“Well I Never! How Insulting! My Book is Worth At Least Three Cents! Maybe FOUR! Harrumph! Harrumph! Harrumph!”
Sometimes, you have to just laugh your ass off at Ol' Man Coincidence. He can be as funny as watching Bush read “The Jabberwock”.
My most recent post dealt with the issues that WGA writers are facing in their work stoppage. Issues like proper compensation via “secondary distribution channels” and so on. Well...in my blogospheric wandering after putting the post up, I casually ventured over to one of the sites I hit several times a day—Crooks & Liars, and what do I see?
I see the “down the rabbit hole and out the other end”, alternate-universe version of the WGA's dispute, as played out by the Mighty Cheeto-Dusted Rage-A-Holic Wingnut Players. If you've ever wondered what the deal is with those annoying Flash ads for batshit winger books selling for a penny or so, wonder no more, oh skeptical progressive—it was the scam you always thought it was. Via the coolest crooks on the intertubes:
In a suit filed in United States District Court in Washington yesterday, the authors Jerome R. Corsi, Bill Gertz, Lt. Col. Robert (Buzz) Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Miniter state that Eagle Publishing, which owns Regnery, “orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.”
-------------------------
(They charge) that the company deprives its writers of royalties by selling their books at a steep discount to book clubs and other organizations owned by the same parent company.
-------------------------
[Richard] Miniter said, “It suddenly occurred to us that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance.” He added: “Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?”
Go get a paper towel and wipe the just-spit coffee off your monitor. I'll give you a second.
(Whistles Alanis Morrissette's “Isn't It Ironic”)
Did it? Good!
So now you get the deal. Those heavily Photoshop clone-stamped pics of the Wingnut-Du-Jour in those “penny book” ads hide angry, foundation-shedding faces twisted with rage in getting screwed like a goat at Kaus's house over their royalty money (their residuals) being pocketed by Big Daddy Wingnut Welfare The Third. It's a fucking shell game, for Eagle and Regnery—your typical “profits first” shell game involving the intense, internal back-scratching and kickbacks that drives so much of conglomerate business practice these days. And surprise, surprise, surprise!—The right's bigwig moneychangers have as little problem shitting on their literary “Pinkerton Men” as they do on the brown, and poor, and contrasting-viewed people they so happily hate.
I'm just laughing at seeing these crayon-crackin' clowns go all “Norma Rae” on the big boss man so publicly.
Did someone not get their check to get their white robes and pointy hats outta the cleaners before 180 days when they were sold to the ragman?
Or is someone strapped for cash to pay off the child psychologist's sessions with the kids to blot out all memory of mommy's flouncing about the yard in that...that cheerleader's skirt?
Who knows? All I do know is that they're plenty pissed. Pissed enough to get so discombobulated that a nutbar like Miniter can't seem to separate wingnut friend from moonbat foe anymore. “Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?” Very “Manchurian Candidate”-ish—left manipulating right to manipulate the left...which is right—oh, fuck it!
Let's just sit back and watch this l'il 'ol freeper crab-fight play out, shall we? And see if anybody else decides to drop dime about this mini-Enron tale of scammery.
Hey! “drop dime”! Why, that's four Ann Coulters, two Malkins, a Hewitt, a Mary Cheney and uh...a Jerry Corsi right there.
Or...two pieces of chalky-ass bubble gum.
You make the call.
|