Of books and psychobabble

While I'm not a Drudge Report fan, I occasionally go to his site by following links on other blogs. Yesterday, I saw a mention of Drudge on PowerLine. The post John referred to was about low sales figures for Markos Moulitsos' book Crashing the Gate.

This must have touched a few nerves - Glenn Greenwald, who has a book coming out, stepped up to the plate to defend Markos' book. So did a lot of other leftist sites. Glenn's was titled "Anatomy of the "thought" process of Bush defenders", although he bases his rant on Drudge and two conservative bloggers. Yet he paints his assertions with an overly broad brush on all those "Bush Lovers" he dislikes:

There are so many data holes and misleading omissions in this item that it is literally and wholly useless in determining whether the book is a success. I want to emphasize that what matters here is not whether the book really is a success (I have no idea if it is or isn't), but how the baseless Drudge assertion became gospel fact among Bush followers, a distorted and corrupt process which generally governs how they come to think about the world with regard to virtually every issue.

What happened to the dislike of stereotyping he displayed last week? This theme gets repeated several times though his rant. He dismisses Drudge's source (Bookscan) as unreliable and then uses the same source to run down sales of conservative books. At least he backs off on the assertions of his encyclopedic knowledge of the liberal blogging book world - Tuesday's claim:

"There have been a few other recent blog-based books, including Markos and Jerome's highly successful Crashing the Gate..."

Is corrected yesterday to:

"I want to emphasize that what matters here is not whether the book really is a success (I have no idea if it is or isn't)..."

The interesting thing about this is how silly it is. Drudge is petty for starting it, the small number of right wing bloggers who chimed in are petty for revelling in the low numbers, and lots of folks on the left are being downright childish for taking offense at it. I point out Greenwald because it appears that this opened an especially large wound for him, apparently inspiring him to drag in every single issue he has with the right, but there are plenty of other examples. Jane Hamsher doles out the reasoned and intellectual discourse she's so well known for:

The success of both Crashing the Gate and Glenn Greenwald’s book? The right are quite literally gagging on it.

Bon a-fuckin’-petite, you warmongering, bedwetting bastards.

Classy, huh?

Atrios, in an unusually long introduction to an open thread, also ties this to generalities about the right:

"Their defective mind processes work the same way, whether it's Iraq or book sales."

Surprisingly, Crooks and Liars has it right:

"It is a stupid pissing contest."

Glenn defends his generalizations here. It seems to be situational - sweeping generalizations are repugnant when used to describe liberals but necessary when describing conservatives.

By the way, Glenn's book is still showing at #1 at Amazon, and that's just fine. I wish him success (honest, I do). I may even read it, as I am curious to see if it contains any insight into his apparent contempt for the constitution (particularly Article III). In case it's dropped from the top slot at Amazon, here's a screen shot
.

I've checked a couple of times and noticed something that the folks who focus on politics only probably didn't - the number two slot has been solidly occupied by the same book. It's a ground-breaking tome about doggy discipline entitled Cesar's Way : The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems. Considering all the squabbling over rankings, and to demonstrate that there's more than sales numbers with which to evaluate a book, it occurred to me that Cesar's Way might be a useful marketing tool for Glenn in light of the constant companionship it's provided his book on the Amazon list. Maybe some creative marketing is in order....

I think it would look stunning in those glowing ad panels at the airport, don't you?

Update: Fixed link for screen shot.