need some slightly disturbing entertainment for a moment? step into most any bookstore and head for the political section. perusing the displays and shelves should tip you off that it's a polite war zone of passive aggressive activity. depending on where you reside in the country, you'll see a different genesis of this phenomenon, but it's amusing in any form.
you stroll up to a shelf to browse and notice that some of the books have been turned around. more often than not, books that have anything to do with the clintons are the first to be hit. (i guess they must be polarizing than i thought, but that's rant i'll save for another day.) not only will overly sensitive customers turn these books so that you see the back cover instead of the front, they have a multitude of other ways to try and banish the offensive from your sight. hiding only the cover must not be enough for some. their anger makes them do things like making sure that none of the books are faced out (turned so that you see the cover facing towards you instead of just the spine of the book) except for the ones they want you to read. before you know it, the only faced out books become the reagan diaries and anything by newt gingrich. taking the practice a step further leads people to putting the spines towards the back of the shelf so that you can't even find the books they hate. if you're looking for a book by madeleine albright you might want to check that chunk of white pages facing outwards. try the ones with the ron paul postcards sticking out of the sides first.
still another tactic is to cover the faced out books with those by a different author. do you honestly think ann coulter's books are in every part of the alphabet? take a few of those away and you'll reveal, well, everyone else the ann coulter people don't want you to know about. which seems to extend all the way to everyone who is not ann coulter. they can even hate on other conservative types. hey ann! what did condi rice ever do to you?
in other places it's just as likely to be the books by conservative authors. in this instance i have even seen books turned upside down. come on, you dweebs. that doesn't make a statement, it only makes a mess! oh, and please stop taking biographies of people you don't like and hiding them in the sex section. not only is it frustrating because the books aren't in the right place, but you've defeated the purpose of hiding them. the sex section gets shopped by more people than you think. it's in psychology, after all. who doesn't occasionally wander past it "by accident" when they say they're looking for self help? still, the irony of finding a book by bill clinton next to the kama sutra is enough to elicit hilarious laughter from me.
the newest twist on this twist is blue-on-blue hating. last week i walked into politics to shop and discovered all the clinton books had been removed from displays. there weren't any holes in the display; just a slew of obama obama obama. oddly enough, the mccain books on the very same display were all still in place. when i glanced over at the shelves, bill had magically turned into barack and both of the clintons seemed to be glowing with the audacity of hope. i don't know if this was funny or maybe too reminiscent of ann coulter, but it really just looked kind of stupid. i mean, i don't think is what candidates mean when they talk about grassroots campaigning.
mostly i can't believe how often these things are done. are the people they support so very fragile that they can't handle a different point of view? is it really that important whether or not i see that a book by ronald reagan exists? am i not smart enough to make choices based on what a personally believe? do they think that if they cover madeleine with newt i'll change my mind with a sudden "i coulda had a V8" fervor? what the fuck, man?!? i'm a big girl. i can take it. if i can restrain myself from vomiting on the dr. laura books (which thus far has amazingly been a successful task) then i would think they can trust me to differentiate between what i want to investigate and what i'll skip.
or they could just go on activating my juvenile side. ultimately, if you try to take it away from me i only seek it out more. jeez, just take it a step further and try to ban all of the books that have to do with history or politics so that sales go through the roof. either way, they lose. hear me snickering now, losers? get a life.
what i'm reading this week:
KV - armageddon in retrospect
raymond chandler - farewell, my lovely
donald margulies - collected stories
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