Posted on 06/23/2004 10:56:42 AM PDT by AnnaZ
That the Lord would render the Clintons, and ALL their minions, totally powerless and useless and nameless and faceless and voiceless and homeless and penniless, and that He would strip them bare before the world, such is their evil, leaving only their immortal souls, and it is for these souls I pray ...
That other "MY" book, "My Struggle" , is supposedly a painfully ponderous tome also.
... and enjoy the winter.
....Hot Sales In Havana.
....North Koreans Eat Dirt To Afford Book.
....Traffic Stops in Berkley.
Thanks for posting that, Pegita. I join you in that prayer.
In-freakin'-credible
To heck with the carbs!!
Oh, my Pegita.
That's powerful. Wonderful. Amen.
Clinton tried to create a pop-culture event. It won't last long. That's why Rush took the week off to play golf:)
bump
Dan Rather/CBS Infomercial--See Below:
CBS News Confirms Amazon.com Partnership.
June 23, 2004, 12:27:12 EDT
Updated 15:39:35 EDT
--RatherBiased.com has received official confirmation from an ad executive at CBSNews.com that the network's Web site is a business partner with Amazon.com.
In an interview, CBSNews.com sales director David Ghiraldini verified the existence of the relationship but declined to discuss the partnership or its ethical ramifications for a news organization profiting from the sale of controversial political books, especially since CBS News isn't known for being particularly friendly with conservative authors.
Ghiraldini became defensive after reading our earlier item which first disclosed the partnership, a story which he repeatedly insisted was "incorrect." When asked repeatedly what parts of RatherBiased.com's story were in error, Ghiraldini declined to do so, insisting only that the story was incorrect.
"I don't think I should have to tell you," the executive replied "I'm just telling you it's not correct. I just don't think I can discuss this. Maybe I can call you back if I ever want to talk about it."
Pressed further, Ghiraldini reverted to his previous statements, insisting, however, that he did support the public's right to know the truth.
Besides its controversial vending of the books of authors featured on its news programming and its unprecedented decision to devote an entire 60 Minutes episode to Dan Rather's dialogues with former president Bill Clinton, CBS has also come under fire for forcing all of its radio affiliates to carry a live townhall meeting featuring Clinton tomorrow.
"It's going to be like one big commercial for the book! Why didn't Mr. Clinton's publisher just buy an hour," a CBS Radio News affiliate exec told Matt Drudge last week. "This is not news, this is marketing. I already feel dirty!"
Asked about CBS's apparent efforts to boost (and profit from ) the sales of books covered in its news programming, conservative publishing executive Peter Collier sensed two problems.
"There are really two things wrong here. One is the general problem of liberal media bias which is universally known, including among the media themselves. It's fair to say that CBS and many others in the media marginalize conservative authors unless they're too big to ignore, like Bill Buckley.
"The other thing is that these are supposed to be news shows. The whole deal raises serious questions about their authenticity. First they make news out of liberal authors which increases their commercial viability and then they, in effect, profiteer from it by selling the books on their site. The whole marketing concept is bad, period."
Tom Biro, operator of themediadrop.com, a Weblog focusing on the news media, argued that CBS's ads are emblematic of a new journalistic issue--how far a news organization should utilize content-sensing technologies to display advertising.
"Normally I wouldn't have a problem with a news organization receiving money from advertisements that are on their websites, but I feel like after the coverage that President Clinton's book received on CBS that it's not very transparent to their audience," he said. "It would be like breaking the rule that Google has for its AdSense users where you can't tell people to click on the links in order to drive revenue to your site.
"If they had been covering the story, and contextual advertising had picked up on it and put up a link, I wouldn't have a problem with it -- but it definitely felt like CBS was promoting Clinton's book for the last two weeks, including its 'news' interview with him earlier this week."
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The Selling of the (Former) President.
--The promotional effort behind the release of Bill Clinton's presidential memoir My Life has been an astounding success with appearances on 60 Minutes, The Today Show, Good Morning America and CNN's Larry King Live all in the span of just one week, Clinton's publisher Alfred Knopf has pulled off an unprecedented media coup.
That at least is the view of many of the nation's top journalists who have been targeted by the PR campaign.
