Number 1,018 (With A Self Inflicted Bullet)

Hindrocket at Power Line does some inventive primary source reporting on the composition of the limited audience for the new Al Gore potboiler "Joined at the Heart":

I confess that I have not yet read Al Gore's new book, Joined at the Heart. Of course, I'm not alone. Al and Tipper's study of American family life currently ranks #1,018 on Amazon's bestseller list. And I have to suspect that most of those sales are institutional--gray-haired librarians in birkenstocks ordering copies for high school kids, and so on. It's hard to imagine a lot of actual people buying this book and reading it. Despite the Gores' massive media push and whatever institutional sales they can muster, it is heartwarming to see their book languishing far behind G. Gordon Liddy's When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country, #95, and of course Bob Woodward's Bush at War, #2. It is also fun to read the Amazon reviewers' comments on Joined at the Heart: "Poor Al, another blockbuster fizzled. I hope this guy can find employment somewhere." And: "Absolute nonsense! I tried very hard to finish this book but it was impossible! It would surely be a violation of the Geneva Convention to require anyone to read it." Most revealing, however, is Amazon's listing of other books bought by the people who purchased Gore's latest. This list is interesting because it is computer-generated rather than subjective. The books most commonly purchased by buyers, in addition to Woodward's book about the war, were Paul Begala's It's Still the Economy, Stupid: George W. Bush, the GOP's CEO; The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton, by Joe Klein; Vincent Bugliosi's The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose our President; and Jews for Buchanan: Did You Hear the One About the Theft of the American Presidency?, by John Nichols. In other words, the only people who actually shell out money for Al Gore's book are embittered, hate-filled, over-the-top, partisan Democrats. This doesn't bode well for Gore's effort at reincarnation.