Mainstream Media Embarasses Itself
By Jane • Jun 18th, 2008 • Category: Publishing News • •MSNBC decided to run a poll about romance novels in conjunction with its feature of fiction writer Danielle Steele. Why MSNBC jumps from Danielle Steele to romance, I’ll never know but it just goes to show how culturally illiterate the MSNBC poll writers are.
Apparently MSNBC believes that romance books are still called “bodice rippers.” Hello, MSNBC, the 80s called and they want George Michael and your poll writers back. See, bodice rippers don’t identify romance books anymore. It’s man titty. Can you get that right? Let’s have culturally relevant insults. It works better, you look smarter and it makes it harder for us to make fun of you.
And perhaps you haven’t heard yet, but millions of women spend nearly a billion dollars on romance books each year which means you are pissing off a huge segment of your viewership. Rock on with your bad, deluded, out of touch selves.
Links to other bloggers who think you are as stupid as I do:
- Smart Bitches (with new poll)
- Barbara Vey’s blog with an alternate list of poll answers
Jane is a long time romance reader whose passion is, you guessed it, reading. Jane also does not like to talk about herself in the third person, but apparently this is the way that this biography thing works (although in a true biography, someone else would be writing this blurb). Anyway, currently Jane loves urban fantasy authors Patricia Briggs and Ilona Andrews. She's really excited about this year's crop of historicals including Joanna Bourne's The Spymaster's Lady and Sherry Thomas' Private Arrangements and the upcoming Loretta Chase Her Scandalous Ways.
She's looking for a good contemporary author. Email her with a recommendation!
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I know this has been going on all day, but I am still shaking my head in dismay.
BTW: See, bodice rippers don’t identify romance books anymore. It’s man titty.
Awesome. Casserole.
My question is - does anyone inside the romance community consider Danielle Steele a romance author? Because, sure I’m only a reader but, I do not. Nothing against her books or the people who love them. I just think they fall more in the women’s fiction area. Am I totally off base?
C2 - I have no idea who considers Danielle Steele a romance writer. I don’t know if Steele even considers her a romance writer.
No, she doesn’t.
No, she does not. She’s supposedly said, over and over, “I do not write romance.”
There’s a think tank somewhere in Nebraska that’s trying to discern just what it is that she does write, but no one’s heard from them since 1979, so we may never know.
I’ve never read a DS book in my life, can’t get into them.
Read the poll, shook my head and then emailed MSNBC over their cluelessness.
Oh, I feel better. It’s the media being stupid instead of me.
Isn’t there a rumor that she has a computer that will generate a novel after a few key fields are filled in? I can totally see that…