I can't help but notice that almost exactly 6 months into the Obama presidency the first histrionic wingnut attempt to cash in on it has already arrived in bookstores. Yes, Michelle Malkin stopped picking the corn out of her own shit for long enough to churn out Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies, the title of which was meticulously chosen by a panel of 11 year-old boys.
Have you ever sat down and tried to write a book? It's agonizing, slow, and not unlike sitting down in an open field with a hammer and a stack of two-by-fours and saying "OK, time to build a house." To have churned out a book about a presidency which has yet to go on longer than the average baseball season requires either herculean research and writing skills or the employment of some creative time-saving measures. It's 376 pages. Three hundred and seventy-six fucking pages! I mean, I know there are some ginandtacos readers in the publishing industry and the idea that a book of that length could even be edited, revised, typeset, and printed in this timeframe would be extraordinary let alone considering that A) it had to be written (376 pages!) and B) enough things had to happen for an author to actually write about. One of three things must be true in the exercise of Malkin's tradecraft:
1. The book was written in 2008 right after it became apparent that the Republican field was not going to produce a successful candidate – you know, around January 1 – and the names of the winner and his "cronies" were filled in with a simple ctrl-f find-and-replace session. INSERT NAME HERE sure is a corrupt, godless little liberal, after all.
2. The book is a hastily-assembled pastiche of glorified blog posts which involved absolutely no research and thus could be written in just a couple of weeks, albeit at great effort. For context, the average ginandtacos post is about 800 words and, if it involves minimal fact-finding, takes around an hour. In Word that would be about a single-spaced page. So, you know, do that about 250 times and you'd have Malkin's book. Unless it has 3" margins, which wouldn't surprise me in the least.
3. 342 of the 376 pages are reproduced transcripts of the Oliver North trial.
If you want to feel like shit about this country, please understand that the book immediately rocketed to the top of the Amazon bestseller list where it currently resides snugly behind Glenn Beck's Common Sense. Who buys this shit? Can they possibly read it? Can they read? Skim the comments to learn that, contrary to the expectations one might have about a book about the first six months of a presidency but released six months and seven days after said presidency began, the book is fabulously well-researched:
Ms. Malkin did her homework and the facts, figures, and resource information presented in this cogent, well crafted, invaluable book make for a must read. Culture of Corruption will confirm what many have long suspected about this president and his administration, or will be a real eye opener for Obama supporters who went along for the ride for no other reason than the catchy slogans and still don't get why they ought to be alarmed. As an aside – this illuminating book dovetails handsomely with the important work Ms. Malkin does every day on her blog site keeping the citizenry informed. Thank you Ms. Malkin and keep on fighting the good fight.
Of course that review was written on July 28, twelve hours after the book was released. So the person who wrote that review, unless working for the publisher and privy to advance copies, didn't even read it. That is, on so many levels, fitting. Art imitates life; reviewer imitates author.
Daniel says:
I saw this book in a bookstore yesterday and was indeed amazed. Most of the anti-Bush books took a few years after 2001 to come out and were actually based a timeframe of substance. The absolute earliest a book like this could come out is January of 2010, and even then what is this nutjob complaining about? This is like writing a yearly Sports Almanac review in March.
ladiesbane says:
I am familiar with fanbase fluffing before, during, and after a beloved author's new work is published, but I can't picture the type of person who considers Malkin to be intelligent, well-informed, or discerning. Is that a joke?
On the other hand, a small percentage of the public read for pleasure, and of those who do, most are reading about sparkly teen vampires and plucky bounty hunters with complicated love lives. Non-fiction can be a prop for the barely edu-ma-cated strivers who identify with the oppressor.
jon says:
Ms. Malkin could have a new book out next week, as long as she can come up with a new title. It's not as if any of her books are different from each other, since they're the same old "This is what the liberal socialist communist fascist gay foreign terrorist agenda is doing to your car, house, money, savings, freedom, dog, children, lawnmower, television or whatever." Writing for Wingnuts is really just Mad Libs with the golf pencil replaced by a keyboard. Malkin might add an afterword describing the great effects of torture, but even that has a formula by now.
I'm sure next week we'll have Regnery's "Obamacare: Why You Should Lock Grandma in the Attic until the GOP Saves U$" by Sean Hannity. If that Twilight dude would appear on the cover it would be a top seller until Ann Coulter's "One of These Days I Might Open My Legs" hits the stores in plastic wrap and millions of Wingnut men rush home with it only to get disappointed to find that she's got nothing but a huge taint.
