Anti-Climacus

HEH: SIAW:

"Meanwhile, of course, as a quick glance at any of the usual outlets will show, the media and political sections of the great coalition for peace, stability and complacent fantasy are still doing their best to keep up with the academic section, generating still more selective indignation at the curious failure of everyone on the planet to fall into line with their preconceptions. A majority of those who voted in the US election preferred Bush to Kerry? It must be because they’re all fundamentalist rednecks who probably want to bring back slavery. The ultraleft whackjobs who control the Stop the War Coalition can’t get more than a few hundred people (at best) to protest against the bloodthirsty neo-Nazi in 10 Downing Street? It must be because everyone else is being brainwashed by the media. The media are failing to get across to the public the message that the Coalition forces in Iraq are brutal mass murderers and the “resistance” are just like the Viet Cong and/or the Free French, only more sensitive to cultural nuances? It must be because everyone is being brainwashed by the ... um ...
Just in case you’re in danger of taking any of these people at their word, and inferring that the great British (or any other) public is as obsessed with Iraq, as self-deluding about it and as incapable of coherent thought as they are, here’s some welcome news from the book trade on the sales of certain over-hyped titles (via Norm Geras, who cites the Evening Standard and, though the link seems not to work, the Scotsman):

* Revolution Day by Rageh Omaar of the BBC - 16,000 copies sold;
* the memoirs of Jon Snow, chief propagandist at the absurdly misnamed Channel Four News - 9,000 copies sold;
* the memoirs of Greg Dyke, former Director General of the BBC - fewer than 6,000 copies sold."