Right Books, Wrong Time

Slate Says New York publishers discovered conservatives—just a little too late. Because they are notoriously slow to catch on to trends, big media conglomerates are classic financial contraindicators.
Given this, right-wing scribes, and perhaps even Republicans at large, shouldn’t be celebrating the news that establishment publisher Simon & Schuster, a division of Viacom, hired Bush loyalist Mary Matalin to run a new imprint to publish conservative books. Indeed, the move encapsulates the ways in which big media have been led astray.

March 27, 2005 by Uncategorized 1

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1 Response

  1. GregS* says:
    March 27, 2005 at 6:45 am

    who knows
    I don’t know if the market is ripe or over-ripe at this point but with slanted writing like this:

    In 2003 Penguin Group (USA) started conservative imprint Sentinel, which churns out mind-candy for the National Review crowd. Random House has started Crown Forum, whose Web site contains handy links to the right-wing echo chamber. All are trying to mimic the success of Regnery Publishing, the ur-conservative publisher that brought us Unfit for Command.

    I’m guessing there’s plenty of stuff for conservative readers to get revved up about.

    As to this part:

    A more important point: Given their triumph in last November’s elections (and their behavior since), the Republicans have nowhere to go but down. Indeed, polls and nimble online right-wing media types (Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan) are already starting to call a top in the Republicans’ stock. The House and the Senate can’t agree on the basics of a budget, the dwindling but vital core of northeast Republicans can’t abide their southern and western compadres, and Tom DeLay is morphing into Jim Wright.

    They were commented on here and the best part here:

    The problem is that all serious and large political and ideological movements contain internal contradictions. Internal contradictions come with growth. Perfect internal consistency comes with contraction and insularity. Small cults are internally consistent on every point. Large movements must deal with coalitions of competing interests

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