> Unfortunately, this is one of those things you have to put up with when you have a public web site.

Yeah, I know. I've dealt with this sort of attitude before; it's just never been so...personally condemning, I suppose.

>The latter threatened to involve the Australian government, although what they would have done about it is beyond me.
>

Sent the anecdote to "Things People Said," perhaps?

> ...in order to avoid racism and stereotyping, you may only represent a group of people by depicting its majority.

Except in America, where any "politically correct" image of "Americans" must
include an Asian, a Hispanic, an African-American (another of my pet peeves--what's degrading about the term "black"? I certainly don't feel patronized when someone calls me "white."), a person with brown skin of ambiguous descent to cover any group left out, and a disabled person (who's usually the Caucasian). I'm not saying that depicting only the majority group is a good thing (because that's the major catalyst for creating stereotypes in the first place), but I do think we tend to go a little overboard with trying to include everyone.

In my e-mail to him, I said that perhaps Mexican- and African-Americans should not be allowed to represent the US because they are minorities. (Although you'd be hard pressed to prove that Mexican-Americans are minority in California agricultural communities like mine. :-P)

>The trick to dealing with these people to laugh it off. You'll drive yourself crazy if you comtemplate too hard on what makes people SO gleeful about tearing people down, and what makes people get offended about such ridiculously superficial things.
>

I think knowing he'd get made fun of is partly why I posted his message here. And after the initial shock, I did get a fair amount of amusement out of it.

> Above all, though, do NOT let nonsense like this change what you do with your site, what you put on it, how you promote it, or anything. This...
>
> > All I know is that I won't be posting links to my dolls for just anyone to see anymore.
>
> ...is a supremely bad idea, for a number of reasons. Whoever sent you this email is not worth consideration. He's *certainly* not worth acting upon.
>

In addition to you being right (gee, imagine that), I had already undone my resolution when I linked to the doll at the end of the post. :-P

>Unless there was a really random person in chat at the time you posted those links, it seems rather improbable that it was anyone here.

I agree. It was a rather amazing conicidence, though. I haven't gotten an e-mail about my site in well over a year, and to suddenly be e-mailed about the same doll I linked to here was weird.

>If you'd like, though, and think it would help with your peace of mind, memo me the email address, and I'll see if I can match it up with anything I have.

You're an awesome friend, Sam. It's OK; like you said, he isn't worth it.

La"You're all awesome, for that matter"Zorra