Comments on: Books Without Content

By: jd

jd — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:46:08 +0000

I must confess that I rarely read the sort of book that Jane is talking about. Too American and too short lived. But that’s a matter of taste and budget – the local library rarely buys them.

>Nobody who knows what the word “fascism” actually >means, noone who knows the first thing about the >history of the twentieth century, can read Hedges’s >book without getting a headache.

Yes! I have reached the point of treating fascist, nazi, communist, socialist, liberal, conservative, right wing, left wing as meaningless noise.

And I’m considering adding torture, justice and human rights to the list of noise words.

By: robert_piepenbrink

robert_piepenbrink — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 16:29:55 +0000

Odd. I’d have put Franks in that “content-free” stack. He spends several hundred pages arguing that if only the Democratic Party moved further to the economic left, socially conservative Kansans would vote for Democratic candidates. It’s possible, but where is the evidence? Poll results? Voting in local elections? Results in other states? Nada. Wishful thinking makes a 15 minute sermon, not a “non-fiction” book.

Yet Franks sold well, which may be the point. His readers wanted to have their existing beliefs confirmed, which is always a popular thing, and they enjoyed being told that what they needed to do was what they wanted to do anyway. I privately think of such books as “beer and potato chip diet” books. There was one a few years ago teling people how good for them watching evening TV soap operas was.

In either case, a book which said you have to sacrifice to get what you want–that you’ll have to give up the potato chips to lose weight, or change your entertainment to be better informed and alert–might have been more accurate but less popular. And if Franks had written that Democrats wanting a more progressive income tax structure might have to give a bit on homosexual adoption and quotas for cross-dressers, he might not have gotten that big display as you walked into Borders.

Whch may be why the good stuff is harder to find. Coulter had to put serious work into TREASON and GODLESS. If she can move about as many copies of HOW TO TALK TO A LIBERAL and IF DEMOCRATS HAD ANY BRAINS, why go to the extra effort? As a nation, we get only what enough of us will pay for, and we’re stuck with whatever enough of us will put up with. I find it a little depressing sometimes in books, music and cars.

By: Lymaree

Lymaree — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 14:49:26 +0000

“If you already hold the point of view they favor, you’ll do nothing but hear it repeated”

And that right there is the reason for the books. A certain category of people, who probably don’t read all that much or all that widely, are willing to pay for, and glad to have something to point to, that agrees with their preconceptions completely.

They aren’t the market for the substantive books with actual content. They listen to conservative radio or read liberal websites because they already know what they’re going to see or hear. It’s more of a sacrament than an exploration, it just confirms their place in the world and how they see themselves.

That’s my take on it, anyway.

Lymaree
on vacation, still opinionated….