Posted on 12/04/2003 12:53:51 PM PST by areafiftyone
Sybil Ammons bought eight books and thought about buying two more. Standing in a line that snaked by the coffee shop and past the travel section, she wanted Zell Miller to sign them all.
Face to face with the only U.S. senator on this week's New York Times best-seller list, the coroner from Stewart County had a question.
"Can you run for governor again?" Ammons asked.
"You don't know how old I am," said Miller, 71.
"No, but I think you've got enough in you to straighten us out again," said Ammons, also the assistant director of nursing at Stewart-Webster Hospital.
Such were conversations between Miller and people who lined up Wednesday at Barnes & Noble for him to autograph "A National Party No More," a book that performs literary surgery on the National Democratic Party without the benefit of anesthesia.
In two hours, Miller signed 400 books. Even after he was enjoying a bowl of soup, people were still pushing books in front of him.
"That's all right," he said, "as long as you're buying a book."
His book is No. 7 on the Times list of best-sellers, between a tell-all by Princess Di's butler and an autobiography of Stone Cold Steve Austin, the rattlesnake from World Wrestling Entertainment. This is the third week Miller's made the Top 10.
Miller is in the epicenter of a whirlwind week. Both Friday and Saturday, he signed 1,000 books. Tuesday in Macon, he did more than 900. Leaving Columbus, he was on his way to autographings in Savannah and Augusta.
"I'm enjoying my 15 seconds -- or is it 15 minutes -- of fame," Miller said.
Miller, a lifelong Democrat, has slammed the Democrats' lineup of presidential hopefuls and recently endorsed President George W. Bush. A two-term Georgia governor, he was appointed to the seat held by the late Paul Coverdell, a Republican.
Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D. -- the Senate Minority Leader -- has also written a book and in it mentions the paradoxical Miller. "He said the Democrats knew something was wrong with me when I hired so many of Sen. Coverdell's staff members."
As controversy swirls around the University of Georgia, president Mike Adams and Athletic Director Vince Dooley, there are whispers that Miller could emerge as a potential successor to Adams. Unthinkable, Miller said.
"I'm not a college administrator," he said. "I'm a teacher."
That just about sums up the black-hearted Democrat partisans, that they would besmirch a fine man like Senator Miller because he has the audacity to hire some staff from the man whose death elevated him to the Senate in the first place. Real classy by Daschle and his fellow demoncrats.
Yep, sums them up. Oh, that and the time Hillary Clinton forced 99-year-old Strom Thurmond to stay late into the night on the Senate floor rather than permit a deal that would allow him to go home.
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