Is Amazon.com Deleting Conservative Book Reviews?

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So, here is a curious thing. I have been reviewing books at Amazon for a few years now and never had the occasion to have been censored by Amazon.com. But, I just had two reviews in a row deleted by Amazon and it has caused me to wonder how often other conservatives have their reviews summarily eliminated from the Amazon site?

I have noticed, of course, that leftists use Amazon quite well to give conservative books a bad Amazon rating. In the past, whenever I wrote a positive review of a conservative book, for instance, I would be loaded up with negative votes on the review by Amazon visitors. But whenever I wrote a review of a non-political book, I got favorable votes on my review.

But, up until now, I’ve never had a review completely deleted by Amazon.

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The first review that was deleted by Amazon was for Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s failure of a book titled "Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters." This book is horrible and is horribly tanking at the booksellers.

I wrote the review on-line and posted it from the Amazon site. I did not save my review in a word document because I did not imagine that I would be censored. But, let’s just suffice to say I hated her trite piece of garbage. Still, I did not call her names but I did say this (and I paraphrase from memory):

Some may recall the oft quoted and badly mauled Shakespeare quote that goes something to the effect that we should “first kill all the lawyers.” Well, I would like to paraphrase that saying and direct it to a profession more worthy of such a genocide. It would go thusly: “First kill all the political book ghostwriters.”

I know, I know. I’m very clever. But, Amazon apparently didn’t think so because the on-line bookseller deleted my review. And without so much as a by your leave, at that.

The next one I reviewed was for a music CD called “Levittown, Go Out Dancing – Part II” (2008). This is a CD by Tony Carey’s occasional band Planet P Project. Carey is a self-loathing, ex-pat American that lives in Germany now and since 1983 his Plant P band has put out four albums.

His first one from 1983 was an 80s style pop album that sound OK even today, if not a bit dated with that typical 80s sound. The second, “Pink World” from 1984 began to show Carey’s obsession with Hitler and his hippie-esque worry over the bomb and western totalitarianism – as all the while he ignored, like every other hippie did, the worse totalitarianism of the Far East and Russia. Still, “Pink World” has some interesting Pink Floyd-like tunes that are listenable. The third album “1931, Go Out Dancing Part I” (2003), is a full-blown nightmare of hippie angst replete with Hitler speeches recorded into the songs. I began to sour on Planet P Project with that one.

And now we get to their newest one, “Levittown.” This one is a frontal assault on the evil, evil America that Carey left behind when he went to Germany, turning his back on his country. Still, he loves to whine about us, just the same.

Just as I was ripped off by Pelosi’s “book” I was similarly cheated out of good money for “Levittown.” And that is what I wrote in my Amazon review. But, Amazon didn’t want me to say so, apparently. My review was deleted unceremoniously.

So, now, I leave the assessment to you, kind readers. Was my review too mean, too harsh, not on target or somehow deserving of being deleted by Amazon? Is my opinion of this album not as legitimate as those who love it? Or is Amazon trying to shill for the left?

Here is what I wrote:

(Important notice! I have radically changed my mind about the review of this music. See the new review.)

Levittown? Try LEAVE IT Town!

Planet P Project has been steadily getting worse and this fourth album offering is the worst of them yet. Tony Carey's first Planet P Project album (un-inventively called the "Planet P Project") in 1983 at least had a great 80s sound that almost stands the test of time today and the double album "Pink World" (1984) was a really great album filled with tons of Pink Floydesque music. But the 2003 offering "1931" began the over-the-top, self-hating, nihilism that this new offering, "Levittown," loads up in spades.

There is lots of hand wringing and self-hate piled on top of finger wagging scolding of western culture and history in the lyrics of this ponderous album. Worse, Carey's vocals seem strained and sorrowful giving each tune -- and by each I mean EVERY -- a whiny character that seems to make a mockery of the harsh subject matter he is attempting to highlight. It all seems over wrought, petulant, and eye rolling.

