John Avlon writes in today's Daily Beast something I've long suspected given that I started working at Barnes and Noble almost immediately after the 2008 presidential election: Anti-Obama screeds fill our shelves in unprecedented numbers.
According to Avlon's article, at this point in Bush's presidency, just five anti-Bush books had hit the shelves. So far the tally for anti-Obama books stands at a whopping 42.
Let that sink in...and think about it. For a country led around by a liberal media, how is this conceivable?
That's not really the point, though...and I'll cop to it being a bit of a cheap shot. Avlon's actual point is that these "fear-mongering" books written for "personal and partisan profit" won't end with this election cycle. He argues that because politics tends to follow "the lines of physics - every action creates an equal an opposite reaction," welcome to the "new normal."
I'm going to take Avlon's argument further than he does, though, especially after viewing the actual book titles he lists. I've shelved them all at the bookstore and watched our conservative readership gobble them up during the past nearly two years, but seeing them listed one after another takes things to an altogether new level of crazy. Because we live in the Information Age, as these (please, please, please follow the money) screeds become the new normal, we risk inciting ourselves out of our "can-do" spirit and into a nation of cartoonish behavior wherein we become the Wylie E. Coyote of the First World, always searching for ways to "get" the metaphorical Roadrunner, but being unable to accomplish that - let alone doing the things that really matter - out of impotence. If you're looking for something to be scared about, I suggest worrying about this instead of a secretly Muslim, socialist president who wants to send our kids to the gulag.
We Are Becoming Wylie E. Coyote
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