts of scripts and toys, so maybe we're still slow to understand what's important here.

They were partly right; women do use the Internet differently.

During those days, ecommerce was a large 'threat' to the way of WWW life ~ it was a perversion of what they held sacred. Sort of like the good old boys business club where they greedily yell "mine, Mine, MINE", only instead of old white men, the Internet had really young boys (most of whom were white too) and these kids and twenty-somethings thought it was all theirs and they didn't want to change.

But ecommerce came along and women were strong adopters of online shopping. No mere coincidence in my mind.

While men surfed for consumer reports, reviews and price comparisons, they still purchased locally in person. Women on the other hand, loved the time savings of shopping and purchasing online. They could sit at home in their jammies, after the kids were asleep, and complete so many shopping errands... This of course led to mommies and others to making the Internet a tool for simplification of their lives. Email, ecards, maps and other tools proved the pc was more than just a toy. But of course, more time online meant they would find other joys of the Internet.

While Williamson doesn't say anything which completely contradicts gender roles, there is still this aura of surprise.

Women are huge consumers, including of technology. Women are humans first, so we will be drawn to many of the same activities and uses of the Internet and technology. But our roles are different, so we may be drawn more to somethings more than others.

Women tend to be more social in terms of talking not just 'hanging out' so we likely will participate more in chats, forums, discussions and blogging than men who will just forward a video or a link to a website. Women and men may be interested in many of the same things, but women will want to talk about why they are interested in something whereas men typically think forwarding a clip or link is self-explanatory ~ it's all that needs to be said.

So why this continual surprise over the differences in gender usage? It's not like women stop being human when confronted with new things. Nor do our 'real world' gender differences cease to exist online.

(Those who think women are so different would likely buy this bridge I have for sale... It's in Brooklyn and if you charged a toll you could really rake it in! I also can also put you in touch with a man in Africa who has millions of dollars to deposit in your bank account ~ just email me your bank account and routing information. Since women are so different from men these offers from a woman must be true!)

But then again, the gaming industry long underestimated the number of women ~ including older women (30s-40s) ~ who were active gamers spending lots of cash & entire weekends playing games. Fundamentally, both the teenage boys and the more mature women played games for the same reason: to escape & to compete, but marketers still seem to be struggling to use this knowledge in both the creation of games and the presentation of games.

So why would should I expect pundits to recognize that women are a strong segment of this market, powerful users of this technology?

I guess maybe it will take more 'surprising' numbers in 'surprising' studies to convince them all.

...Meanwhile, if anyone is interested in that bridge, contact me.

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What Kind Of Blogger Are You?

Via Spin Thicket:

The 25 Basic Styles of Blogging... And When To Use Each One

This is a nifty slide-show showing the types of blog posts (Event Blogging, Survey Blogging, Brand, Link etc.), how difficult they are, the buzz or linking probability rating, and a suggested maximum number of times a week you can use each type of post. Your mileage may vary, of course, but the definitions and (suggested) limitations sound sane to me.

It's food for thought as your type of posts, in a general way, determine what sort of blogger you are and what sort of blog you have.

Sarah sent me this link to a Yahoo! news story:

Bloggers rail against imposing civility online

The title is very misleading ~ acting as if bloggers are insisting upon being rude, mean and down-right illegal when all the bloggers are saying is, "No," to a "Blogging Code of Conduct."

Bloggers are always free to remove what they see as inappropriate contributions to forums on their websites, said Technorati founder David Sifry. Technorati specializes in tracking and indexing blogs.

People interested in spewing caustic comments can feature them on their own websites and then leave links on those of other bloggers, Sifry said.

"One of the core principles that the Internet is built on is the principle of free speech," Sifry told AFP. "If you really are a jerk, I don't have to read what you say."

Ethical issues in the "blogosphere" mirror those raised by the relentless trend of users providing raw content to websites ranging from video-sharing superstar YouTube to news gathering organization NowPublic.

"I'm not sure a code of conduct is the answer," NowPublic co-founder Mike Tippett told AFP. "It makes about as much sense as me wearing a badge to have a conversation. It won't make a difference."

People don't need to sign pacts of civility to use telephones or send letters, Tippett noted.

"I think the wisdom of the crowds, societal mores, and the expectations of civility will generally solve the problem," Tippett said. "The Internet is just an extension of our everyday lives."

What's rather crazy is that this move to badges and codes of conduct has been brought to the forefront by the Kathy Sierra situation. Threats of death and physical harm are illegal and so we have a code of conduct for that. Asking people to censor themselves more with this media than any other is rather chaffing ~ and impractical. Who is going to be the mean police and define the line? 'Nice' is as relative as 'mean' is. While I certainly don't enjoy, nor do I recommend, rude blogs or talk, we already have police to enforce laws and behaviors which cross lines; I don't want (additional) thought police.

Like Tippett said, "Presumably, we are all bound by the social norms of our communities. Violate them and you are locked up."

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