With a sort of stilted narration in the song "The New Frontier," Carey tries to scold America for its wonderful economic growth in the Post WWII world, an economic growth that later improved the standard of living for the whole world. Naturally, like most with his anti-western point of view, he just complains and offers no solution to what he obviously sees as some sort of evil -- except the empty advice of "just fight it," what ever THAT is supposed to mean. Carey uses this whiny narration in several other songs but it ends up sounding like an attempt to impress with sonority instead of really being thoughtful.

"Fremont Street" sees Carey whining that his family should have been millionaires from Vegas land sales after the turn of the century (that apparently they somehow missed because his grandaddy was a "gamblin' man."). Unfortunately, he ends up sounding more like an envious complainer. Not only that but his whole worry about the bomb, such as in the song "What We Did," and the finger pointing at the USA as all that is evil in the world smacks of the failed tactics of the anti-western hippie set from the 1960s causing this album to seem dated and silly. Remember, all those hippies became stockbrokers or government workers in the 1980s, partaking quite easily in the so-called evil profits that Carey whines about in his "Levittown" tunes. Few ever kept to the claimed "principles" of the Counter Culture.

With "Where We Want You," Carey seems to blame the USA for the attacks on 9/11. This one was the most offensive of the bunch. Apparently we Americans just used "the big lie" and "found the common enemy" to force the lowly people to do our government's bidding. Also apparently, the planes flying into the Twin Towers was somehow a "big lie" that never really happened, or maybe was caused by the US government its hard to tell which Carey is positing. I wonder if Carey is scared by the black helicopters floating above his European home as he worries over 9/11 truther conspiracy tales? Naturally he seems to think all Americans assume "the devil himself wears sandals and a robe," too. This causes me to wonder if he sees anything at all wrong with people who use Islam as an excuse to chop off people's heads, stone gays to death, rape women and small boys and the like? After all, he has all sorts of complaints about America and the west, but doesn't seem to display any opprobrium of the East.

All in all, the entire subject matter of this album sounds as outdated and wrong headed as the failed ideas of the childish, nihilistic, troublemakers that shut down University campuses all across the country in the 1960s. The vaunted Counter Culture that ended up doing absolutely nothing but causing strife fills this backward looking and pointless collection.

I suggest passing this one up unless you hate America, too. I, for one, will also be passing up part three of Tony Carey's "Go Out Dancing" trilogy. Worse, I wish I hadn't wasted my time with this one. But, like I said, if you think America is evil... well, this one will fit the bill for you.

++++++++++

So, there you go folks. Was this so out of line that it should have been deleted by Amazon? And is Amazon deliberately deleting conservative reviews? And if so, how long has this been going on?


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One line


So, there you go folks. Was this so out of line that it should have
been deleted by Amazon? And is Amazon deliberately deleting
conservative reviews? And if so, how long has this been going on?

I have no idea, but I bet I know which line in your review someone with their head in the sand did not like.


This causes me to wonder if he sees anything at all wrong with people who use Islam as an excuse to chop off people's heads, stone gays to death, rape women and small boys and the like?

Yeah, probably this excerpt

(especially the "rape women and small boys" statement)

The second shift editorial staff probably rang their "hate speech" bell in the cube farm and deleted it. 

That being said, your review is great. It focuses on the issue of how aging entertainers start to focus on bringing politics (using screaming, leftwing politics) into their work as they get into their 40s, 50s, 60s. They think they need to put this "gift god gave them" to "good" use by being a soapbox for ideas that may have surved them well on the stage but are useless or harmful to society.

I was just reviewing this weekend how REM used to matter to me but as they became more political, I lost all interest.

Ah well: that's why we keep the old stuff that was good

Oh: and the stuff I see on Amazon reviews is just insane and offensive and makes this look like you LIKED the new album.

But then maybe it was you calling him a hippie and that he lived in Germany. And so you lied. Because all the people at Amazon KNOW all the hippies are in Oregon.

