Incivility is Where You Find It

There's a lot of media attention focused on the bad behavior of some elements of the Tea Party movement, and it's quite true that some of it is heated, hostile, and reprehensible.  But there's plenty of incivility to go around.  Tea Partiers don't hold a monopoly.

An interesting example can be found on Amazon.com and is centered on Michael Lewis's new book The Big Short.  In the Customer Reviews section of the book's Amazon page, a lot of Kindle users are complaining because no electronic edition is available.  To express their displeasure, they are assigning the book a meager one-star rating.  Other Amazon customers are pushing back at the Kindle crowd, slapping them down for posting "reviews" of a book they haven't read yet.

Some of the posted comments and replies are pretty ugly.  Seems like the perception of anonymity--whether in a crowd of protestors or on the internet--brings out the worst in some people.

To make this point, I came up with a quiz called "Tea Party Rhetoric or Amazon Review?" which you'll find on The Huffington Post.  See if you can tell which nasty comments were made in a heated Tea Party exchange and which were posted on Amazon.

Things I'd Like to See This Weekend on C-SPAN's "Book TV"

Saturday
10:00 am Balancing the Bernie Books
Publishing industry experts discuss the glut of books about Bernie Madoff. Three competing books will be published simultaneously in August, and a fourth has been scheduled for next year. The panelists weigh the huge financial risks involved in publishing multiple books about a media-saturated topic, but fail to acknowledge the irony that, even from prison, Bernie Madoff can still make a whole lot of people lose a whole lot of money.

4:00 pm "I was Henry Louis Gates's cab driver!"
The one major player from the Henry Louis Gates arrest drama who has been ignored by both the police and the media, "Cabbie X" talks about his instant book Gates Crasher: Driven to the Edge. Cabbie X describes Gates as "a perfect gentleman, except when he was screaming at me"--things like "Can't you turn that music down?" and "What did you go this way for?" He says Gates repeatedly encouraged him to drive faster in order to beat the other cars, but insists the word "race" was never used. X also says that Gates's reported use of the expression "your momma" was actually a reference to Yo-Yo Ma, but X still found it offensive because "I can't stand that crazy cello music." He didn't consider it odd when Gates asked for help forcing open his own front door. Passengers often ask him to jimmy open doors, pick locks, smash widows, and scale the sides of buildings with rappelling ropes and grappling hooks to enter through a skylight. He once dug a 150-foot tunnel complete with electric lighting and a ventilation system simply because a passenger forgot her keys. Cabbie X also confirms the widespread rumor that he is, in fact, Speed Racer's brother.

Sunday
11:00 am A Little More Than Kin(dle) and Less Than Kind(le)
Live coverage of the Book vs. Kindle Smackdown, hosted by Green Apple Books in San Francisco, which pits Amazon's proprietary ereader against the traditional book in a contest designed by a traditional bookstore. In a stunning turn of events, the traditional book is winning. However, only a fool would try to predict the outcome at this early stage, so check back often for updates on this nail-biter.
In another segment, novelist Nicholson Baker, who offered a highly critical evaluation of the Kindle in a lengthy essay in The New Yorker, has more examples of how Amazon's ereader falls short as a replacement for the book. Among them:

-A book can prop up the leg of a wobbly table, but the Kindle just shatters, leaving thousands of Vizplex shards and bi-stable microspheres all over your floor.
-A book can serve as a coaster, but the Kindle just sparks and smokes and zaps you with tiny lightning bolts, especially if your glass is "sweaty."
-You can offer to carry your sweetheart's books home from school, but offering to carry her Kindle is just stupid.
-An exciting book will set your heart pounding, but the Kindle will stop your pacemaker.

The segment concludes with Baker lining up ten or twelve Kindles and smashing them with a baseball bat while Jeff Bezos' maniacal laugh is heard in the background.

2:00 pm Obscure Dickens
A series profiling lesser-known Dickens characters. This week: Olymphe Jejune, fancy-pants guillotine operator in A Tale of Two Cities.

Things I'd Like to See This Weekend on C-SPAN's "Book TV"

Saturday
10:00 am Big Brother Bezos
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, explains how Amazon was able to delete unauthorized digital copies of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four from thousands of Kindle devices, in much the same way the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's novel eliminated information deemed too subversive for public consumption. In a related case of life imitating art, Bezos reveals that Amazon also caused Kindles containing downloads of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 to suddenly burst into flames and burn to cinders.

3:00 pm Near Miss USA
Controversial Miss USA runner-up Carrie Prejean talks about her forthcoming book Still Standing. Prejean stirred controversy during the Miss USA Pageant when she voiced opposition to same-sex marriage in answer to a question from judge Perez Hilton. In the book, she'll clarify her position, saying she believes that "the issue of same-sex marriage should be decided by individual states, like Miss North Dakota and Miss Rhode Island." She'll also vent her feelings about Mr. Hilton, vowing to never again stay at one of his hotels.

Sunday
10:00 am Free Chris Anderson
The author of Free: The Future of a Radical Price defends his premise that companies should give away digital products and information rather than charge for them, but notes that there are subtleties to the concept. For instance, it's perfectly OK to use information from Wikipedia for free, right up until you fail to attribute it--then you'll pay for it in spades, brother. Mr. Anderson says his theory has applications beyond the digital realm. For example, he argues that furniture should be free, a notion he put to the test by removing a loveseat and matching ottoman from a Raymour & Flanigan store in Watchung, New Jersey without paying for them. As a result of charges stemming from that incident, viewers are invited to contribute to "Free Chris Anderson"--Mr. Anderson's defense fund--because good legal representation is another commodity that isn't free. Or even cheap. [This program is brought to you by taxpayer dollars.]

2:00 pm Michael M. Thomas
The bestselling author of Love and Money and other novels clarifies remarks he made earlier this week about the publishing industry. "You have large publishing companies essentially run by young people who aren't interested in reading books," Mr. Thomas said. "What they are interested in is lunch." A former partner at Lehman Brothers and a pugnacious New York City journalist, Mr. Thomas says he prefers companies that are run by grouchy older guys who want to eat your lunch.