July 24, 2009

R.I.P. E. Lynn Harris (1955-2009)

“In 1991, I helped E. Lynn and he helped me. I had my own magazine ‘SBC’ that was widely distributed for the LGBT community and when he came out with his first novel, ‘Invisible Life,’ I said let’s do some stories on him because the stories he’s telling about our community is groundbreaking. … I don’t know where I would be if it wasn’t for E. Lynn Harris.”

— Stanley Bennett Clay

What a loss. What a terrible loss.

The obituary from Essence downplays his gayness (even in the linked article, “E. Lynn Harris’s personal side”), but Harris’s contemporaries, at least, don’t mince words in the buried piece, “Black Writers Remember Author E. Lynn Harris.”

You might also want to check out ELynnHarris.com.

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June 13, 2009

R.I.P. Harold Norse (1916-2009)

I’m not a man. I write poetry.

I’m not a man. I don’t want to destroy you.

Harold Norse dies at 92; Beat poet was a literary beacon in the gay community

A pioneer of poetry written in plain American English, Norse was mentor or peer to great talents in 20th century American literature, including Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin and Allen Ginsberg.

Harold Norse, a San Francisco poet often associated with the Beats, who was mentor or peer to many of the greatest talents in 20th century American literature, including Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski, has died. He was 92.

Norse died of natural causes Monday at an assisted-living facility in San Francisco, according to his conservator, attorney Mark Vermeulen. …

More at the link, including a gorgeous portrait.

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June 9, 2009

And Now for Something Completely Supernatural

Somebody on my long, long list of Religious Whackadoodles to Add to Conservative Babylon is televangelist Robert Tilton, who— well, here’s a brief introduction to Tilton, with a link to the Wikipedia article that does a nice job of running down the whole ugly story.

In the meantime, I just had to share this with you: Tilton’s new book, How to Pay Your Bills Supernaturally.

Yes, the book is real. (And if you’re really, really stupid, you can buy it directly from Tilton himself.)

Oh, yes, I’d love your suggestions for titles of future editions in what must be an ongoing series. The first that come to my mind:

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June 8, 2009

Dateline 1951— Oops, 2009: Wisconsin Whackjobs Want to Start Burning Books

Don’t buy into the specious reason for the ban-’n'-burn; we think we know what their real problem is (stay tuned after the jump).

From the American Library Association, June 3rd:

Milwaukee Group Seeks Fiery Alternative to Materials Challenge

Life grows more interesting by the day for officials of the West Bend (Wis.) Community Memorial Library. After four months of grappling with an evolving challenge to young-adult materials deemed sexually explicit by area residents Ginny and Jim Maziarka, library trustees voted 9–0 June 2 to maintain the young-adult collection as is “without removing, relocating, labeling, or otherwise restricting access” to any titles. However, board members were made cognizant that same evening that another material challenge waited in the wings: Milwaukee-area citizen Robert C. Braun of the Christian Civil Liberties Union (CCLU) distributed at the meeting copies of a claim for damages he and three other plaintiffs filed April 28 with the city; the complainants seek the right to publicly burn or destroy by another means the library’s copy of Baby Be-Bop. The claim also demands $120,000 in compensatory damages ($30,000 per plaintiff) for being exposed to the book in a library display, and the resignation of West Bend Mayor Kristine Deiss for “allow[ing] this book to be viewed by the public.” …

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April 15, 2009

Nathaniel Frank’s Take on the Amazon “Glitch”

From the author of Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America (which was “glitched”) who finds (as I do) Amazon’s explanation that “a mid-level employee began to tag books as ‘adult’ using very loose criteria … still troubling.”

If this is indeed what happened, it says some pretty bad things not only about Amazon, but about what probably a large swath of the population assumes but doesn’t always articulate: that things gay are automatically sexual and, by extension, bad. It would be pretty ironic if a book about the censorship of a gay presence — which is what “don’t ask, don’t tell” succeeded at accomplishing — was censored because of its gay presence. And censored by a large company eager to profit from selling that book but all too happy to cave to social conservatives griping about gay themes appearing on a website where millions of books about everything under the sun never warrant a peep. …

Richard Nash wrote that it doesn’t so much matter if Amazon deliberately targeted gay books: “In a world where whiteness and straightness are ‘norms’ and males benefit from our patriarchial [sic] history, it is always the GLBTQ books, the queer books, the non-normative books that get caught in the glitches, the ham-fisted errors.”

