Updates 28 Oct 2010 12:09 am by David !

CULTURE OF DEATH

Some more media mentions!

Here’s a cleverly-titled post on SLOG, the blog of The Stranger alt-weekly in Seattle (which runs Dinosaur Comics in print, albeit a week ago I noticed that they printed the wrong title on it).

Here’s trenchant analysis from Publishers Weekly, or at least a succinct bullet-point version of the highlights of what’s happened over the last few days!

ABC News in Australia has also picked up the story, quoting at length the absurd hobos-winning-the-Super Bowl metaphor that Ryan and David rambled on about in our audio message.

Something else we learned today! When we picked a release date, we tried to aim for a day far from other major book releases — why invite more competition than we needed to? Unfortunately we don’t know anything about publishing, and so missed the fact that a number of high-profile books also had official release dates of October 26: a new John Grisham book; Keith Richards’ autobiography; a Barefoot Contessa cookbook; etc.

Let me put that another way — the books we beat on Tuesday were on their release date.

Apparently someone named Glenn Beck had a book come out on Tuesday too? I don’t know who Mr. Beck is, but a quick Google seems to indicate that he’s some sort of Ron Popeil-like infomercial huckster or something:


He also apparently has a three-hour daily radio program (well, one hour and forty-one minutes if you don’t count commercial breaks), an hour-long streaming internet program, and an hour-long talk show on cable that he’s been using to push his books. His radio show is full of fancy-sounding commercials like this.

But we beat him on his release day. I feel bad! He must have been looking forward to that day so much!

Anyway, I’m absolutely certain that our particular brand of bootstrapping, entrepreneurial, small-business-friendly capitalism is right up Mr. Beck’s alley — by all accounts he is an outspoken champion of the little guy, a humble spokesman for the downtrodden.

And I want to tell you that, um…our books are ALWAYS #1. And I find it REALLY fascinating, FASCINATING, that if you go to Amazon.com, Broke is number THREE. And the two books that are ahead of it — one is Keith Richards’ Life, which is getting a TON of — you know, that’s everywhere.

But this is a book about, you know, how he snorted his father’s ashes, after death. (sarcastically) THAT’S cool. This is the SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] book. This is for all of the — this is for [union leader] Andy Stern who’s all, I guarantee you he’s on the phone and has been the last few days, you know, with people like, you know, Bill Ayers going “All right, DUDE! Ah, do you remember when we were rolling around in the mud like animals? Remember that? This guy was smoking ash — you know, smoking his dad, and, and, popping stuff into his veins? Ah, those were the DAYS, man.” And then William Ayers was like, “Whaddaya mean, those were the days? I’m still doin’ that stuff, man!”

So that… “culture of death.” And it’s an escape into the past, of, you know, the Woodstock stuff.

And then, the #1 book — TODAY, at least — is Machine of Death. And it’s a — collected stories about, you know, people who know how they’re gonna die. Haowww!

So you have DEATH — I know it’s called Life, but what a life it is, really! It’s a culture of death! OR, “How do we restore ourselves?”

These are the — this is the left, I think, speaking. This is the left. You want to talk about where we’re headed? We’re headed towards a culture of death. A culture that, um, celebrates the things that have destroyed us. Not that the Rolling Stones have destroyed us — I mean, you can’t always get what you want. You know what I’m saying? Brown sugar. I have no idea what that means.

– Glenn Beck, The Glenn Beck Program, October 27, 2010

UPDATE: The audio has been posted here.

In the hours since that program was first broadcast into the ears of legions nationwide, Mr. Beck has gotten his wish and captured the #1 spot. We’re just sad we couldn’t have given him his special day on Tuesday! If you’re reading this, Mr. Beck, we’re sorry about that. We just didn’t even know you were there.

54 Responses to “CULTURE OF DEATH”

  1. on 02 Nov 2010 at 9:15 am 1.Ryan said …

    We can has MoD.pdf?

  2. on 02 Nov 2010 at 12:41 pm 2.Holly said …

    Between that and having his rally trounced, this was not a good week for Mr. Beck.

    I wish I’d found this in time to have participated in BOTH parts, but the results are the same anyway, 🙂

  3. on 03 Nov 2010 at 1:03 pm 3.Tree said …

    Sheer awesomeness.

  4. on 05 Nov 2010 at 8:52 pm 4.William Zachary said …

    Could not have arrived at a much better time. Fantastic content.