My post on Deroy Murdock’s straight-faced apology for outrage garnered a couple of interesting reactions — and you know who you are, of course. As it happened, a far more edifying response to Murdock’s piece than mine surfaced via, of all people, a RedState commentator, something I wasn’t expecting to happen in about a million years. However, Joe Carter (who, it should be noted, served in the Marines, and who is described here by a sympathetic source as “a committed conservative, and…a defender of this war” — pulling the BDS claim on this guy isn’t going to get far, I think), whose main blog is at Evangelical Outpost but like a number of writers crossposts to RedState, threw down a heck of a gauntlet with a post entitled “Our Tortured Silence: The Shameful Response of Christians to Waterboarding”. To quote a passage:
(How degraded has conservatism become? Consider: Historically, a utilitarianism-embracing Benthamite like Murdock used to be a prime target of conservative criticism. Today, he gets to be regular contributor to Human Events and National Review Online.)
Compare the opinion of this ignorant scribbler and armchair general to men who have served their country with honor and distinction: Sen. John McCain says waterboarding is torture and adds ” People who have worn the uniform and had the experience know that this is a terrible and odious practice and should never be condoned in the U.S. We are a better nation than that. ”Charles Krulak, former commandant of the Marine Corps, and Joseph Hoar, former commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, say that waterboarding is torture and note that such methods “have nurtured the recuperative power of the enemy.” John Hutson, former Judge Advocate General of the Navy, says “Waterboarding was devised in the Spanish Inquisition. Next to the rack and thumbscrews, it’s the most iconic example of torture.”
As Christians we must never condone the use of methods that threaten to undermine the inherent dignity of the person created in the image of God. Murdock may believe there is nothing “repugnant” about waterboarding. But there is something clearly repugnant about our unwillingness to distance ourselves from the fear-driven utilitarians willing to embrace the use of torture.
To say that this has tripped up a lot of people puts it mildly — you can read one response on RedState here, and there are others, and Carter has followed up in comments at many points as well as in comments to his original post (all of which I encourage reading, and which cover a wide range of responses). That I admit to a bit of ‘they eat their own’ glee in response is my own failing, but the greater feeling is one of depression, in that, again, this issue should never have come up in the first place. Nonetheless, it is good to see that the debate exists.
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On a lighter note, though, RedState provided laughs tonight, though as per usual of the unintended sort. A little background — if you’ve not immediately heard of Regnery Publishing or its parent organization Eagle, you’ve definitely encountered some of their works around, having been involved in publishing books with a conservative bent for some decades. Plenty of their books have been best-sellers of late, most recently Dinesh D’Souza’s What’s So Great About Christianity?, and they’ll be a force for a long while to come, one figures.
However, they recently got a rather nasty little black eye — from their own:
In a suit filed in United States District Court in Washington yesterday, the authors Jerome R. Corsi, Bill Gertz, Lt. Col. Robert (Buzz) Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Miniter state that Eagle Publishing, which owns Regnery, “orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.”
…
Traditionally, authors receive a 15 percent royalty based on the cover price of a hardcover title after they have sold enough copies to cover the cost of the advance they receive upon signing a contract with a publisher. (Authors whose books are sold at steep discounts or to companies that handle remaindered copies receive lower royalties.)
In Regnery’s case, according to the lawsuit, the publisher sells books to sister companies, including the Conservative Book Club, which then sells the books to members at discounted prices, “at, below or only marginally above its own cost of publication.” In the lawsuit the authors say they receive “little or no royalty” on these sales because their contracts specify that the publisher pays only 10 percent of the amount received by the publisher, minus costs — as opposed to 15 percent of the cover price — for the book.
Mr. Miniter said that meant that although he received about $4.25 a copy when his books sold in a bookstore or through an online retailer, he only earned about 10 cents a copy when his books sold through the Conservative Book Club or other Eagle-owned channels. “The difference between 10 cents and $4.25 is pretty large when you multiply it by 20,000 to 30,000 books,” Mr. Miniter said. “It suddenly occurred to us that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance.” He added: “Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?”
Needless to say, I could have fun with that last quote for years. In a weird way it’s almost an echo of the current Hollywood writers’ strike as well — writers versus the companies they write for — though I doubt we’ll see picket lines involving these five any time soon.
A more or less official Regnery response is its own form of soft soap that would take a while to break down (sample: “I’m a lawyer and know that the contracts they signed are clear and transparent, and are similar to the contracts used throughout the industry” — personally I can feel the heartwarming author-friendly sincerity, can’t you?), but more fun was a post earlier tonight at RedState from one of the main folks there, Erick Erickson. I don’t question he was put on the spot by his readers a bit, since as he noted RedState is also part of the Eagle family tree, but I do find it funny that this was his most substantive comment:
Eagle’s power house was able to get them to the top of the New York Times best sellers list despite — and pay attention here — despite the New York Times never reviewing their books. In fact, the Times seems to pride itself in ignoring all of Regnery’s books, despite Regnery’s success in generating best sellers.
So, it is with a great deal of irony, I think, that these guys filed their suit and then ran to the New York Times to bitch about Eagle — perhaps the only positive coverage they’ll ever get from the New York Times because the Times gets to bash a conservative powerhouse it loathes.
Could anything be more love/hate! “That damned NY Times! (Which, um, validated the sales.) But ignored us! (Even as they always listed us.) Foolish authors to run to them to whine! (Oh wait that means they know that lots of people read the NY Times and therefore will actually learn about this now oh god no WHY WHY?)” Erickson’s point about the nature of this coverage may have merit, but he seems to have missed an important point about PR, namely that you don’t plan your world conquest by running a two-line ad in the Pennysaver saying “WANTED: ARMY GUYS” or the equivalent.
As it is, his post feels like self-important bootlicking no matter what, and it indirectly puts me in mind of a great piece at Balloon Juice today regarding RedState’s increasing if not necessarily permanent marginalization (reflected by other recent events as well — I couldn’t give a care for Ron Paul, frankly, but rather notoriously RedState banned all supporters of him from commenting, then faced the news of his smash-success fundraising with a bitter carp that he didn’t raise as much as he’d hoped, which redefines the term sour grapes right there). Tim F. used the opportunity to link back to an earlier post some months ago, when Erickson tried to lead a housecleaning protest against the GOP House leadership regarding a committee appointment going to a California GOP rep facing corruption charges. He failed spectacularly, leading Tim to further state, after quoting a report of some of the fallout:
It is hard to imagine a more trenchant, telling and dispiriting exchange for conservative bloggers than this short anecdote. A Republican lawmaker outright says that the influence of GOP blogs is a pale shadow of their Dem counterparts, and more than that, this subservient position in the political discourse is exactly where he thinks they belong. Even other bloggers like Dean Barnett acknowledge that unlike their liberal counterparts, conservative bloggers like Erick don’t get a place at the table. Barnett argues that a party member like Erick should know his place and stop making so much noise.
Erick’s voice may have gotten shriller, but he seems to be heard somewhat less than before. As Tim F. added today to that earlier post of his, “It will only be good when when the party treats well-intentioned members trying to effect change from the inside like a squeaky wheel rather than like an unhammered nail.”






November 13, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Nonetheless, it is good to see that the debate exists