This, I think, is where the debate now stands. Too many Americans still can’t separate “gay” from “sex.” And I don’t mean that gays should stop admitting they are sexual beings. I mean gays should be able to be proud and out about our sexuality while not being defined by it, and certainly not being defined by the sloppy assumption that our demand for first-class citizenship is somehow an instance of endemic self-indulgence, an incorrigible impulse toward uncontrollable pleasure-seeking.

As Queer theory has rightly taught, the “problem” with homosexuality in America is really a problem with straight America: until they get over the notion that gay = sex and sex = bad, we’ll continue to face the harmful effects of sexual repression, we’ll remain vigilant about ham-fisted homophobic glitches, and we’ll proudly keep the doors to our gay rights groups wide open.

More: What to Make of #Amazonfail

Backstory:
A “Glitch,” A Hack, Or Just Bad Judgment? Bottom Line: It’s Still Amazon’s Fault, April 13, 2009

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April 13, 2009

R.I.P. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, 1950-2009

I have only ever worn out one book. … That book is Epistemology of the Closet, and its author is the brilliant, inimitable, explosive intellectual Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, who died last night from breast cancer at the age of 58.

It is difficult to calculate the impact of Sedgwick’s scholarship, in part because its legacy is still in the making, but also because she worked at a skew to so many fields of inquiry. Feminism, queer theory, psychoanalysis and literary, legal and disability studies — Sedgwick complicated and upended them all, sometimes in ways that infuriated more anodyne scholars, but always in ways that pushed established parameters.

In one of her more audacious insights, Sedgwick proposed two ways of understanding homosexuality: a “minoritizing view” in which there is “a distinct population of persons who ‘really are’ gay,” and a “universalizing view” in which sexual desire is unpredictable and fluid, in which “apparently heterosexual persons…are strongly marked by same-sex influences.” Think of it, in shorthand, as the difference between Ellen Degeneres’ “Yep, I’m gay!” and Gore Vidal’s “There is no such thing as a homosexual or heterosexual person; there are only homo- or heterosexual acts.”

Sedgwick wasn’t interested in validating either view, but rather in how these two views compete and collude in ways that produce an “irreducible incoherence”… Consider, for example, her analysis of homosexual panic defense, which was once accepted by juries as a rationale for reducing sentences for gay bashers. …

Sedgwick’s work was marked throughout by an abiding love for gay people, gay men in particular. She once proposed that in a gay-affirmative world, there would be guide books on how to bring your kids up gay. “Advice on how to make sure your kids turn out gay, not to mention your students, your parishoners, your therapy clients, or your military subordinates, is less ubiquitous than one might think,” she deadpanned in Epistemology. It’s funny, and then, after you laugh, it hits you like a rock. …

More from Richard Kim at The Nation.

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A “Glitch,” A Hack, Or Just Bad Judgment? Bottom Line: It’s Still Amazon’s Fault

Amazon says it was a “glitch”; authors have evidence showing otherwise. Either way, Amazon is at fault, and I’ll tell you why.

Publishers Weekly’s take:

A groundswell of outrage, concern and confusion sprang up over the weekend, largely via Twitter, in response to what authors and others believed was a decision by Amazon to remove “adult” titles from its sales rankings. On Sunday evening, however, an Amazon spokesperson said that a “glitch” had occurred in its sales ranking feature that was in the process of being fixed. The spokesperson added that there was no new policy regarding “adult” titles. As of Monday morning, a number of titles affected by the glitch were still without sales rankings. No one at Amazon was available this morning to discuss when the problem might be fixed or what caused the glitch. …

Whatever the cause, titles like James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room and Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain are among the those that have lost their sales ranking. Bloggers aren’t buying the glitch explanation and some are calling an Amazon boycott, but the fact that such a wide range of titles have lost their rankings suggest that whatever Amazon may have been trying to do went haywire.

