The used-book world was all aflutter this week with the news that a venture capital firm headed up by one of the Texas Bass Brothers has essentially bought Alibris, the #3 bookselling site in the world.
WARNING: Attempt to stir up a pot of trouble follows:
What's really interesting about the deal is this- the Bass family apparently has a history of taking things over and then radically remaking them according to their own, far-right, political beliefs. When the sister-in-law of the guy who just bought Alibris "bought" (in all but name) the Forth Worth, Texas public zoo she turned it into a oil-company/cattle-dairy industry theme park, with the polticial messages that hunters and oil companies are the guardians of the enviorment and environmentalists are bad people. She also used one exhibit to take a pot shot at former-President Bill Clinton, making up a fake gravestone for "Slick Willy- he was here too long, but now he's gone".
Here's the rest of the story.
We don't list books on Alibris, and certainly won't be anytime soon. For those who do, I suggest you sell your Bill Clinton and Thomas Friedman books off fast- you never know how long they'll be allowed...
Paranoid? Mebbe. But up until yesterday most folks thought that the idea of a secret guv'mint agency monitoring all your phone calls without a court order was paranoid too...
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