The FTC says book bloggers seriously need to chill. “We’re not after you.” Oh really? Then how do you explain that car that’s been parked outside my house since I came home last night? You know, the black one with the carseats in the back? And my computer crashed twice yesterday. Coincidence? Oh, I think you DO know what I’m talking about, FTC, if that is your real name…. But regardless of who you say you’re after, the mechanism exists and can be applied broadly at will. I guess I’m overreacting. I mean, when in all of US history has legislation intended for one purpose been perverted at the suggestion of political or corporate interests? Pfft. I should totally take a pill. Or talk to this lady and maybe get a hug or something.

The Federal Trade Commission, which set the blogging world aflame two weeks ago with new guidelines governing truth-in-cyberspace-advertising, “never intended to patrol the blogosphere,” said Mary Engle, an FTC lawyer who addressed KidlitCon 09, a conference of kids’ book bloggers held last weekend in Alexandria, Va. “We couldn’t do it if we wanted to and we don’t want to.”

Engle, the FTC’s associate director for advertising practices, spoke to the gathering of 70 bloggers at the invitation of conference organizer Pam Coughlan, who blogs as Mother Reader. “Everybody who talked to me after she spoke said they felt so much better and that they understood the issues much better,” Coughlan said.