Author Mark R. Probst’s take:

On Amazon.com two days ago, mysteriously, the sales rankings disappeared from two newly-released high profile gay romance books: “Transgressions” by Erastes and “False Colors” by Alex Beecroft. Everybody was perplexed. Was it a glitch of some sort? The very next day HUNDREDS of gay and lesbian books simultaneously lost their sales rankings, including my book “The Filly.” There was buzz, What’s going on? Does Amazon have some sort of campaign to suppress the visibility of gay books? Is it just a major glitch in the system? Many of us decided to write to Amazon questioning why our rankings had disappeared. Most received evasive replies from customer service reps not versed in what was happening. As I am a publisher and have an Amazon Advantage account through which I supply Amazon with my books, I had a special way to contact them. 24 hours later I had a response:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature. …

Yes, it is true. Amazon admits they are indeed stripping the sales ranking indicators for what they deem to be “adult” material. Of course they are being hypocritical because there is a multitude of “adult” literature out there that is still being ranked – Harold Robbins, Jackie Collins, come on! They are using categories THEY set up (gay and lesbian) to now target these books as somehow offensive.

Now in fairness I should point out that Amazon has also stopped ranking many books in the “erotica” categories as well which includes straight erotica. But that’s a whole other battle that I’ll leave to the erotica writers to take on.

Now I could probably convince the automatons at Amazon that The Filly is YA and therefore not “adult” in the least, and I could probably even convince them to reinstate my ranking. But if they are excluding books just on the basis of being “gay” then by all means exclude mine too because I don’t want them just to reinstate the “nice” gay books, they need to reinstate all the gay books and if they are really going to try and exclude so-called “adult” material, then how come this has an Amazon ranking? …

[Update:] Publisher’s Weekly now has a story … that an Amazon spokesperson claims this is all a glitch and they have no such new policy. My caselog is still active in my Advantage account with the response from customer service rep Ashlyn D. Also I’d like to point you to this blog of an author who received this same response from Amazon back in February. …

As of 8 AM this morning (April 13th) The Filly has had it’s ranking reinstated by Amazon. I also noticed Alex Beecroft’s False Colors was reinstated as well. Many others are not, so they haven’t fixed the “so-called” glitch as of yet.

A protest petition (which both my wife and I signed, and which is gathering literally hundreds of new signatures by the hour; the total is up to 17,744 as I write this) lists more LGBT titles that were “glitched” out of the ranking system:

–Radclyffe Hill’s [sic] classic novel about lesbians in Victorian times, The Well of Loneliness, and which contains not one sentence of sexual description;

–Mark R Probst’s YA novel The Filly about a young man in the wild West discovering that he’s gay (gay romance, no sex);

–Charlie Cochrane’s Lessons in Love (gay romance with no sex);

–The Dictionary of Homophobia: A Global History of Gay & Lesbian Experience, edited by Louis-George Tin (non-fiction, history and social issues);

–and Homophobia: A History by Bryan Fone (non-fiction, focus on history and the forms prejudice against homosexuality has taken over the years).

The last two, especially, blow me away. And… The Well of Loneliness? With all due respect to Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness makes for a better sleep aid than it does an aphrodisiac.

Finally, here’s another, much longer list of books purged from the ranks; what burns my hide is the presence of even more most-decidedly un-erotic, scholarly works:

• Who’s Who in Gay and Lesbian History

• Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America

• Transgender Warriors (Leslie Feinberg)

• Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue (Leslie Feinberg)

• Who’s Who in Gay and Lesbian History

• Strangers: Homosexuality in the Nineteenth Century

• Celluloid Closet (Vito Russo)

• The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (Randy Shilts)

• Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military (Randy Shilts) (Yet Shilts’ And The Band Played On hasn’t been touched yet. Huh?)

• Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet (William N. Eskridge Jr.)

• Biological Exuberance (Bruce Bagemhil)

…and pretty much every other important, required-reading, historical, biographical, and queer-theory book your can think of.

So, what happened? Was Amazon deliberately targeting LGBT-themed books, or was it really a “glitch”?

I think it was both, and here’s why — that is, if — I repeat: if — this “fag”-hating troll is telling the truth, and not just making stuff up to impress his fellow low-life troll friends who have nothing better to do with their time than make life more difficult than it has to be… just for lulz:

Amazon removed its customer-based reporting of adult books yesterday. I guess my game is up! Here’s a nice piece I like to call “how to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code”.

