The Washington Post Publishes Highly Positive Review of Mollie Hemingway's Book on the Kavanaugh Hearings, Months After the Book Was Published

First of all, you should know that the entire media collectively -- and I would say, in coordination and collusion with each other -- blacklisted/embargoed Mollie Hemingway's and Carrie Severino's Justice on Trial: Epstein Did Not Kill Himself from any mention in the legacy press.

Wait, I might have that title partly wrong.

I think the highest profile mention the book got from a leftwing media source was a passing mention (a positive one) in an opinion column about something else entirely in the Boston Globe. It was just off-handedly mentioned as a good book.

Other than that -- nothing. Radio silence. No interviews on networks, no reviews in newspapers.

Why no review? Well, because it's a good book and they couldn't say otherwise so they decided to do the next best thing -- the media's protocol about stories which might help Republicans is "spin it negatively, and if it can't be spun negatively, suppress the story entirely."

So they never even alerted their audiences that this book existed, and hoped that would damage it sales.

Well -- it probably did. Congratulations, corrupt c***suckers!

It still reached #1 on the bestseller lists -- or, as the New York Times calls it, "#6" (the New York Times routinely plays with numbers to favor books they like or hurt books they don't like, and they've actually had to admit that in court, admitting that, like World Wrestling Enterprises, their "bestseller" lists are staged presentations, not objective contests) --- but doubtless, and 100% complete media blackout did hurt sales.

So why publish a positive review now?

Well, a knowlegeable insider speculates that they have to publish this review now because the Washington Post's own Ruth Marcus is about to publish her bullshit book on the Kavanaugh hearings, and of course the Washington Post is going to give that a big push -- newsvertisements for the book -- and it would look even worse if they mounted that big PR push for Ruth Marcus' book while continuing to deny the very existence of the Hemingway/Severino book.

So here's the review -- timed, deliberately, to not help in the critical first weeks (or even first months of publication.

Oh, and they didn't even give the book a stand-alone review. They're reviewing it as part of a pair of books on the hearings.

"Justice on Trial" is longer and more ambitious than the Lovelace book. It was co-written by Hemingway, a journalist, and Severino, a former law clerk for Thomas who runs the Judicial Crisis Network...

What makes “Justice on Trial” a must-read for those who follow the politics of the federal judiciary are the details gleaned from the authors' hundreds of on- and off-the-record interviews with participants in the confirmation drama.

"Justice on Trial" puts readers in the room where the action took place, whether that was the Senate antechamber where Democratic Sen. Chris Coons and Republican Sen. Jeff Flake negotiated the confirmation process in real time, or the Kavanaugh home, where the soon-to-be-nominee gathered his family for a secret exit to the White House for the televised announcement...

If "Justice on Trial" has a failing, it is this: It never really charts a clear path out of the judicial confirmation mess. But that may be because there isn't one.... Hemingway and Severino suggest a return to a more modest judiciary that leaves political disputes to the elected branches of government. It's a view with which I am broadly sympathetic...

The late justice Robert Jackson quipped that he and his fellow justices were "infallible only because we are final." That the Supreme Court gets the last word inevitably means high-stakes high-court politics, in a world where the federal government has grown far beyond the limits prescribed in the original Constitution. Those seeking clarity would be well-advised to peruse these new books on the latest judicial confirmation controversy.

So it's a "must-read" and anyone interested in this huge story would be "well-advised" to read it.

Gee, that sounds like it might have been helpful to hear at the book's launch, no?

Oh well: Now they can endlessly push Ruth Marcus' KAVANUGH IS A SERIAL RAPIST BOOK and when you ask "Where's the review for the Hemingway/Severino book," they'll say, "Oh, we reviewed that alongside a 166 page quickie pamphlet just a couple of weeks ago."

Meantime, Lee Smith's book -- The Plot Against the President: Epstein Did Not Kill Himself -- is itself subject to (stop me if you've heard this one before) a complete embargo in the media apart from Fox and conservative outlets.

Dang, I might have gotten that title slightly wrong too.

Even with the full media suppression, Smith's book is still the number seven bestseller in the country -- and debuted at number five just a couple of days ago.

Actually, he debuted at #1 on Amazon.

But Amazon uses a different metric than the New York Times does to gauge sales. Amazon, you see, tallies actual sales in their sales lists. The New York Times "bestseller list" bases it lists partly on sales, but largely on dreams and wishes and unicorn kisses.

In 1983, author William Peter Blatty sued The New York Times for $6 million, claiming that his latest book, Legion (filmed as The Exorcist III), had not been included in the list due to either negligence or intentional falsehood, saying it should have been included due to high sales.[6] The Times countered that the list was not mathematically objective but rather was editorial content and thus protected under the Constitution as free speech.[6]

Blatty alleged that the Times' "editorial decision" to leave a best selling book off the bestseller list cost him $3 million in sales. That's probably not too far from the truth.

It helps with advertising and public awareness.

Which is precisely why the New York Times uses its "editorial judgment" to keep certain books off the list, and to list some books lower than "objective mathematical" evidence would indicate.

The methodology of tracking best sellers according to which books sold the best just doesn't leave the New York Times with the wiggle room and finagleability they prefer.

And thus our Brave Firefighters go, burning the books of all the people they don't like.

But we all should trust them. Why shouldn't we trust the word of proven liars who lie even more extravagantly every single day?

Speaking of remorseless liars, here's Hillary Clinton's quickie cash-in book reviewed by Daniel Greenfield. It's called The Book of Gutsy Women: I Personally Garotted Epstein With a Prison Sheet.

The Book of Gutsy Women, a collection of feminist stories by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton about role models like eco-brat Greta Thunberg, Rachel Carson, and Bella Abzug, remembered respectively for helping revive malaria and ugly hats, is the #1 bestseller in Women’s Studies on Amazon.

That's about all it has going for it.

Even in its debut, the lazy cash-in fell behind the latest Trump conspiracy tract, Rachel Maddow's Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth. Even Maddow's title sounds like something a crazy homeless man might yell at you while waving a cup of his own urine, so it obviously sold more than twice as many copies as Hillary’s feminist tract.

Hillary might have taken a lesson from What Happened, which outsold her own memoirs, that her ex-base is a lot more interested in conspiracy theories about Republicans than feminist heroines. Lefties might claim that they want to read about inspiring women, but they really want to flip through a spittle-flecked rant written on tin-foil paper which blames all their problems on a vast-right wing conspiracy.

How could Hillary, who has been living that way for a generation, not pick up on the obvious?

Only the die-hard Hillaryites, who wear matching pantsuits to her book tours, and eagerly shell out hard cash for the opportunity to smell her chardonnay breath, showed up on Day 1. And there was no Day 2.

The Book of Gutsy Women debuted at No. 3 in NPD's BookScan list which gathers data from thousands of booksellers. By next week, it was down to No. 10, meanwhile Maddow's explanation of how the space aliens conspired with the Russians to elect Trump so he could let them construct a base in Wisconsin and perform experiments on local cows continued to reign over the bestseller list.

David French's book, To Serve Wife, will be out later in November. It's said to be a cookbook, to make your wife satisfied and calm.

Wait a minute, there's a smudge on my screen. It says it's a *c**kbook" but I can't make out those two letters.

Thanks for the last to FenelonSpoke.

posted by Ace of Spades at 06:16 PM

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