"Political memoirs tend to be dry affairs, and Knopf, which reportedly paid Clinton $10 million for the book, has been promoting it with a wall-to-wall media campaign," Newsweek correspondents Weston Kosova and Michael Isikoff write in the magazine's current issue. "He granted an interview to Dan Rather on 60 Minutes, and had AOL dole out audio clips. The rollout of the book has been vintage Clinton--charming, down home and completely calculated."
Knopf's rollout strategy is "right on the edge of the envelope," Today producer Tom Touchet told USA Today.
"They have timed it very well, to precede the conventions, and the week before the handover [of sovereignty to Iraqis], the NBA finals are over."
Clinton's publisher has "forged new ground -- to take a book and its author and spread it across the cream of the media empire," Time managing editor Jim Kelly argues.
CBS has also played a helpful role in the launching the book, according to some observers.
"The publication of Clinton's memoirs has been the most anticipated event of the publishing season, while CBS itself has masterfully leaked a series of quotes over the last five days in an effort to prime the audience," Newsday television columnist Verne Gay says.
In a larger column about how commercialism has infected television news, Frazier Moore, the widely read Associated Press television reporter, condemned CBS's star anchor for shamelessly flaking a his interview with the ex-president.
"Even for a serious correspondent on a serious newsmagazine, salesmanship [has become] part of the journalism game.
"CBS News's Dan Rather was busy last week granting interviews to print and broadcast (including CBS News's Early Show as well as Extra) to promote Bill Clinton's appearance with him on 60 Minutes Sunday.
"Rather's mission was not to inform viewers on the substance of that taped interview with the former president, as much as to tease them into watching the show (itself the TV kickoff for Clinton's own publicity blitz to hawk his memoirs, published this week).
"As one of the chosen to get an early look at My Life, Rather, the intrepid reporter, had agreed not to report what he had read. And he wasn't likely to scoop himself by giving away the best stuff from his interview before it aired."
Moore might also have added that Knopf threatened a lawsuit against his employer after and AP reporter filed a story about the book after obtaining an unauthorized copy of it before its release.
But the Eyemark Network's promotional assistance extends beyond its anchor trotting around to assorted TV shows and chatting it up columnists. CBS has also, as RatherBiased.com reported Monday (see below), been selling Clinton's memoirs to its Web site readers.
Will Campaign Backfire?
Not everyone agrees that all the promotional efforts will lead to big sales for the book, though.
Going against the grain, media scholar Paul Levinson argues that the book's timing is actually not as good as you might think
"The conventional wisdom is that he's going to receive an enormous amount of attention, but I think there are so many other events going on-- the release of [Michael Moore's] Fahrenheit 9/11, the first private space launch, the continuing stories out of Iraq, the 9/11 Commission reporting -- that it's going to be tougher than usual for Bill Clinton to achieve the attention that a former president achieves," he told USA Today.
Whether that prediction proves true is something that only time will tell. One thing is certain, however. You don't have to finish every book you buy.
CBS News Hawks Clinton Book on Web Site.
They hyped it for weeks. They bought ad space in USA Today to promote it. Star anchor Dan Rather appeared on numerous talking head shows to promote it. CBS News brass did all they could to get the word out about their exclusive interview between Rather and former President Bill Clinton.
The purpose of the interview was to promote Clinton's new book, My Life.
But who is be making money from whom?
The CBS News division, always embarrassingly behind the other networks in terms of money and resources, is trying to earn a cut of the sales of the presidential memoir.
On the CBS News Web site, [read the article here] in an article trumpeting the exclusive interview with Bill Clinton, there is an option to "Buy the Book." It says further, "Buy former President Bill Clinton's book, 'My Life.'"
For CBS News, a self-proclaimed bastion of fairness, to explicitly promote a partisan book is bad enough, but it doesn't stop there.
After clicking on the link, it goes to an Amazon.com listing for My Life. But this is a special listing. Falling on hard times, the News division decided earning cash on the side wasn't so bad. If one clicks on the link and ends up at Amazon there is a little "cbsnewscom" extension on the URL. For any sales of the book, CBS News will make a cut of the profits, through a pre-existing arrangement between CBS News and Amazon.com.
After spending beaucoup bucks promoting the interview, the execs figure, what's wrong with a little recouping?
Isn't that redundant?
How many people have a table with one leg that much shorter than the other three?
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