Even When It Comes to Books, They Can't Face Reality

The right-wingers are great at denying reality. Instead, they create their own.

I saw another way in the New York Times Book Review. If you want your book to get big sales, making the Review is a good way to get it. Of course, you have to get past the Times' bias, but conservative books have been reviewed in it. The reviews themselves have often been rather panning, but the Times doesn't want to be known as an exclusively liberal publication.

There's another way conservative books can get into the Review, though. It's through the best-seller list.

If a conservative book is selling well enough, the Times can't deny that and must include it in its Top Ten list. But within that, you can play with the numbers through "bulk orders."

Which means: If you get friends to order hundreds of copies of books at once--I suppose hoping to sell them to friends--you, in a way, skew the numbers. Because on a person-by-person basis, that book isn't selling nearly as well as others are. But in terms of sheer numbers, it must be recognized.

Except for this: The Review makes sure you know about "bulk sales" by a 'dagger' notation next to the short description of the book. That way, you can determine for yourself whether it's something of quality.

It's a way to get conservative books noticed so that people buy them. Thing is, those "bulk sales" don't last long. Usually, that book fades from view within one or two weeks.

Others, though, have staying power. And those others tell, to an extent, what people are really reading.

Let me give you an example from this past Sunday's Review. Number One is Bob Woodward's Rage, which doesn't have the dagger next to it. That means people are buying it, one at a time, in huge numbers. If you've read anything about Woodward's phone calls with 45--calls that are included within--you know that conservatives won't be buying that book.

Number Two is Candace Owens' Blackout, which urges blacks to turn on the Democrats and support 45. That book has been bought in bulk. It has a dagger.

Number Three is Michael Cohen's Disloyal. No dagger.

Number Four is Bill O'Reilly and Martin Duggard's work Killing Crazy Horse. Despite O'Reilly's arrogance and conservatism, he's known for these histories and has built a decent reputation as a genuine historian. No daggers.

Number Five is Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson, which favorably (but not positively) compares India's caste system to our racial culture. No dagger.

Number Six is Compromised, by Peter Strzok, which highlights Russia's interference into the 2016 election. He should know something about that, since he was with the FBI then. No dagger.

Numbers Eight and Nine are Live Free or Die, by Sean Hannity, and Speaking for Myself, by Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Both have daggers.

I have looked at the Top Ten list for years. Rarely have I seen a conservative book listed that high that has been without a dagger. There have been exceptions, but not recently.

It's a way of denying reality. It's trying to say, See? We have great authors, too, just like the liberals. But how would we know without the "bulk sales"?

It's trying to say that people like their ideas as much as they like those of liberals. After all, these books aren't cheap. They go for thirty or thirty-five bucks apiece (these are the hard-covers, which come out first). You have to like someone an awful lot to keep dropping that kind of money and spend that kind of time reading them.

It's trying, in fact, to force a reality upon us, something we should now be used to. If you look carefully, you see the truth. You see all the relevant facts. Just like in politics, you have to keep looking because they play tricks. They know how to get your attention then assume you'll stop looking. It's all over their ads.

45 keeps doing the same thing. He says that Covid is nothing to be scared of. That ignores over 210,000 who have died from it and the more than seven million who have gotten sick, more than two percent of the population. He is the leader in twisting reality to fit his narrative, if you want to call that leading.

They will do it again in the wake of their oncoming defeat on November 3. They will try to hold up the vote count when and where they can, delaying the inevitable. Get ready for that. But don't lose faith. Science, the undeniable, found 45. So will other forms of reality.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark