At The Book Store

--> by Mark Adams

We took our two youngest girls to the bookstores today.  They'd both done outstanding this year in school and been very helpful at home since school let out.  Some kids get rewarded with toys, games and outings.  Mine chose the bookstores to cash in their gift certificates, one each from Barns and Nobels and another from Borders.

And of course, we about tripled their allotment.  They had a ball and I shouldn't hear anymore "I'm bored" and "When's dad going to finish the landscaping and put up the pool?" Not, at least, for a few days.

A few things struck me as I wandered among the stacks.  The first, naturally, was the sight of accused plagiarist Ann Coulter's smug sneer as soon as you enter Borders.  I swear I heard her book whisper, "Go ahead, buy me. Ya pussy."

I physically stopped, and swallowed down the bile inching up my throat.  But we were here for the children.  (It's always for the children.  Just ask Brangelina.)  Needless to say, I was able to avoid the temptation to plunk down my MasterCard for a copy -- even with the 30% off sticker on the cover.

The reaction to the Andrew Dice Clay of political discourse from the right is either deafening silence from elected GOP officials, rousing defense from wingnuttia radio talkers, GOP strategists, and Vice Presidential advisors, or dismissal, from Blogistgan, as someone not to be taken serious, indeed a comic.

Funny thing about humor . . . usually humorous books by funny people are in the, er ... humor section.  I saw a bunch of Al Franken books there: Truth, Lies.  Michael Moore's Stupid White Men was in that category too, as were books calling Franken a liar and Moore a fat white guy.  There they sat along with Jon Stewart, George Carlin, Dave Barry and Robert Klein.

I did pick up one of those thick bathroom readers filled with useless trivia.  I'm sure if I put Coulter in the john, one day when I was out of Charmin . . .

Seriously, the Ann Coulter is no comic, she's a joke.

I didn't see any Ann Coulter books in the humor section, although her last book was in the bargain bin along with Mary Cheney's newly released rant on the trials and tribulations of being an angry gay daughter of one of the angry leaders of the anti-gay party.

Now that is funny.  Mary Cheney got a million bucks and hasn't sold 6,000 books yet.

Even at full price, they need to sell another 34,000 copies just to break even.  Assuming her sales to date were all full price (they aren't since Amazon already cut the price by ten bucks) at the current sales rate of 574 books per week (a miserable figure which will only diminish) and at the $8.99 bargain price I saw at Barns and Nobels, they will take over three years just to pay her off, not including the actual printing cost.  It'll never happen.

One thing is for certain with Ann Coulter.  She knows how to promote her twisted world-view and undoubtedly has already surpassed Cheney's sales.  Funny sells, even whacked out, not really "ha ha" funny but twisted "Would it kill you . . . to do us all a favor and kill yourself" funny, sells better than angry rants about daddy always wanting a boy.