Patti says:
She was on This Week yesterday trying to convince George that people on unemployment will only find jobs when there are 3 weeks left on their benefits, so if we extend unemployment benefits, the economy will never recover. Cynthia Tucker very calmly ripped her a new one on that, in a very delightfully condescending way. (http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=8233167 – with a little more than 15 minutes left.) There's a point early on where it looked like Al Hunt was going to physically bite her head off – which I would have appreciated.
comrade x says:
It would be an easy and lucrative career, regurgitating a tome of lies and fabrications, but most people like to look at themselves in the mirror once in awhile and not see a giant piece of shit.
JohnR says:
When you don't need facts, you save a lot of time in your writing and reading; indeed in your whole life. Start with the premise that "what I believe, is", and suddenly you've got tons of free time to do what you like; especially if you have a science-based job (although it may take a few weeks for the "tons of free time" bit to take effect). It can turn your life around!
Desargues says:
The Amazon best seller list surely must include the audio-book versions of her screed. Can't imagine that most of those knuckle-draggers can read. Or maybe they just have a lot of doors that need to be stopped.
Desargues says:
JohnR hit upon something true with his comment. Writing "books" in that vein must be much like doing theology (or casuistics). You take a small, fixed set of immutable but abstract beliefs and try to apply them to a mish-mash of hastily reported "facts". It makes for endless writing. The fathers of the Western church filled the almost two hundred thick tomes of Migne's Patrologia Latina with bullshit like that. Michelle Maglalang and her ilk are just getting started.
Sutton (simply) says:
Perhaps Ms. Malkin wrote the Amazon "review" herself.
J. A. Baker says:
Somehow, I suspect that it's actually a mixture of all three – mostly a mix of things from Column A and Column B.
J. Dryden says:
I do, in fact, feel like shit about this country now; thanks, Ed. More specifically, I feel like I'm sitting in the middle of the crowd at the Scopes Trial, listening to everyone else around me rumble about how great it is to listen to William Jennnings Bryan really let that no-account Darrow fellow have it.
Ken Houghton says:
Nah. Bryan was at least a skilled speaker.
Having Malkin lecture you is like taking your cues from Lenny in Of Mice and Men, with a strong touch of "justice for thee, not for me" from the woman who wants U.S. cittizenship revoked for those who were born in the U.S.A. of a non-citizen who immigrated less than nine months previously.
You know, such as her mother.
timbob says:
at least shes hot…..?
http://www.windypundit.com/archives/2006/images/MalkinBikini_500x380.jpg
Ed says:
The previous comment triple-fails. Not relevant, not appropriate, and not true.
Matthew says:
I have two interesting bits of information re: publishing schedules. Okay, in all fairness, this information is not interesting, but so what? I'm telling you anyway. I was exhorted to make this post by certain parties who shall remain nameless.
The variance in book production schedules is enormous. Even in my relatively small experience in the industry, I have seen the time between the delivery of a final manuscript and books on shelves range from two months to eighteen. Obviously, the more care that goes into the preparation of the manuscript – the intensity of the copy-edit, the thoroughness of the proofreader, and so on – makes a book move toward the higher end of that range.
It is entirely possible that Ms. Malkin got a book deal when Obama was all but assured of victory and finished her book around March. That's being pretty generous, but assuming that the publisher had no plans of editing the book (why bother?) this is more or less a realistic schedule. She could have taken as much six or eight months "writing" this book. Still, for 376 pages at 6 x 9, I would be shocked if the book was less than 120,000 words. We're getting into Kerouac "That's not writing, that's typing" range here.
And also, the date listed as a book's publication date is basically meaningless. Books have warehouse dates, release dates, and pub dates. The release date, usually between 2 and 6 weeks before pub date, is actually when people can start seeing books on shelves and getting copies from various websites. Unless it's a Harry Potter book, nobody really cares if you get it before the official pub date. So it's not too much of a shock that people are reviewing it quickly.
And don't take that to mean I'm giving those reviewers the benefit of the doubt – I'm still sure they didn't read it. But they could have had their copies days or perhaps even weeks ago.
zhak says:
Excellent post and comments.
I enjoyed reading. :-)
(I think Malkin is Patient Zero for Extreme Cognitive Dissonance, if anybody cares what I think.)
Cheers.
waldo says:
Congrats on the mainblog-quoted review.
Malkin = rabid Shi tsu
Steve M. says:
Wingnut welfare can undoubtedly pay for quite a few ghostwriter/fact-manglers working simultaneously. Malkin then comes along and punches the raw material up with her trademark shrillness. Voila! A book, in no time.
ignatov says:
Current ranking:
#1 in Books > Nonfiction > Current Events > Conspiracy Theories