From CNN to Atlantic Monthly to Washington Monthly to Harpers - first round of reviews and press are stunning. More later, but here’s the highlights:
“Essential reading for all political junkies.” - Ken Silverstein, Harpers
“Consistently funny…I intend it as real praise when I say that ‘I Am Martin Eisenstadt’ is the best fake memoir of the campaign season.” - Atlantic Monthly Sr. Editor Joshua Green in The Washington Monthly
“What Stephen Colbert is to Bill O’Reilly, Martin Eisenstadt is to countless political pundits. Hilarious…biting commentary on Washington, DC.” - Jeremy Jacobs, Politics Magazine
“I can’t vouch for the comedic value of the book, but I assure you the accompanying promotional video is very, very clever and well worth the watch.” - Clint Hendler, Columbia Journalism Review
Victory is ours! Instead of Going Rogue, maybe Sarah Palin’s new book should be called Diary of a Wimpy Governor? The former vice presidential candidate’s upcoming book has already seen plummeting sales and is now being offered for a whopping 69% discount by both Amazon and Wal-Mart. The ratings for Going Rogue: An American Life have tumbled in the Amazon bestseller list, now coming in at #5, just below Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days.
Of course, one reason for the drop-off is undoubtedly due to the counter campaign I led on Twitter and the YouTube - and largely supported by fans of Dan Brown in particular, who were shocked to learn that Going Rogue had dethroned the longtime #1 bestseller, The Lost Symbol, written by my good friend, Brown. The campaign suggested that Brown supporters who already owned his book, should buy copies of my upcoming book to dethrone Palin. It worked!
Much heralded on September 28 by Rupert Murdoch’s publishing house Harper for its mammoth 1.5 million issue run, Palin’s book skyrocketed to Amazon’s #1 spot on the bestseller list within a matter of days after becoming available for pre-orders. The book has a list price of $28.99 but was offered by many online retailers for as low as $15.79, an appropriate discount for a hardcover political book with a 7 figure print run. But now the book is being offered for just $9.00.
When Going Rogue first became available, there was a concerted online and Twitter effort by Palin supporters to boost its rankings and push the book to #1. With that, they succeeded. But the real question is if all those people will now feel cheated that they overpaid for her book; or worse, that they overhyped the book - much like her vice presidential candidacy itself peaked too early during the campaign. From what I hear about how the Amazon rankings work (a closely held secret algorithm… or is it “Al Gore-ism”?), it’s conceivable that Going Rogue could have nabbed the #1 spot with barely more than 100,000 in sales to Sarah’s core audience - which could leave as many as 1.4 million copies headed for the discount bin. I know Sarah’s always been a foe of our dependence on foreign oil. With that many left over books, she could probably live off the grid for a year in Wasilla.
To paraphrase my favorite movie, “The Secret”, it is important to be positive. So let me say, what a great time it is to be a neocon. Under Bush, no one trusted us. They questioned our every move. Why are we in Iraq? “For oil!” they would yell. “Don’t believe a word they say”, the lefty rabble rousers screamed on blogs and at protest rallies. Now with that multicultural puppet Obama in power, the supposedly thoughtful, latte sipping crowd suddenly believes everything the government tells them. Of course we have a right to have 60,000 soldiers controlling and patrolling a country half way around the globe. Eight years ago foreigners training in that country attacked us. That’s the reason we’ve taken over their land and lives. Not because of the pipeline or the opium or who the hell knows why. And maybe 60,000 troops aren’t enough. And anyhow it’s Bush’s fault because he took his eye off the prize, whatever that means. Thank you God. America is back! United in common cause. When I was coming of age, it was the Soviets who invaded and occupied countries, while we idealized and sold weapons to the little people who resisted them. A losing paradigm, if you ask me. Best way to wage a war is with a Democrat at the helm, I’m sorry to say. Just ask Korea and Vietnam. And now we can add Afghanistan to that list. And for that I am thankful. Stay positive, brothers and sisters. That is my message.
I hear from sources in the administration that Obama, in response to accusations that he’s all talk and no action, has come up with a grand plan to solve the gay and Afghanistan problems with one proverbial golf swing. Apparently, the homosexual community will no longer accept “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”. They are demanding the right to proudly and publicly travel to far away lands and be killed. Which after intense consultations across the aisle appears to be okay even with the right wing. Problem solved. The generals get their Afghanistan surge, the right gets to see America’s homosexual population reduced and the left gets to feel like Barack is listening to them. Thank you again dear leader for teaching us the value of compromise.
Naturally, we here at the Harding Institute recognized over a year ago the value in actively recruiting gay troops into the military. Some of you may remember seeing our Marine recruiting video several months ago. It was commissioned under the Bush administration, then quietly classified, and then in May was declassified by the Obama regime. We were admonished to not discuss the reasons for why the Bush team scuttled the video initially, but now it’s clear that it was de-classified as a shrewd move by Robert Gates to start recruiting gay Marines specifically for the Afghanistan mission. Were we used as a pawn by the Obama/Gates regime? Maybe. But as I said earlier, if everyone’s happy with this new policy, then who are we to object. And by the way, over 30,000 people have watched this video since it was declassified in May and it is the top ranked video on YouTube if you search “Marine recruiting.”
What do Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, Acorn, Sarah Palin’s new book, Michael Jackson, Oprah and zombies have to do with each other? Not much. Until, that is, you see how I weave them all together while providing a stinging indictment of so-called “Community Organizers.”
A full year before James O’Keefe and his prostitute friend exposed Acorn as being nothing more than “community organizers,” I went undercover in Baldwin Hills to expose the Acorn “front” group the Marcus Garvy Community Outreach Program (the militantly acronymed MG-CORPs) as hucksters and conmen. But instead of pandering to my friends at FoxNews (which, as O’Keefe found out, seemed too “on the nose”), I allowed a BBC documentary crew to follow me in my own sting investigation. You can watch the full excerpts of that investigation here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2K4Om http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLklw48Pe3g
As a good capitalist, I can certainly appreciate that Sarah Palin and Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins publishing house would want to sell all 1.5 million copies of Sarah’s upcoming book “Going Rogue.” But when that effort knocks my friend Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” off the top of the charts for the first time in countless weeks, I must take umbrage and stand up for poor Dan who is said to have remarked, “I didn’t spend 7 years slaving over noetics and symbology just so some glacier-snipe could dictate to a ghost writer for three weeks and wallow in first place.”
So, I’ve issued a challenge to my friends, and to all fans of “The Lost Symbol.” If you want to deny that coveted #1 slot to former Gov. Palin, then all you need to do is buy another copy of “The Lost Symbol.” Of course, if you already own enough copies, then the second best option would be to pre-order a copy of my own upcoming Palin book, “I Am Martin Eisenstadt: One Man’s (Wildly Inappropriate) Adventures with the Last Republicans.” If you hadn’t heard, my book is guaranteed to be twice as “rogue-y”, half the price and comes out two weeks sooner than Palin’s book. Just go to Amazon (or Barnes & Noble, which is experiencing the same phenomenon) and order mine and Dan’s books there.
As many of you know, Dan is very humble and though a big fan of Washington (where I once gave him a personal tour of Masonic sites and certain “symbols” set into the building that houses my beloved Harding Institute), he might not acknowledge nor even overtly appreciate me stepping into the fray to help him regain his #1 status. That wouldn’t surprise me at all. But he’s my friend and fellow author, and I owe him this courtesy.
And finally, I know a lot of my fellow neoconservatives will still be interested in Sarah Palin’s book, so if you do buy a copy (as indeed I have myself), then I simply suggest that for you own sake, you save on shipping and buy a copy of my book as well.
