IDIOCRACY

On the New York Times bestseller list that was just sent out via e-mail, Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism moves up from #10 to #3. Good grief.

Right-wing books in general are doing better right now than left-wing books -- Paul Krugman's last book missed the list, as did Glenn Greenwald's, but Glenn Beck and Laura Ingraham and now this lunkhead are going gangbusters. As someone who grew up in Boston during the 86-year Red Sox championship drought and who moved to New York at the dawn of the Steinbrenner era, these folks remind me of (pre-Red Sox Nation) Yankee fans -- "Hey, we haven't won a World Series in two years!" Republicans haven't even lost the White House yet (and may not), they still control the Supreme Court, they effectively still control Congress -- and yet they feel they've been down too damn long and it's high time they regained the rightful place at the top that they haven't even lost yet. And so they're buying books trying to get fired up for the inevitable restoration and the long-awaited end of the wilderness years that still haven't arrived.

Or at least that's my theory.

(The new list will be posted at the Times site this weekend.)