Boycott this boycott

I like a good boycott -- who doesn't? It's true that my proposed boycott of Hewlett-Packard, which spied on journalists in San Francisco, went absolutely nowhere. I believe the company reported record profits soon after my little-noticed call for accountability.

Similarly, the Democratic presidential candidates' turning their backs on Fox News seems quite ineffectual. It allows Fox to broadcast shows that people might actually want to watch, instead of the terminally un-fascinating Mike (Who He?) Gravel v. Joe (Doomed Candidacy) Biden kaffeeklatsches.

But who can ignore the loopy website BoycottLiberalism.com, which anathematizes goods, services , and people of whom the right-wing webmaster disapproves? The movie "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry" currently tops the site as the "New Boycott of the Week." "Recent Boycotts of the Week" include "Sicko," "Ratatouille," no reason given, and Al Gore's latest book, which must be suspect because it was written by Al Gore.

BL.com highlights a permanent list of "products from the LEFT," all worthy of boycott. The Globe -- I believe Bill O'Reilly calls us the "ultraliberal Boston Globe" -- occupies pride of place, along with almost every other newspaper, magazine, and network in the country. Except for The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Fox. Also on the permanent boycott list: the Democratic Party, the Traverse City Film Festival (hint: founded by Michael Moore), the AFL-CIO, Germany , and even France, which just elected a conservative president. Not conservative enough for BL.com , apparently.

I first learned about this website from Brainiac, the Globe's intello-blog, which reported that BoycottLiberalism was calling for a girlcott of Watertown's own Eliza Dushku, she of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Bring It On" fame. According to Joshua Glenn, BL.com added her to the Do Not Patronize list because Dushku attended a benefit concert for John Kerry. Senator Kerry, of course, figures in BL.com's "Liberal Hall of Shame," in between Robert Kennedy Jr. and New York Times columnist/scold Paul Krugman.

BL.com also reports the news of the day, promotes Christian values, and has links to quotes from Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, and Dog the Bounty Hunter. Dog, whose real name is Duane Chapman, is famous for such cryptic utterances as "No. 1, you never hit a woman. No. 2, you never hit a pregnant woman."

Until recently, BL.com was in the predictions business. In July 2004, BL.com predicted that "Dax from the first season of the show Punked [sic] will become a star." It's true that Dax Shepard has voiced a part in "Robot Chicken" and that he has appeared in an episode of "The Naked Trucker & T - Bones Show." But stardom remains an elusive goal, I fear. In March 2004, the BL webmaster, who calls himself Thomas George, predicted that "the Democratic ticket in 2008 will be Hillary Clinton and John Edwards." Later, he commented: "Not incorrect: I saw Edwards as a vice-presidential nominee."

And being half-right isn't half-bad, eh? The webmaster declined to answer my e-mails.

I haven't seen or heard of Joshua Gidding since I read his debut novel "The Old Girl" in 1980, and I remember liking it a lot. Gidding has just published his second book, "Failure: An Autobiography," and I like it even more. It's so good, it's flirting with greatness. Here is how he now explains publishing a well-received first novel at age 26: "That was my first failure as a writer -- premature success."

The table of contents gets you started: "The Failure of My Childhood," "Failure at Exeter," "First Failure at Sex," "Failure in New York," " Failure in Hollywood," "My Failure as a Husband," " My Failure as a Son." But there's more going on here. Gidding is a wry, philosophical writer, and underlying his comic shtick -- he used to nap under his desk while working as a "story analyst" for Warner Brothers -- he writes about deeper losses.

His wife, Diane, to whom he was not always faithful, dies, leaving Gidding to raise his young son, Zack. Among her parting gifts to her bibliophile husband, who is a compulsive book-buyer, was the line: "But Josh, it's not in a book." Whatever "it" is -- knowledge, joy, enlightenment -- she was right, it's not in a book. But there is a lot of it in this book.

Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.