Posted on 07/11/2005 1:27:58 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Edward Klein's book "The Truth About Hillary" has made the New York Times best-seller list for the second week in a row - a development that has the Times book review spitting mad.
As NewsMax reported over a week ago, Klein debuted on the Times list this week in the No. 2 slot.
Despite an orchestrated campaign to keep Klein off major TV talk shows, NewsMax has learned that the best-selling author will be on the Times list next week as well, in the No. 4 position.
The liberal Gray Lady apparently doesn't like the fact that one of its own - Klein is former editor of the New York Times Magazine - penned a biting biography of one of the paper's icons, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The Times has yet to review the book, but took the unusual step in Sunday's book section to publish a disclaimer attacking the book from pillar to post in a sidebar column adjacent to the best-seller list.
"'The Truth About Hillary' has united [no easy task] literary critics," Timesman Dwight Garner fumed, adding "it is easily this year's most vilified book."
Then Garner promptly joined in the vilification:
"Writing in the Book Review in 1988, Joyce Carol Oates coined the term 'pathography' to describe hatchet jobs like Klein's. Reading Oates's taxonomy of that genre today, it sounds as if she somehow had an advance copy of Klein's book rotting at her elbow."
Rotting?
Still - in what must have been a gut-wrenching admission for the paper - Garner lamented, "That hasn't stopped Klein's book from landing on beach blankets; it makes its debut at No. 2 on this week's hardcover nonfiction list."
The paper's vitriol against Klein contrasts with its first-class treatment of Kitty Kelley's works, including her recent hit book on the Bush family. Kelley's book on Nancy Reagan - in which Kelley alleged that Ronald Reagan engaged in date rape, among numerous other scurrilous allegations - made Page One coverage in the Times.
Shall we call that liberal "pathocoverage"?
Klein, a veteran journalist and editor with credentials well beyond anything Kelley has to offer, said he isn't bothered by the elite media's disdain for his book.
"My book's staying power on The Times list is testimony to the power of the Internet and conservative talk radio," he told NewsMax on Saturday. "The mainstream liberal media no longer have a monopoly on what's news and what isn't, and that's a healthy thing for America."
More healthy still, "The Truth About Hillary's" best-seller status shows that readers were willing to defy the media blockade orchestrated by the Clintons.
Hours after speaking to NewsMax, Klein told WABC Radio's Monica Crowley:
"Hillary and her people have called up ... all the TV networks and the newspapers and said to them that if you give Ed Klein exposure, we're not going to be very happy about it." The result: "I've been canceled on many of the TV shows that I was booked on," Klein said, "and have not had my book reviewed by any of the major media."
Klein appeared on Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes" the day his book was released on June 21, but the network quickly canceled three scheduled interviews with the author.
A wave of other cancellations followed, and CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" and Sinclair Broadcasting's News Central were the only other programs to interview the author.
But the media censorship may be working in Klein's favor. Not only is his book a certified New York Times best-seller, it also debuts this week on the Publisher's Weekly best-seller list in the No. 4 slot.
"Shall we call that liberal "pathocoverage"?"
More proof of bias, but who reads Newsmax. When this is the header on CBS or ABC I will be impressed.
Char :)
You will remain unimpressed .......... unfortunately.
This country is in trouble because of the old media.
****
The old Dem./liberal/socialist media is America's most ruthless, relentless, and destructive enemy.
Listening to our local Boston talk radio guy, Howie Carr, interviewing Ed Klein right now.
Klein is doing well on the talk show circuit.
Ah. So the logic is that, yes, the networks and most news outlets are biased, but the true test of journalistic integrity comes when they print or air something.
I think I get it.
The liberal World view: liberals are good, conservatives are bad. Hillary Clinton is good, Ronald Reagan is bad. Kitty Kelley is good, Ed Klein is bad.
He did say she aided and abetted Bill's infidelities over the years.
Compared to the President and the First Lady Laura, these Klintoon ca-ca are repulsive.
I bought and read the book. Unfortunately, it really is mostly crap. It was short on detail and long on opinions and descriptions. It didn't supply any more concrete info about some of the more mysterious and controversial parts of her past, just spent time reinforcing the image of her as cold and calculating, and covered mostly the Monica scandal and her college days. I am sure much better is out there.
Hence you decisiveness in coming to FR?
Is it common practice they don't bother to review "their" best sellers? It would seem that if they don't review the most popular books they might as well eliminate publishing any reviews.
It is when the best sellers are conservative books!
Author Klein makes some interesting characterizations of Hillary, and none are flattering. He does a good job of demonstrating the chronic and reflexive mendacity and duplicity of Hillary and what's his name. It adequately portrays Hillary as socially uninterested and politically obsessed.
Yes, I know others have done a superb job of this as well. However, I can see why Hillary Rodham is leaning on the nets to avoid coverage of Klein's book. It definitely has the potential to scuttle Hillary's upcoming senate campaign.
Some here fear that the book could be a sucker punch, meaning that there might be some neatly planted source conflict mines that when conveniently "discovered" might be used to poison the wells of negative history that tenaciously "stain" the Senator.
I can't rule that out, given Klein's non-conservative pedigree and the Clintons' proclivity to produce P.R. ruses.
The other possibility (and I expect this to happen more and more within MSM) is that Mr. Klein followed his research, and revised his own opinions accordingly.
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"He did say she aided and abetted Bill's infidelities over the years"
Was Hillary in charge of putting the cigars in the "humidor"?
This is my view. . . plus what you said, Lancey. This is one, like Bernie Goldberg, who just "got real" and walked away from the slime of the MSM and decided to do something fruitful while exiting "the club" of self-obsessed liberal dunderheads.
I've read countless conjectures here on different threads, proposing that Klein's book is a set-up job, coming out this early on purpose, so that she can say (which she certainly will), "Oh, THAT?........that's OLD NEWS......." But frankly, I don't think her tired old line will sell this time around, and there are also going to be a few more barn burners about this termagent.
Maybe her goose will finally be cooked. I - for one - want to see her exit American politics in total ignominy!
Char :)
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