I’d believe that last one, except for the fact that the book is a runaway bestseller. It is making Amazon a considerable amount of money.
Enough so that they could moderate the discussion, and preserve their previously held objectivity, if they saw fit.
As it stands, Amazon seems to want to denounce the book while ensuring that any copies sold come from them, as opposed to any competitors. Witness the fact that they’re selling it for $16.77, vice the $27.95 cover price. The book is also eligible for FREE Super Saver shipping.
Well, if I were to hazard a guess, strictly from my own entirely non-partisan point of view, y’understand…they probably figure it won’t last long. They got the big rush of orders from people eager to see some serious shit on Kerry, before the book even came out. Hell, our own Sam, the Canadian Eagle had his order in for weeks (IIRC). Now its out, and people can get the scandalous stuff for free, and the scandalous stuff is proving to be very, very weak.
Even a generous interpretation would have to be that the allegations are open to controversy, if not out and out derision.
Plus, one mustn’t forget, Amazon moderators have to be paid, they are whores, and lack the perspicacity and integrity of our own band of incorruptible moderators and administrators…(kissy, kissy, grovel, suckup…)
I just wonder if the high sales of the book are coming from rich Republicans (as if they’re hard to find) buying copies in bulk to keep it at the top of Amazon’s best-sellers list. After all, the Scientologists keep L. Ron Hubbard’s stuff in the spotlight with the same trick…
Well, that’s kinda why I asked that question. A somewhat more moderately informed friend advises that Amazon doesn’t do bulk sales of the type you and I were talking about. So, dunno.
No reason it couldn’t be perfectly straight up, theres a very lucrative chunk of demographic out there that would be perfectly happy to shell out $19.95 for 200 pages of somebody saying, over and over, that Hillary shot Vince Foster to cover up her lesbian affair with Janet Reno…
Since the book itself is nothing but an unconsciounable slander fest with no redeeming value I see no problem with this. This is a book that does not deserve any normal courtesies. I would put in the same category as Mein Kampf or The Turner Diaries. Hate fiction deserves to be responded to appropriately.
This is not about partisan selectivity, it’s about dishonesty and slander. There is nothing on the left that comes close to this level of character assasination (and no, Michael Moore is not equivalent. The left does not have the ability to hate and to lie as much as the worst of the right does).
Welcome back, Scylla. I did a double take when I saw your user name attached to this thread.
Spend an imordinate amount of time moderating the most controversial political book of the season.
Not gonna happen. No matter what’s the book’s profits, it’s not worth diverting the manhours away from teh other few thousand books in their lineup.
Shut it down.
Well, that would be fair, at least. But they’d be attacked from both sides. The left would accuse them of not allowing them to decry the book’s numerous lies, and the right for stopping them from praising the book that brings the true Kerry to the public.
What they did do.
Now the grumblepants on both sides feast on each other, rather than the Amazon staff. Not as fair, as it opens up trolling from the book’s opponents, but less damagine to Amazon, and the book’s fans can get their licks in too.
I doubt thw decision was political, past the opinion that no way would this thing stay civil.
According to them, per the OP, neither #1 nor #2 were listed as a reason. You provide an interesting analysis, but if it’s true why didn’t Amazon.com just say so? They basically said “open season” on only one book. It’s hard to imagine that books by O’Reilly or Franken or Coulter or any number of other controversial folk would place any less of a burden on the monitors to keep personal attacks at bay.
Thank you. I’m glad to be back. There’s a number of threads discussing the specifics of Kerry and the Swiftvets right now. Could we define the political shots to those?
I thought Amazon’s remarkable policy was something that we could debate without the Righty/Lefty namecalling thing.
Personally, I can’t come up with a rational reason behind Amazon’s policy, but I’m not willing to attribute to malice what can be explained with sheer stupidity, as I believe that this a policy that few will be satisfied with.
Do you agree, or do you think the Amazon policy is a good one?
The SBVfT book is based on documented lies. I’m not talking small parts of the book-I’m talking the basic premise of the tome itself. You got anything to put up left-wise to compare?
Well, I guess we’re going to be political. I’ve read the book. I would say that the basic premise of the book is that Kerry is unfit to be President because of his actions with VVAW and his misrepresentation of his service at the expense of his fellow servicemen. This premise is backed up by first person testimony, Kerry’s own words in interviews, witnesses who contradict key events, and in many instances where Kerry contradicts himself.
How is this basic premise a lie? Or, is their another basic premise I missed?
My opinion, by the way is that they fail to prove that Kerry’s service in Vietnam is anything but meritorious. Clearly, they are painting Kerry’s service in the worst possible light, just as Kerry is painting it in the best possible light.
In hockey, you get penalized for intentionally moving the goal around. So when I point you off to a Dowd book, I fully expect you to come back with, “I’m not talking about small parts of the book written by a woman whose first name starts with M!”.
Not to mention, the claim may be that Unfit for Command is based on ‘documented’ lies, but obviously, quite a few people disagree. The matter is still in play, it appears.
None of the books you listed are comparable to the Sleaze Boat book. Franken and Dow, especially, are completely accurate in their facts. I haven’t read the Moore book but MM in general does not slander people the way the Swifties have. None of the three authors you mention have ever been anything but respectful to combat veterans regardless of their political stripe. Lying about the service of a highly decorated, thrice wounded Vietnam Veteran is a new low for politics. There is nothing on the left which is analogous.
Pundits who actually back up their claims with facts and references, instead of making up stuff from whole cloth? Sure. Not that it has anything to do with your allegations, though…
He usually jumps out with something like that in similar situations.