Thursday, January 17, 2013

Crosseyed and Brainless

Jonah Goldberg:
It took time. In an age when conservative books make millions, it’s hard to imagine how difficult it once was to get a right-of-center book published. Henry L. Regnery, the founder of the publishing house that bears his name, started his venture to break the wall of groupthink censorship surrounding the publishing industry. With a few exceptions, Regnery was the only game in town for decades.

That’s hardly the case anymore. While there’s a higher bar for conservative authors at mainstream publishers (which remain overwhelmingly liberal), profit tends to trump ideology.

And publishing is a lagging indicator. In cable news, think tanks, talk radio, and, of course, the Internet, conservatives have at least rough parity with, and often superiority to, liberals. It’s only in the legacy institutions — newspapers, the broadcast networks, and most especially academia and Hollywood — that conservatism is still largely frozen out. Nonetheless, conservatism is a mass-market enterprise these days, for good and for ill.

The good is obvious. The ill is less understood. For starters, the movement has an unhealthy share of hucksters eager to make money from stirring rage, paranoia, and an ill-defined sense of betrayal with little concern for the real political success that can come only with persuading the unconverted.

8 comments:

OBS said...

Blood is thicker than water

That's what we get for talking about spam in the last post.

mikey said...

Well, while he's once again seriously numerically challenged, he's actually right. Any market that represents 28% of the population, something on the order of 75 million people, who are desperate to be told over and over again that they are the victims, that their freedoms, along with their wages, are being stolen from them by some kind of unholy alliance of blacks, mexicans, gays, socialists, atheists and anarchists who want nothing so much as to destroy the way of life they hold dear, there is a significant profit opportunity in, you know, telling them that over and over and over again...

mikey said...

For all his vile lack of basic humanity, Rupert Murdoch is not a stupid fellow...

zencomix said...

Born Under Paunches.

Substance McGravitas said...

Blood is thicker than water

Quick buggers!

Smut Clyde said...

the wall of groupthink censorship surrounding the publishing industry

'Groupthink'? 'Censorship'? You wonder how many rejection slips it took to engender this sense of grievance & persecution.
I agree that the publishing industry has traditionally targeted a *literate* market

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Did somebody mention making money?
~

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Nonetheless, conservatism is a mass-market enterprise these days, for good and for ill.

Of course, he ignores the fact that the "bestseller" status of books like his is due to bulk buys by conservative organizations, thus necessitating the affixing of asterices to such titles in the bestseller lists.