I really hate reputation systems based on user input. This started a while back on Craigslist, when I was trying to score chicks to do heroin with. My listings like “looking to get tarred and pleasured” and “Searching for a heroine to do the paronym of this sentence’s lexical subject” kept getting flagged. The hypocracy of the gay community disgusted me. They would flag my ads down but searching craigslist for “pnp” or “tina” reveals tons of hairy dudes searching for other hairy dudes to do meth with. How is homosexuality and meth okay but heterosexuality and heroin bad? So I decided to get them back and cause a few hundred thousand queers some outrage.

I’m logged into Amazon at a far later date and see it has a “report as inappropriate” feature at the bottom of a page. I do a quick test on a few sets of gay books. I see that I can get them removed from search rankings with an insignificant number of votes.

I do this for a while, but never really get off my ass to scale it until recently.

So I script some quick bash. …

There’s some quick code to grab all the Gay and Lesbian metadata-tagged books on amazon. Then I pull out all the IDs of the given books from those URLs … and I have a neat little list of the internal product ID of every fag book on Amazon.

Now from here it was a matter of getting a lot of people to vote for the books. The thing about the adult reporting function of Amazon was that it was vulnerable to something called “Cross-site request forgery’. This means if I referred someone to the URL of the successful complaint, it would register as a complaint if they were logged in. So now it is a numbers game.

I know some people who run some extremely high traffic (Alexa top 1000) websites. I show them my idea, and we all agree that it is pretty funny. They put an invisible iframe in their websites to refer people to the complaint URLs which caused huge numbers of visitors to report gay and lesbian items as inappropriate without their knowledge.

I also hired third worlders to register accounts for me en masse. If you ever need a service like that, you can find them in a post like this advertising in the comments…

Then they would log into the accounts, save the cookies in a cookie file and send it to me.

Then I used the cookie files like so to automated-report all the books…

The combination of these two actions resulted in a mass delisting of queer books being delisted from the rankings at Amazon.

I guess my game is up, but 300+ hits on google news for amazon gay and outrage across the blogosphere ain’t so bad. …

H/T to a commenter at Pam’s.

If none of that made sense (and it shouldn’t, unless you’re a geek of the highest order), he’s claiming to have exploited Amazon’s customer rating system through a script; i.e., automatically, programmatically.

So, let’s assume this “fag”-hating hacker-troll did just what he says he did. Then it’s not Amazon’s fault, right?

Wrong.

There’s still the issue of Amazon’s replies to more than a couple of authors (in addition to Probst, and predating Mr. Gay-Basher’s attack):

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

If Amazon was relying solely on customer feedback, Amazon is still at fault for not catching the sudden wave of negative feedback solely targeting LGBT-themed books — an anomaly that should have stuck out like a sore thumb to anyone at Amazon who was paying attention. That, of course, begs the question: Why was no one paying attention? Amazon.com is a 24/7 business; Web sites do not get weekends off.

If this programmatic exploit of its feedback system is the “glitch” Amazon is referring to, then why did Amazon reply to inquiring authors with the canned “adult material” response — and before this exploit was supposedly implemented?

Bottom line: Any system can be exploited, but Amazon is still at fault — not so much for failing to lock down its feedback system against exploits (seriously: you can’t know there is a vulnerability until somebody exploits it), but for 1) failing to detect an overwhelmingly obvious anomaly, 2) failing to come clean about what really happened, and 3) continuing to shift the blame from itself to the “adult” content of de-ranked books that were never “adult material” (i.e., sexually explicit) to begin with.

So, now what? Well, for us, the answer is simple, if painful: After many years of being satisfied customers of Amazon, and almost as many years selling books and videos through Amazon, we’re moving on, and looking for a new online outlet both for our personal shopping, and through which to sell books and DVDs.

Even if Mr. Gay-Basher Troll is telling the truth.

We cannot, and will not, continue to support a company that would allow our community — or any other (yes, even right-wing Christian authors) — to be targeted so easily, and fail to come clean about what’s really going on.

We may go back to Amazon one day. But we’d need to see Jeff Bezos hold a press conference, explain everything fully and truthfully, and then get down on one knee and beg forgiveness. Oh, and he’d have to sack that “Ashley D” person who keeps sending out the “adult material” replies, too.

In the meantime… If Mr. Gay-Hating Hacker Troll is telling the truth, shouldn’t he have been arrested by now?

