(Title edited)
On Monday, Chris "Tweety" Matthews pimped Ann Coulter's appearance on his show Tuesday with the words "Say what you will about her - she sells books!"
So does she really? Let's look at Amazon's Top 100 Non-Fiction Political books list (updated hourly, so these positions may change somewhat).
Currently, Coulter's paperback release of "Godless" is at #58. (When I first compiled this list an hour or so after her appearance on Matthews' show, it was at #85. A half-hour later, it had dropped to #98.)
What books are, as of this writing, more popular than Coulter's?
#57. Anatomy of Deceit: How the Bush Administration Used the Media to Sell the Iraq War and Out a Spy by Marcy Wheeler (yay, Marcy!)
#54. How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok by Glenn Greenwald
#44. American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America by Chris Hedges
#32. Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project) by Noam Chomsky
#29. Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans--Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild by Greg Palast
#20. Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill
#7. The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption by John Perkins
#6. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming by Paul Hawken
And of course, at #1:
A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency by Glenn Greenwald
So, if "selling books" is the big criteria for getting on Tweety's show - and let's keep in mind also, Coulter got THE FULL HOUR - why aren't any of the above-mentioned authors, who have books currently selling better than Coulter's, being booked onto Chris Matthews?
I especially want to point out the performance of both Greenwald's books and the book by Marcy Wheeler - two authors best known for their work as "bloggers," who have received little, if any, promotion from the "conventional" book business. In fact, in his appearance at Firedoglake's "Book Club" on Sunday, Greenwald revealed his first books - "How Would a Patriot Act?", still selling better than Coulter's "Godless" - received NO "dead tree" reviews. His current book, #1 for the moment on this list, is being published by a more "conventional" publisher - Crown - but it still doesn't seem he has much lined up in the way of interview shows. As for Marcy Wheeler's book, it is a complete product of the internet, has received little if any "promotion" in the mainstream press, and is still, months after its release, outselling Coulter.
We won't even go into Chomsky!
So again, if "selling books" is what gets you on MSNBC (and the Today Show, and Good Morning America and etc etc etc), why aren't the people above being booked? They're selling books, Chris, Matt, and Diana - Coulter isn't.