Remember back a couple of weeks ago, when Richard Clarke was being described as nothing more than a commercial product foisted on an unsuspeting public by evil, liberal, synergistic Viacom? Well, USA Today notes that, after Condoleezza Rice testified, Clarke refused to give an interview to CBS -- or to any TV news organization other than ABC. (Clarke is a consultant to ABC and has appeared on that network regularly since he left government.) ABC and Clarke's publisher (Free Press, a dvision of Viacom's Simon & Schuster) gave Clarke leave to make the rounds, according to USA Today, but he declined.

Surely some conservative will explain how this is the work of a man (and a multimedia empire) willing to do anything, even destroy Western civilization, in order to sell books. I look forward to being enlightened.

(USA Today link via Publishers Lunch.)