RANT
OR RAVE
HUFFINGTON
09.09.12
“I could’ve
written a
book with no
reporting that
would have
been utter
bullshit and
would have
sold a million
copies.”
–Michael Grunwald
date. In August 2004, Regnery published
Unfit for Command, by John O’Neill and
Jerome Corsi, a book that was propelled
by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a
group trying to undermine Democratic
candidate John Kerry’s military record.
Corsi returned in Aug. 2008 with The
Obama Nation, which prompted the
Obama campaign to issue a 40-page rebuttal, calling into question numerous
salacious claims.
Even as the campaign and independent
fact-checkers debunked claims, the book
kept selling.
Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New
York Times’ Sunday Book Review, says
that “prolonged or intensive cable ex-
posure sells books.” Tanenhaus pointed
out that former Fox News host Glenn
Beck helped propel various thrillers up
the best-seller list, along with Frederik
Hayek’s classic The Road to Serfdom and
R.J. Pestritto’s Woodrow Wilson and
American Progressivism.
While the New York Times was criticized for downplaying Klein’s book—columnist Cal Thomas claimed “ideological
apartheid” on Fox News—the newspaper actually did review the book in the
daily paper although not in the Sunday
supplement, because the editors never
received a galley of the book in advance
of publication, Regnery confirms.
Tanenhaus says editors “always [make]