Wednesday, July 02, 2003

Conservatives, prepare to weep. The new New York Times bestseller list just arrived in my e-mail in-box, and, well, sorry:

Hillary Clinton's Living History is still the nonfiction #1.

Ann Coulter's Treason, in its first week on the list, gets the consolation prize: the #2 slot.

Buck up, righties. You can take it.

Now, I actually think the bulk of Coulter's sales are legit, which puts me at odds with a lot of people on the left. However, I do note that out of fifteen titles on the Times hardcover nonfiction list, three are marked with a dagger, which means that "some bookstores report receiving bulk orders." Those three books are Ann Coulter's Treason, Dick Morris's Off with Their Heads, and Robert (Buzz) Patterson's Dereliction of Duty -- all just the sorts of books that a cash-rich right-wing foundation might want to purchase in bulk in order to get (or keep) it on the bestseller list. But some right-wing books do a whole lot better on the bestseller lists than others, and Coulter's new book, like her last one, is doing very, very well. So I think she really does have readers, and we should take her as seriously as we would take any other utterly irresponsible hatemonger with a large public following.

But in any case -- oh, did I mention this already? -- Hillary is still #1.

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