 

 

 

Interesting Phenomenon, Warner

First, I compliment you on your prolific volume of writings.  I don't see where you find the time to read all those books, write reviews, and still make daily thoughtful contributions at NB and elsewhere.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' political contributions seem to trend left -- especially recently.

 http://newsmeat.com/billionaire_political_donations/Jeff_Bezos.php

I use Yahoo! a lot and note that the stories they select and headlines they post are heavily slanted (like one yesterday opining that the Edwards scandal was going to hurt McCain the most).  Amazon...Yahoo!....I guess it's appropriate to call them dot.communists!

I suppose it's reasonable to have some sort of oversight of reviews on Amazon....but the overseers apparently have a political agenda that they will trot it out for "important" books.

 

I am...

I am a busy feller. I try to read as many books a year as I can find time for.

Right now I am reading, "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution," (1967) by Bernard Bailyn. I love it so far. I highly recommend it for those into somewhat scholarly works. It isn't light reading, to put it bluntly.

Sales matter, not reviews.

Sales matter, not reviews.

Yea First One, Nay Second One

I think you know that the first one should have been deleted. You can't talk about killing public figures anywhere these days without expecting a reaction. And rightly so, in my opinion.

In the second instance, I would be willing to bet they received complaints from some Muslim readers, and wanted to cover their butts. Like it or not, publishers and sellers of published material are deathly afraid of being the victims of Jihad.

Re-post it without the Muslim line, and let's see what happens.

I'm so glad you are out there doing reviews WTH

more conservatives need to do that stuff at the major sites like Amazon and IMDB and Netflix we also need to rate more on those sites and Youtube.

I could see how they could justify the Pelosi book review because of the "First kill all the political book ghostwriters." line. I'm sure some libs wrote in saying they felt threatened. I still don't think that was right, especially because you couched it in reference to Shakespeare but it's more understandable. There is no reason what so ever for them to delete the Levittown one.

You have inspired me and I think I may do a review now when I finish the book I'm reading. It's Called "The Story of Mankind" by Hendrik Willem Van Loon. It's a young adult book that I tried to get my son interested in and he wouldn't read it so I did. I'm really enjoying it because it goes through all the major events in history but reads like a novel. This author definitely has some left wing spin on events though and this book was written in 1936! I'm reading an updated version but I assume since I'm not past the Renaissance yet that it's all his writing so far. It should be interesting to see how people rate me down because I'll give the book an overall favorable rating (assuming I continue to like the rest) but draw attention to some of the left wing distortions.

Good for you...

I say go on and post a review. Jess don't mention my name! ;)

about YouTube

Whenever a news report mentions a video on YouTube being viewed a million times, it is suggestly falsely that a million different people saw the video.  Big difference! 

I'd imagine people with OCD, or who are overly passionate, or who are just plain nuts, might be the most likely to "vote early and often" to inflate the totals - or, say, pan negative book reviews for things they haven't read.  But if Amazon has staff who are justifying messing around behind the scenes based on their political biases, don't be shocked if the same is discovered elsewhere.

 

 

Good To Know.

Whether its Amazon doing the deletion, or Amazon moderators reacting to the complaints of leftist forum-troll whiners, I think that the public is savvy enough nowadays to recognize bias when they see it (or are made aware of it).  I, for one, don't like reacting like a lib when anything I've posted online is deleted, moderated into obscurity, or negatively "flagged" just because of the opinion I expressed.  The typical lib response would be to whine and moan and expect the company/forum/whatever to bend to their wishes and moderate their forums "fairly" (whatever that means).  I for one prefer the "voting with my wallet and loud mouth" way of doing things.

Now that you've made me aware of this (though it doesn't surprise me), I plan on telling everyone I know, as much, and as often as possible.  I'll sure think twice about buying stuff using Amazon now, and I might even shoot them an email about how their review system is either maliciously moderated, or they've failed to curb abuses, and that affects my buying habits, and those of as many people as I can convince likewise.  Oh, and also now I plan to spend a few hours a week writing vitriolic reviews and doing some "moderation" on Amazon myself... ;)

Please

WTH,

I'd love for the writers on NB to stop referring to Nancy Pelosi as the author of her book. No one actually believes she wrote it herself.

Of course I know you can't technically do that - but it would be fun to see. 

Yes...

