Fit to print?

Here’s one of the best Amazon.com reviews I have seen so far. While it is written by the author about his own book, the man was way ahead of his time:

Bad News was written over a period of a dozen years in response to Richard Nixon’s disgrace. It contrasted John F. Kennedy’s disastrous foreign policy (Bay of Pigs, Vienna summit, Berlin Wall, Vietnam war) with Nixon’s brilliant one that left the Soviet Union dying, until it was revived temporarily during Jimmy Carter’s tenure. I had covered many of the events in it.
I argued that Nixon’s Watergate cover-up did not rise to the level of an impeachable offense, but the news media, led by The New York Times and Washington Post and backed by Hollywood, became what I called a jackal pack. The last page predicts the demise of the Soviet Union. The book’s working title was Style and Substance: Kennedy and Nixon. But during research The New York Times turned up so consistently, I put the newspaper in the title, breaking another tabu. In the years following Kennedy’s martyrdom, the media regarded it as blasphemy.
Henry Regnery published it against the advice of an editor, who tried to kill it. It received excellent reviews from Joe Sobran, Tom Bethell, Herbert London, Philip Gold, Stan Evans, James O’Malley, C. Lowell Harriss, Bernard Norling, Lev Navrozov, Michael Grossberg, and Medford Evans, and was praised by Arnaud de Borchgrave, Midge Decter, Brian Crozier, and British historians Paul Johnson and Jonathan Aitken. Major media did not review it, and the only slam I saw was a parenthetical remark by Elizabeth Pond in a Christian Science Monitor piece on disinformation.
It is still timely, as an antidote to Ted Turner’s 24-episode falsification of Cold War history on CNN (see Charles Krauthammer). It is also a perfect fit with today’s news media support of Bill Clinton’s White House, where many on the Watergate prosecution team now work, or lurk in the bushes, including Charles C. Ruff, Terry Lenzner, Hillary Rodham, Bernard Nussbaum, Richard Ben-Veniste, or are planted in the enemy camp, Sam Dash.
If the openness of Amazon.com had existed in 1984, the book would have had a chance. Go Amazon! The publishing establishment could use a shakeout. Russ Braley January 3, 1999

I bought the book in 1997, and it did much to confirm what I suspected.
The heirs of Walter Duranty continue their rule.
Hence, I was honored to jump at the opportunity to join in the successful parody. I would do it again in a heartbeat.
Anyone seriously interested in the much-covered-up background of the New York Times should must read Mr. Braley’s book!
The only thing I would add to Mr. Braley’s review is “If the openness of the blogosphere had existed in 1984, the book would have had a chance.”
NOTE: The above is posted simultaneously at blogcritics.org.


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