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November 3, 2008

Orwellian Quote of the Day: James Dobson

— James Dobson at “The Call,” a stadium rally of 15,000 evangelicals determined to strip gay and lesbian Californians of the fundamental right to marry

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September 25, 2008

Mike Petrelis Makes Donation to Sarah Palin’s Local Library

You go, Mike!

Gay-lesbian titles donated to Wasilla Library

Responding to news reports about then-Wasilla [Alaska] Mayor Sarah Palin asking a librarian how she would feel about banning books, a San Francisco man has donated two children’s books dealing with homosexuality to the Wasilla Library.

Mike Petrelis, a 49-year-old who files Freedom of Information requests for a living, said he was aghast to read reports of Palin’s 1996 inquiry about banning certain books at Wasilla’s library.

The news — old news in the Mat-Su Valley, but new in the Lower 48 — prompted Petrelis to send to Wasilla “Heather Has Two Mommies” and “Daddy’s Roommate,” both children’s books that explain gay lifestyle.

“I said, ‘I’m going to send copies of both books just to make sure they’re on the shelves,’” Petrelis said.

The story of Palin’s book removal question caught national attention after reporters arrived in town to probe Palin following Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s surprise Aug. 29 announcement. …

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September 2, 2008

Lesbian Icon Janis Ian’s New Autobiography Out

Don’t you young’uns dare ask: “Who?”

Grammy Award–winning singer and songwriter Janis Ian’s memoir of her more than forty years in the music business.

Janis Ian was catapulted into the spotlight in 1966 at the age of fifteen when her soul-wrenching song “Society’s Child” became a national hit. An intimate portrait of an interracial relationship, “Society’s Child” climbed the charts despite the fact that many radio stations across the country refused to play it because of its controversial subject matter. But this was only the beginning of a long and illustrious career. In this fascinating memoir of her life in the music business, Ian chronicles how she did drugs with Jimi Hendrix, went shopping for Grammy clothes with Janis Joplin, and sang with Mel Tormé — all the while never ceasing to create unforgettable music.

In Society’s Child, Ian shares with readers what it felt like to move in and out of the public eye. In 1975 her legendary song “At Seventeen” earned two Grammy awards and five nominations. But during the 1980s she made a conscious decision to walk away from the often grueling music business to study ballet and acting. She also struggled through a difficult marriage that ended with her then husband’s threat to kill her. The hiatus from music lasted for nearly a decade until, in 1993, Ian returned with the release of Breaking Silence. Rather than risk losing artistic control, she took out a second mortgage on her home to fund the record. It paid off as Breaking Silence gained Ian her ninth Grammy nomination. Now in her fifth decade, Ian continues to draw large audiences around the globe.

Janis Ian has inspired generations of fans and in this moving book she shares the fascinating story of her life in music.

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January 21, 2008

The Right Not to Tolerate the Intolerant

Over the next few days (or weeks, or perhaps months), we’re going to be talking a lot about Kirbyjon Caldwell, Metanoia, and “ex-gay” ministries — and, of course, Barack Obama.

But first, I want you to read something: a quote that prefaces the very first chapter of Chris Hedges’ amazing book, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America. I’ll be referring to American Fascists a good deal as well in upcoming posts, but for now, I’d like you to focus on this quote (I mean, really focus, letting the meaning of each sentence seep into your bones), from The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper:

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

Re-read it a few times. Let it roll around in the back of your head for a while.

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October 28, 2007

Feh! The Tighty-Righties Weren’t Letting Their Spawn Read Harry Potter Anyway

JK Rowling under fire from US Bible belt after outing Dumbledore as gay

JK Rowling may be a saint to millions of children and their parents, but today she is a sinner to a large slice of middle America.

The 42-year-old Harry Potter author has become a hate figure to Christian evangelicals in the US since she outed Albus Dumbledore as gay.

The mother-of three, who is worth £545 million, told a New York audience that the much loved head of Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizadry was homosexual.

Talk shows in the Bible Belt have condemned her, web-sites have reviled her, and newspaper letter columns have been filled with complaints.

And there are fears it may affect profits at Warner Bros who have a further two films to make and a dvd on sale this Christmas.

Roberta Combs, president of the two million strong Christian Coalition of America, said: “It’s very disappointing that the author would have to make one of the characters gay.