That is exactly why I had the ghostwriters bit in there. Obviously she didn't write it. Not a word. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if she ever even saw any of it before it was printed!

LOL Warner

Yeah your ghostwriter bit was pretty funny - more people need to press that issue in public that these celebrities and politicians don't write these books.

As to your reviews getting banned, well I can kinda see why they'd delete the Pelosi one where you make a joke about killing all the ghostwriters. I understand that you were making a parallel to Shakespeare's quote and didn't mean for us to literally kill the writers - but it's far too easy for some lefty to twist it around.

But with that said, I don't understand why they deleted your album review at all, since you didn't say anything controversial there.

*shrugs*

This is what happens when liberals get absolute power

They use it in a tyranicalway to forward their own agenda and trample all over the rights of those who happen to have a different view point. Notice how very similar it is to the Soviet and Chinese style of Marxism? 

The day that "politician" became a career choice is the day we started losing the Republic. Let's get it back! Alan Keyes '08.

Nothing surprises me

Nothing surprises me anymore.

How does a conservative get elected to the Congress or the White House with all the conservative bias out there.

Good to see I'm not the

Good to see I'm not the only one who's followed Tony Carey enough to know about how his career took a nosedive - and why.

 

(from an online radio station owner)

A shame, though - "A Fine,

A shame, though - "A Fine, Fine Day" is one of my favorite songs from the 80's.

WTH... these people are

WTH... these people are Stalinists.... it's becoming apparent that they will stop at nothing to finally silence all of us... blocking our writing and our thoughts at every opportunity.

They are also more technically savvy than we are as a group and therefore, have much larger gangs of technophiles with nothing better to do than to go around and make sure our writings are given poor ratings... and that our thoughts are blocked and deleted at every opportunity.

____________________________________________________

"A society that puts equality...ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom." ~ Milton Friedman

I live in Levittown! It's a

I live in Levittown! It's a nice place.

They've left my reviews up.

They've left my reviews up. And I tend to give good reviews to books that make abortion look bad.

The strangest thing that ever happened at Amazon.com for me was when they had an ACLU offering for sale about how parental involvement laws supposedly "endanger" teenagers, with the obligatory tales of woe. I wrote a review picking apart their anecdotal evidence case by case, pointing out that these girls lived in states that didn't have parental involvement laws -- but the ACLU gave the impression that they did.

About a week later the entire pamphlet was no longer available at Amazon.com.

Coincidence? Who knows?

Leftists love to hang out at

Leftists love to hang out at Amazon but they also use it as a place to spread their manure rather than critique books.

Why don't you ask Amazon why

Why don't you ask Amazon why they were removed rather than speculate?    

uh oh ... i actually like amazon.com ...

i hope this isn't true ... i checked my book reviews and so far so good ... but the subject matters of reviews weren't politcal ...

hmm... i purchase a lot of books from that site, including few politcal-themed books:

"the politically incorrect guide to islam"
"the political zoo" (savage)
"crazies to the left of me and wimps to the right" (goldberg)
"100 people screwing up america" (goldberg)

maybe i ought to test the water and write reviews on those.

Amazon Bias

I wrote to amazon several months ago regarding their Kindle reading devise and was Angy that most if not all the content for political magazines and newspapers were almost exclusively left leaning. They gave the biggest bunch of nonsense that they couldn't get right leaning publications to agree to allow their content to format into the Kindle format. How incredible is that!!!

I guess this is another no we don't story when it comes to right vs left. 

 

speaking of ghost writers

It would be tough to prove, because authors & their fans obviously get touchy on the subject of ghostwriting, but I'd be willing to bet not one Speaker of the House has actually written his/her own book during my lifetime (I was born in late 1961). Becoming Speaker and writing a book just don't seem to go together, I guess.
JMR

The tax & spend drug war looks racist in the real world.

Newt...

Newt pretty much admits it because he goes on tours with the people he wrote books with and he doesn't hide it in the credits.

But, I will say you are probably right. But, let's face facts. There are very few American politicians who have ever actually written a book. I mean, can you ever imagine Tipp O'neil or Joe Biden being smart enough to string even a sentence together much less a whole book?

