I agree with this. And cricetus gives some good examples of well thought out reasons for boycotts.
OpalCat, I think that there’s a difference between just giving out feedback (this product tastes bad, and I’m not going to buy it) and saying, “This product sucks and no one else should buy it.” And of course it’s been established that your mother had the right to do that. But, like Dio, I don’t think she should have done that. If your mother had come across Lolita and said she didn’t appreciate having her books about childhood sexual abuse on the same site as a book that glorifies pedophilia, we’d think she was ignorant. Yes, Lolita is a well written classic, etc…but what happens if enough ignorant people decide they want it taken off the site? It seems to be sliding into the territory of judging books on their moral sensibilities.
Or, hey, what if enough nutty people decided your mother’s books on sexual abuse were pornographic and wanted them taken down? Yes, it’s easy for people to decry “the pedophile book” but you could find someone who would want to censor even the most innocuous of books. Laurie Halse Anderson’s great YA novel Speak was recently called pornography by some nutty religious guy. There are people who thought Little Red Riding Hood was immoral because Red Riding Hood brought wine to her grandmother. Basically, when we try to decide what’s worth saving and what’s not, we get into some murky territory.
I’ve seen no evidence that murky territory has been entered here. When this slippery slope develops and Amazon starts willy-nilly with the book pulling I’ll think you have a point.
They don’t have to start pulling books for me to consider the people writing their letters about this book, to be well meaning but ignorant. Even if no other books get pulled but this one, Amazon.com will have made the point that there are some books that there are “good” and “bad” books and that the public can decide what those are. Your mother wants the book pulled on the basis that its content is objectionable. And though she has the right to ask that, I don’t personally see her as all that different from someone who wants the novel Speak or And Tango Makes Three or In the Night Kitchen pulled on the basis of their objectionable content.
Feedback should be given to those who produce the products, but trying to harass retailers to stop selling stuff you don’t like is obnoxious, especially when that product is free speech. You don’t have to buy that product. Why do you feel the need to try to stop anybody esle from buying it?
This book was just as legal as your mom’s book.
Who gives a shit what your mom doesn’t appreciate? Why does she think it’s any of her business? What if someone wrote a 'polite email" saying they didn’t apprecate black or Jewish authors being sold alongside white Christian authors? Your mother’s email is no different. It’s self-appointed, self-righteous, busybody bullshit. Tell your mom to mind her own business and not worry about what other people can buy on Amazon.
Sometimes it’s douchebag and sometimes it isn’t. This is a case where it is.
Even doing it with one book is obnoxious, but in point of fact, the article does say that several other books have now been targeted by mobs of Kyle’s mom busybodies.
The Christian Parenting blogosphere is all over this. They still want to boycott Amazon for having ever sold the book in the first place, and are generating lists of other books to pull. Search Twitter for “amazonfail,” or Facebook for “Boycott Amazon,” or do a google blog search for “Boycott Amazon.”
In this case, a boycott is hilarious: people are announcing that they will not buy any books because a book is being sold that they would never buy in the first place. It’s like placing a book on double-secret probation. What next, boycotts against cookbooks that have recipes so delicious that they make weak people buy them, cook the foods and then overeat?
Geeze, and I hear from conservatives all the time that businesses are only in business to make money. But telling that company you will keep them from making money, hell no, that’s not a threat!
This is really the meat of the great debate I think. There’s no threat to free speech going on here. Zero. Zip. Zilch. <insert another word that starts with the letter Z here> Zima (there). Free speech is a two way boulevard. The author of the book is certainly free publish his book and Amazon.com is certainly free to distribute it. People who choose to boycott Amazon over this or petition for them to remove the book from their store are simply exercising their right to free speech.
Because this one has a very real chance of causing very real harm to children.
I doubt much will come of that.
She’s written a number of legal books. She’s a nationally recognized expert in the subject of child sexual abuse and how to represent abused children in court. She’s the attorney that gets kids away from monsters who molest them or beat them senseless. As for the more unfounded part of your post, she’s not saying the guy didn’t have the right to write the book. Or have you forgotten again what freedom of speech is about?
I don’t think you truly grasp or appreciate the meaning of “freedom.” Unless you understand that it belongs to everybody, not just yourself, and will protect the speech you disagree with, you don’t get it.
If some people interpreted your mother’s book as gross or icky because it was about child abuse and wrote it to Amazon.com asking them to remove it, would you be annoyed? Would you complain and think they were obnoxious? Same idea. I just happen to think that someone who writes in about any book–even if they are exercising their legal rights–is being obnoxious. Who are they to decide what books are worthy of inclusion?
Nobody ever said that it was illegal or should be illegal to run a consumer boycott or bitch about something, so can we PLEASE drop that red herring? Really, the weakest possible support for a position is that you have a legal right to make it, especially when nobody for one moment suggested otherwise.
This kind of unfounded declaration is how these things always start. Those same exact words were said about the Beatles.
What about Mein Kampf or The Communist Manifesto or the Bible. A lot of genuine, measurable (not speculative) damage has come from attachments to those books. Should we write letters about those too. Where does it stop.
Sure, can we drop the pretense that some boycotts are inherrently better than other boycotts?
A boycott is a boycott. If it’s got a solid foundation, a legitimate gripe and enough people behind it, it will be successful. If it’s a boycott born of butt-hurtedness, that addresses a begign issue and that only two people take part in … boycott unsuccesful.
This one was successful. And free speech lives on.