#980 With an Anchor
"We already know what you are my dear,"
he replied, "I'm only trying to establish the price." - attributed to Oscar
Wilde
"The bright sunshine of excessive
expectations can sometimes scorch and kill, while the shadows offer room for
maneuver, mistake, learning and healing. There is the ghost of presidents
past: being compared with Ronald Reagan. But George W. Bush is very close to
running the table, and he probably feels it."
- Doug Wead, mixing metaphors, USA Today Op-ED, 1/18/05
"Contrary to a statement that I made to the New
York Times, I know very well that personal relationships are more important
than history. I am asking my attorney to direct any future proceeds from the
book to charity and to find the best way to vet these tapes and get them
back to the president to whom they belong. History can wait." - Message from
www.dougwead.com, 2/23/05
Doug Wead has made one of the
quickest trips back into the shadows that we have seen in many a political
season. Hawking his book with the yawn-inducing title of 'The Raising of a
President : The Mothers and Fathers of Our Nation's Leaders', The Weadnik,
as the president once called him, was not exactly burning up the best seller
list. So in true streetwalker style, he turned the one good trick he had
available to him, in hopes of generating a little heat: letting on that he
had secret tapes of George Bush, and then playing portions of them for the
New York Times. By and large, there was nothing mind-boggling on the parts
he revealed. The only thing that was stunning was the act of betrayal of a
man whom he still naively believes is his 'friend'.
The action quickly backfired on Wead, with
conservatives and liberals coming to a rare moment of rapport with their
recognition of the man as a scumbag. This was surely not a good thing for
book sales. The ninety-six hours following the appearance of the NYT piece
saw Wead frantically trying to position himself in an acceptable light. At
first he congratulated himself for his refusal to speak about the tapes
before the election, whining that his act of valor probably cost him a
million dollars, a most unlikely supposition seeing as the content of his
book and the content of the tapes was only marginally related. And now, to
show that his heart really is in the right place, he plans to give all
future royalties to charity.
Isn't that sweet? Maybe he should quote the
president, who he taped saying "That's part of my shtick, which is,
look, we have all made mistakes." But the truth is, there are unlikely
to be any future royalties, since Wead is working against an (unspecified)
advance, and whatever the amount, the book is being so roundly shunned that
there is only an ice cube's chance in hell that the advance will ever be
recouped. Sales ranking on Amazon on 2/22 was #357. By 2/23 it had fallen to
#654, and as of this morning it stands at #980.
So really, Mister Wead has not even
established the utility value of a Linda Tripp, who despite being almost
universally loathed, did manage to give the Clinton assassins useful
ammunition. Hate the sinner, love the sin. Wouldn't you love to know what's
on the rest of those tapes, the vast majority of which have gone unheard.
One wonders what sort of very special messages have been sent to Wead in the
past couple of days, that he would now so readily relinquish his recordings.
Surely some enterprising individual would gladly ante up enough cash to
pique Wead's interest. After all, we already know what he is. |