Off the top of my head we have Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Woodrow Wilson... and??? I won't even say with confidence that Daniel Patrick Moynihan ever wrote a book on his own. I can't think of any others that have, anyway. (I am excluding the Founding Fathers, by the way. Nearly all of them wrote several books each.)

→ Sure he did WTH

Didn't Moynihan write a book about how welfare was the reason ethnic minorities remained at the bottom of the socio-economic scale? . . never mind, I see your point.

  • LYDSEXICS UNTIE

My fav...

One of my favorite ghostwriter stories is the one where Hillary refuses to admit her book "It Takes a Village" was ghostwritten for her even though the press reported on it as a matter of fact.

By the way, we here at NewBusters are tangentially connected to a ghostwritten politician's book. Brent Bozell Senior wrote the book "Conscience of a Conservative" for Barry Goldwater. He is, if I am not mistaken, the father of the Brent Bozell that hosts the NewsBusters site!

WTH...Grant

Grant...Finished his memoirs shortly before his death from throat cancer.  Very successful...estate was able to pay debt [which had been substanial].

Jer

Maybe...

Actually, some historians claim that Mark Twain helped Grant write his memoirs and that Twain is the ghostwriter there. I don't think either man ever admitted to the fact, though.

But, I have a suspicion, myself, that Grant was not a sole author.

WTH...

WTH...I know that Twain loaned [gave] a good deal of money to him, and the fact that Grant wasn't exactly a soaring intellect lends credence to the Twain ghostwriting theory, but my understanding has always been that Grant did indeed write [painstakingly--since he was dying] every word himself.

I've never really looked into the issue though.  I could be off base.

Jer

I would not...

I wouldn't say you are "off base." After all, the people who claim Twain was a ghost writer for Grant don't have any proof, either. I just wanted everyone aware that some historians think Twain did it, though.

And???

This will probably draw a few flames, because people disagree with what he wrote in his books (by himself!) but the name "Dr. Ron Paul" comes to mind, since you asked... In fact, unlike Speaker Pelosi's, his books have sold well, too, even though the antilibertarian biased media has been grudging at best when it comes to noticing that fact.
JMR

The tax & spend drug war looks racist in the real world.

Dr. Ron

Dr. Ron Paul...Hmm...

Doctor...Ron...Paul.  I know I've heard the name somewhere, sarc.

Didn't he have something to do with ebola virus research?

Jer

→ Get serious Jer

You haven't heard of Ron Paul George and Ringo?

But seriously, there's little that Ron Paul says about monetary policy that doesn't have the ring of truth and a good dose of prophecy.

  • LYDSEXICS UNTIE

But seriously, there's

But seriously, there's little that Ron Paul says about monetary policy that doesn't have the ring of truth and a good dose of prophecy.

Agreed.  In fact, I also agreed with much [but not all] of his view regarding foreign policy matters and the rational limitations on the projection of American power.

Jer

:) Think how annoying

Seeing this must have been for NYT readers in the middle of May. But they were safe -- TV totally ignored it.
JMR

The tax & spend drug war looks racist in the real world.

Conveniently-timed proof I was right yesterday

Here's an article on politicians' books failing, which (surprise, surprise!) doesn't mention the name of a certain exception who proves the rule. Guess what name the readers, not the author, had to insert in the seldom-seen comments area?? More antilibertarian media bias? Yep. But an alternate explanation for mentioning a variety of political book writing failures & ignoring the best-seller would probably be amusing.
JMR

The tax & spend drug war looks racist in the real world.

Sorry you were deleted...but

I'm sure it is disappointing to have your stuff deleted.

 

But I just checked Amazon. Her drivvle book currently has 15 5 star votes, and 98 1 star votes. I didn't read them all, but it seems sorta clear to me that Amazon is not keeping the negative opinions out.

 

that's my nickel

jonesey65244

A bit wrong there... The

A bit wrong there...

The reason I wrote this story for NB is because I have seen several other bloggers who ALSO had their negative reviews deleted on the Pelosi book review section of Amazon. I am not the only one at all.