“It’s not a good example for our children, who really like the books and the movies. I think it encourages homosexuality.”

She called for a ban on the books, saying: “I would never allow my own children or grandchildren to read the books or watch the movies, and other parents should do so too.”

Honestly, we never had a lot of interest in Harry Potter (we’re too busy fighting the bigots who try to censor Harry Potter) — but this makes us want to run right out and buy every Harry Potter book, DVD, and action figure on the market.

Brava, Ms. Rowling!

See also:
Whole New Reason for the Fundies to Pile On the Eeeeeeeevil Harry Potter

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October 20, 2007

Whole New Reason for the Fundies to Pile On the Eeeeeeeevil Harry Potter

J.K. Rowling Outs Hogwarts Character

Harry Potter fans, the rumors are true: Albus Dumbledore, master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts, is gay. J.K. Rowling, author of the mega-selling fantasy series that ended last summer, outed the beloved character Friday night while appearing before a full house at Carnegie Hall.

After reading briefly from the final book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” she took questions from audience members. She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds “true love.”

“Dumbledore is gay,” the author responded to gasps and applause.

Rowling, finishing a brief “Open Book Tour” of the United States, her first tour here since 2000, also said that she regarded her Potter books as a “prolonged argument for tolerance” and urged her fans to “question authority.”

Not everyone likes her work, Rowling said, likely referring to Christian groups that have alleged the books promote witchcraft. Her news about Dumbledore, she said, will give them one more reason.

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September 24, 2007

Gannon Book Sales Soft… Er, Limp… OK, OK: Flaccid.

‘Bulldog’ Gannon’s Book a Bomb?

Even another gay Republican sex scandal couldn’t save Jeff Gannon’s new book, The Great Media War, which promised a “behind the scenes look at the White House Press Corps and the Bush Administration.”

However, only three weeks since its release, the book is ranked in the 780,000 range on amazon.com. By comparison, Robert Draper’s Dead Certain, which was released the same week as Gannon’s tome, currently stands at 62.

Gannon, of course, was outed as a former male escort in 2005 and was forced to resign from the conservative Talon News service, for which he had covered the White House since 2003. His male clients knew him as “Bulldog.”

Bulldog couldn’t have asked for better timing with his tome. Through some tawdry twist of fate, The Great Media War hit during the height of the Sen. Larry Craig’s bathroom follies—a coincidence that even Gannon (born James Dale Guckert) thought might propel sales. Gannon expected a best-seller, according to his pals.

So, why the flop? Mike Rogers, the blogger who first outed Sen. Craig back in October, and former New York Times fabulist Jayson Blair have some ideas. …

See also:
Jeff Gannon Returns To Fray With Book Blasting Media’s ‘Liberal Bias’

Discuss this story

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May 16, 2003

So, How Many Have You Read?

1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
   
2. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
   
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
   
4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
   
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
   
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
   
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
   
8. Forever by Judy Blume
   
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
   
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
    
11. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
    
12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
    
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
    
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry
    
15. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
    
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
    
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
    
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
    
19. Sex by Madonna
    
20. Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
    
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
    
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
    
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
    
24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
    
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
    
26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
    
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
    
28. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
    
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
    
30. The Goats by Brock Cole
    
31. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
    
32. Blubber by Judy Blume
    
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
    
34. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
    
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
    
36. Final Exit by Derek Humphry
    
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
    
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
    
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
    
40. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
    
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
    
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
    
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
    
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
    
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
    
46. Deenie by Judy Blume
    
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
    
48. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
    
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
    
50. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
    
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
    
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
    
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
    
54. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
    
55. Cujo by Stephen King
    
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
    
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
    
58. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
    
59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
    
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
    
61. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
    
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
    
63. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
    
64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
    
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
    
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox
    
67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
    
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
    
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
    
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
    
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
    
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
    
73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
    
74. Jack by A.M. Homes
    
75. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
    
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
    
77. Carrie by Stephen King
    
78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
    
79. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
    
80. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
    
81. Family Secrets by Norma Klein
    
82. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
    
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
    
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
    
85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
    
86. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
    
87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
    
88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
    
89. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
    
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
    
91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
    
92. Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
    
93. Sex Education by Jenny Davis
    
94. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
    
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
    
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
    
97. View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
    
98. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
    
99. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
    
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

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