It's absolutely wretched, of course, but it's clear now that LJ is now a corporate, for-profit entity and it should now be seen and treated as such. People should not give and support it if they expect to receive anything in return.
I'm working on beefing up my other 3 wordpress blogs and here, of course... I'm also liking Twitter more and more to communicate with my real-world friends (also since it's the only thing that ever gets updated on my Facebook account, it's rather useful.)