Originally published June 29 2014
NYT thought police ban politically charged book from best-seller lists
by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) The left-wing thought police at The New York Times are at it again, picking and choosing "winners" based on their political ideology. And this case is particularly galling because it involves, ironically, freedom of speech and freedom of the press issues.
No sooner than it was officially released, book editors at the Times placed Hillary Clinton's latest book, Hard Choices (which is actually a rehashed title from an earlier failed secretary of state; more on that in a moment), atop its very influential bestseller list after just one week of sales, but the same editors have ignored another top-selling hardcover non-fiction title from Dinesh D'Souza, a noted conservative and critic of President Obama (and a minority at that, so you would think, right off the bat, that "tolerant" liberals would do everything they could to help him succeed, but I digress).
D'Souza's new book, which has been on sale for more than three weeks, is not only absent from the top 10 lists that were established for the next two Sundays following the release of Clinton's book, but it was totally missing from the list of the nation's top 25 nonfiction hardcovers, even though it had sales higher than the 13th book on the Times' chart.
Won't even earn back the advance?
The Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard, who writes the Washington Secrets column, reported June 20:
According to sales reports provided to Secrets, D'Souza's new book America: Imagine a World Without Her, sold 4,915 in the first week and 5,592 in the second week. Had it been included on the upcoming June 22 Times hardcover nonfiction list, it would have ranked No. 8, and then No. 11 on the June 29 list that puts Clinton's sales at 85,721. The lists are widely circulated in the publishing industry before they go public.
Bedard notes that Times editors are "somewhat mysterious" in how they calculate the list, but it is important to note that the bestseller's list also includes titles that are selling far fewer than 3,000 copies in a week.
A Times spokeswoman told Bedard, "We let the rankings speak for themselves and are confident they are accurate" -- a statement that, of course, says everything about the process without saying anything about it. This woman could be a White House spokesman.
More reporting from Bedard:
America is expected to explode when the accompanying movie debuts next month. In America, D'Sousa slams Obama's agenda and targets Clinton too -- maybe one reason the Times hasn't recognized it.
"They are part of the propaganda arm of the Obama administration," D'Souza told Bedard. His earlier work, Obama's America, was a Times No. 1 bestseller.
"It's their newspaper, and they have a right to rig their list anyway they want, but if they are doing it, people should know," he said.
'Hard Choices' redux
D'Souza knows what it is like to be targeted by this cabal. He pleaded guilty in May to one criminal count of making illegal contributions in the names of others, an act so petty in relation to others involving political corruption that have gone unpunished, it is obvious he was singled out.
Nevertheless, he acknowledged the importance and significance of the Times list, and he realizes that it helps boost book sales. "It matters to be on it," he said.
Still, to ignore his latest best-seller, he said, "the Times is falling short of its journalistic and editorial responsibilities in a much a bigger way than keeping me off the list."
As for Clinton, well, her tome is doing so poorly in sales that even the Times reported on June 25 that sales had dropped off sharply in only the second week of its release. Separate reports noted that the publisher, Simon & Schuster, aren't likely to earn back the multimillion-dollar advance they paid her, let alone turn a profit. Some cynics are calling it a "campaign contribution" in anticipation of her 2016 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
And about the title: Cyrus Vance, failed secretary of state to President Jimmy Carter, wrote a book after his time in office. It was called -- wait for it -- Hard Choices.
Freedom is truth; truth is freedom. Americans deserve both.
Sources:
http://washingtonexaminer.com
http://www.nytimes.com
http://www.weeklystandard.com
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