What's the big wide world saying and hearing about us? Quite a lot.

How are the media presenting polyamory to your worried mom in Dubuque? Sometimes, in interesting and insightful ways.

If you haven't been keeping up with Polyamory in the News in the last four months
(polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/), here's some of what you missed:

** "Multi-Love: It's Complicated," headlines a newspaper in Chicago -- but, the article suggests, it can also be pretty darn nice.
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2009....html

** The folks who've organized Young Milwaukee Poly get themselves some excellent treatment on mainstream TV news.
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2009....html

** Another fine mainstream TV news report -- this one on Seattle's Terisa Greenan, her two partners, and her webcast sitcom series "Family."
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2009....html

** The Calvin Klein foursome billboard (they're not *quite* naked) raises nationwide ire. ABC News.com asks if this means polyamory is getting mainstreamed, and finds a good poly spokesperson to discuss the matter intelligently.
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2009....html

** ABC News.com also looks at whether a drive for legalized poly marriage is coming down the pike: "Some See Polyamorous Marriage as the Next Civil Rights Movement."
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2009....html

** Governor Mark Sanford and his affair were touchy subjects for polys. Me, I saw a teaching opportunity and posted about it to the Polyamory Leadership Network; Loving More grabbed the ball and sent a press release to 150 media outlets; so far no takers; but keep an eye on Newsweek. Read all about it:
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2009....html

** Why a duck? Poly and bestiality on Fox News; Bill O'Reilly, Glen Beck, and others go on a mini-jihad against triads, comparing them to marrying ducks and turtles.
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2009....html

...and Gretchen Carlson tries to roast Jenny Block, who holds her own:
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2009....html

...and don't miss the Sex with Ducks parody video:
www.youtube.com/watch

** Charles Colson of Watergate fame, now a leading Christian, warns millions of evangelicals -- people *we're* never going to reach -- about loving, bonded poly groups who "walk down the street hand in hand in hand in hand." Yay!
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2009....html

** Feminist Katie Roiphe declaims on open and poly marriages in the high-fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar: "Is our idea of love perhaps too narrow, too literal, too unimaginative?... It is an act of imagination to live differently from everyone else, and maybe, in rare and magnificent moments, it works." She describes, among other setups, an early-20th-century artists' ménage on an English estate and quotes an observer of it: "a triumph of reasonableness over the conventions."
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2009....html

** A TV production company holds a casting-call event in Seattle for a future poly reality show, tentatively called "Real Life Big Love." A dozen or more polyfolks show up; two report back on what happened.
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2009....html

** "Strong nonmonogamous relationships are much like strong monogamous relationships," writes an advice columnist for Feministing.com. "The people involved talk about their feelings, their boundaries, and where they want the relationship to go." She lays out a seven-item "checklist for nonmonogamy." Elsewhere, a different dating-advice columnist snarks at a horror date: "We were no more than two minutes into our first drink when he dropped a bomb. 'I'm Polyamorous,' he said. I coughed slightly and rolled my lychee martini around in my mouth, waiting to feel shocked or react at all, but instead I kicked into dating survival mode...."
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2009....html

** "Why I Hate Monogamy": OpenSalon spotlights a fiesty essay by a triumphal enthusiast for her 23-year open marriage.
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2009....html

** Dan Savage on dumb therapists who don't get it, and on Tristan Taormino, who does.
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2009....html

** A roundup of rather different takes on poly in the gay world (including Dan Savage again).
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2009....html

** "Are Bisexuals the Glue that Holds Poly Together?" With some statistics.
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2009....html

** An interview with Dossie Easton, co-author of *The Ethical Slut,* which is out in its second edition.
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2009....html

** Poly YouTubers. With SpongeBob SquarePants.
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2009....html

** Plus recent poly in the media in Mexico, Argentina, Portugal, Finland, the Netherlands, and France.

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Here's the site:
polyinthemedia.blogspot.com

The 10 most recent items are up front. Look in the monthly archives for more. The archives are also sorted by subject and sometimes location.

If you're on LiveJournal, here's the LJ friends feed:
syndicated.livejournal.com/polymedia

I've done 314 of these reports in the last four years. I hope you have as much fun browsing them as I do creating them!

Happy summer,

Alan

(Crossposted)