It started yesterday with this report on Drudge, proclaiming that Crashing The Gate, the newly-released book by lefty bloggers Markos Zuniga ("Kos" of Daily Kos) and Jerome Armstrong (of MyDD), was doing terribly in terms of book sales. According to Drudge’s source, Nielson’s Bookscan, CTG has sold only 3,630 copies.
In response, Kos pointed out that Bookscan only tabulates books sold in certain major retail outlets, and doesn’t track many independent book store sales — and doesn’t track online sale (like Amazon.com) at all.
But that didn’t deter author and rightwing blogger Roger Simon from crowing about the Drudge "revelation":
Although it underscores what we already knew – that Glenn Reynolds (whose book is selling much better) has remarkable respect in the blogosphere for his integrity and intelligence – I must say I am surprised at the relatively pathetic sales figures for Markos Zuniga’s book "Crashing the Gates."
Reynolds’ book is selling better? Nope, and Simon failed to give any evidence for it. He just … wrote it, as if it was, you know, verified and supported fact.
Fortunately, he was properly taken to task for it, using the same methodology as Drudge used:
As of this morning, for Reynolds’ An Army of Davids (February 2006), Bookscan reports 1716 retail sales and 2609 “discount” sales, for a total of 4325.
As of this morning, for Armstrong and Kos’s Crashing the Gate (March 2006), Bookscan reports 2598 retail sales and 1804 “discount” sales, for a total of 4402.
In other words, despite the fact that it’s been available for four fewer weeks, Kos and Armstrong’s book has now clocked Bookscan sales in excess of Reynolds’. Notably, several hundred more full-price sales. This is leaving aside the fact that Kos and Armstrong’s book is currently at #40 on Amazon, whereas Reynolds’ is at #801.
So there it is. Kos and Armstrong’s book is outselling Reynold’s, yet Simon and the rest of rightwing echo chamber has, for the past 24 hours, been crowing the opposite. [Tbogg reminds us how, generally, lefty blogger-authors are outselling righty blogger-authors in Amazon sales.]
Is this merely a pissing match between competing sides of the blogosphere?
No, it isn’t.
Glenn Greenwald (whose unreleased book is #1 at Amazon.com, by the way) explains:
These twin items by Drudge and Simon — equally baseless, fact-free and misleading on their face — were mindlessly recited as fact by countless Bush followers all day yesterday. The always fact-free Powerline dutifully recited the claim that CTG "has sold an astonishingly low 3,630 copies," and even repeats Simon’s fantasy-driven fiction "that Glenn Reynolds’ book is selling well." Right Wing News drools: "it’s really nice to see Kos’s book nosedive into the pavement." The Bush zombie at BlogsFor Bush echoes the script: "I’ve stopped laughing long enough" to note that "there is no mention of the pathetic book sales of Kos’s book on the site’s front page." And PunditGuy, after celebrating the "failure" of CTG, says this:
Kos claims that Drudge’s numbers aren’t on the up and up. What-ev-eh.
Doesn’t that pretty much capture the whole sickness? "There are facts that suggest that what I am saying is not actually true. What is my response do that? ‘What-ev-eh.’" As in: "Some people claim there are facts that show that things in Iraq are not going really great. Something about civil war, sectarian hatred, anarchy, widespread violence, a total lack of security. What-ev-eh."
Glenn gets to the meat of the issue, and this is why he is widely considered one of the best writers on the Internet:
Don’t they have somewhere lurking in their brain any critical faculties at all? For the sake of one’s own integrity and reputation if nothing else, who would read an undocumented assertion on Drudge — no matter how much of an emotional need they feel for it to be true — and then run around reflexively reciting it as truth, writing whole posts celebrating it and analyzing it, without bothering to spend a second of time or a molecule of mental energy trying to figure out if it’s really true?
***
The way in which it became an instantaneous certainty that CTG is a failure (and Glenn Reynolds’s book is a grand success) — a "fact" that will endure in those circles forever, literally — reflects a process that repeats itself over and over, with a whole range of issues. That is the process that led us into Iraq and not only kept us there, but ensured that we remained immoveably wedded to policies which were so plainly producing nothing but horrendous failure. Being able to pick and choose what facts you want to believe based upon which ones feel good or vindicate your desires can be emotionally satisfying, but there is no more destructive and dangerous mental approach than this for determing how the world’s sole superpower will be governed.
Indeed. Heh.
POSTSCRIPT (4/28/06): Simon retracts and graciously apologizes for his factually incorrect post.