Here’s something the Daily Kos is sending out to its e-mail list today:
Jim,
Tomorrow is Markos’s birthday! Yep, Markos shares his birthday with 9/11, in a coincidence nobody would want — though I think Glenn Beck has been trying to get his own birthday moved to 9/11 for years.
As an impromptu birthday present to Markos, we’re asking people, one last time, to buy his new book, American Taliban. This book makes the rather obvious, but forbidden, point that ultraconservative religious right-wingers in the United States are not all that different from ultraconservative right-wingers in other countries. Even in this country, we have people who think gays cause hurricanes, that science and education are evil plots, and that violent wars to wipe out unbelievers are good things. And they even appear on television telling us that we’re the rotten ones for not believing it too.
The book is a good read, and makes a good case. Extremism is something to be fought, not catered to, no matter what country it calls home.
The book is cheap, so if you want to buy a copy for your local right-wing preacher to burn, you can do that. If you want to buy a copy for your conservative relatives to hold up while they describe what’s wrong with you and the rest of your liberal friends, go for it. If you’re thinking about buying it to read it, and you can spare the ten bucks, then do so now.
Conservatives have book clubs that push their books out to thousands of like-minded souls at a time. They give away books as promotions, or charge a penny for them if you sign up with such-and-such or contribute to such-and-such. We don’t have that infrastructure, so if we want liberal authors to be successful, we’ve got to support them ourselves.
So buy the book already!
Stay shrill,
Hunter, Daily Kos
Right now, this masterpiece is ranked #1,117 at Amazon. (That’s even below Meghan McCain’s new memoir, We’re Not Sure Who the Audience for This Book Is Supposed to Be, But What the Hell, Whoopi Seems to Get a Kick Out of Her.) Even libs are trashing it as dishonest and disgusting. I might be irritated by the way he’s using 9/11 to try to sell his stupid book, if it weren’t so sad. Yes, guys, it’s a conspiracy that the NYT bestseller list is full of conservative books. It’s not because people actually want to read them.
These crybabies got everything they ever wanted in 2008, and less than two years later they’re whining about nobody wanting to buy their amateurish hackwork. Well, at least it’s selling better than the Gawker book did. Oof.