If only politics could drum up such a reaction

By Carl

As lightning rods go, Fox News has to stand out as one of the best. For some bizarre reason, it matters to us on the left how slanted this network gets.

Is it the ratings? Could be. Fox consistently surprises me with the depth of its rating strength, altho that has waned over the past two years. However, I'd wager that somewhere on the order of ten percent of their ratings is lefties watching Fox, trying to be the first to count coup on Bill-o's latest gaffe or some such nonsense.

We've never really had an effective retaliatory strike on Fox, perhaps because in our heart of hearts, we know they have no power over anything but a sliver of the population, who wouldn't listen to us anyway. Or... we might try taking a page out of the gamer's book...

Irate gamers have flooded the page on Amazon.com selling Ms. Lawrence’s most recent book, “The Cult of Perfection: Making Peace With Your Inner Overachiever,” sending its user-generated rating into oblivion.

By Friday afternoon 412 of the book’s 472 user reviews were the lowest possible rating, one star. Another 48 ratings were for two stars. Only 12 of the ratings were for three stars or higher. In addition, 929 Amazon users had tagged the book with the keyword “ignorant.” Tied for second place with 744 tags were “garbage” and “hypocrisy,” while “hack” and “hypocrite” tied for fourth place with 710 votes. Gamers have also attacked the book on the Barnes & Noble Web site. Many of the reviewers admit that they have not read Ms. Lawrence’s book.

As one Amazon user put it: “I know all about this book but have never fully read it. Why? Due to the overwhelming backlash, I have no choice but to agree with the 1 star ratings. The rumors are rampant that this book was poorly written and poorly researched. So without verifying the contents myself — I give it a 1 star. Good thing video games aren’t judged in this manner — whew!!!”

The closest reaction I've seen from the political left has been to Jonah Goldberg's book, Liberal Fascism. But even there, that was intended more as a mocking joke than a serious protest of an idiotic opinion spewed by a man who did his research from the back of a box of Lucky Charms. In a real political movement, Jonah would have been hunted down, tarred, feathered and ridden out of town on a rail, just like the right wingers used to do down South when someone made a complete ass of himself. Lawrence's reaction?

In an interview on Friday, Ms. Lawrence said that since the controversy over her remarks erupted she had watched someone play the game for about two and a half hours. “I recognize that I misspoke,” she said. “I really regret saying that, and now that I’ve seen the game and seen the sex scenes it’s kind of a joke. “Before the show I had asked somebody about what they had heard, and they had said it’s like pornography,” she added. “But it’s not like pornography. I’ve seen episodes of ‘Lost’ that are more sexually explicit.”

Imagine Bill-O being forced to apologize to Jeremy Glick, for example. I sort of feel bad for Lawrence, from one respect: she probably got a call from Fox, asking if she would come on and slam the game, because Fox had heard it was pornographic, and hey, a chance to be on a national network? I can imagine she was rather flattered.

And now, she's just flattened.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)