Big Trouble in Little Parnassus

Dear Danny Boy:

When you’ve lost CNN.com’s Brent Bozell, a man who is to the great issues of the day what flatulence is after a ten course Tex Mex dinner, you know you’ve strayed from the beaten path and are tripping down that road less traveled. Perhaps in an attempt to defend the network that had given him the wingnut welfare so cherished by Republicans and those that love them, Bozell the Clown said your client’s behavior on Piers Morgan's show was “downright bizarre.” He also ended his jeremiad by writing,

O'Donnell had no right to walk off the set. But in a sense I'm glad she did -- if it means she'll never come back. Conservatives do themselves no favors by defending this woman and she is doing conservatives no favors by going on national television programs to talk about -- God only knows what she'll talk about, or not talk about, next. Please, Christine O'Donnell, call it a day.

Ouch. And considering that O’Donnell’s Amazon sales ranking is going down faster than Mark Foley on a congressional page (it’s now at #11,907 in Books, down almost 10,000 places from her peak on her release date of 2800), and since she got herself banned from Morgan's show for life (which, considering his ratings, boils down to the end of the year) I think it’s time to batten down the hatches, sound the General Quarters alarm and do some serious damage control. Because it's rather obvious by now that the poor girl is way out of her depth (I'm thinking of an intellectual kiddie pool or Petri dish) and that allowing her to violate the self-publicity clause of her contract is like sending out a one year-old chimpanzee to supermarket chains to sell Chiquita bananas.

So here are my ideas to shore up book sales and to restore some bloom to the literary rose that is Troublemaker:

First off, we all how know Sarah Palin's literary masterpiece, Going Rogue, became a runaway bestseller. It was bought up in bulk by right wing organizations (including by SarahPAC itself) and distributed for free or sold at right wing functions meaning that relatively few sales were actually made in the brick and mortar stores (shrewdly selling the book at below cost certainly helped). I say we contact other right wing organizations such as the John Birch Society, the various chapters of the Tea Party movement and anti-masturbation factions and ask them to buy Troublemaker in bulk so they can distribute them at White Supremacy rallies, gun shows, tax revolts and whereever Glenn Beck finds himself (I heard he'll be in Israel doing a "Mormons Love the Jews!" rally. Think of the important market that you can open up there, provided Trident's foreign rights agents can sell the Hebrew translation).

Secondly, you need to be more proactive and to not relegate this work of literary genius (which one Amazon reviewer glowingly referred to as "a wobbly table stabilizer infrequently shot through with basic literacy") to the middle of the page of your new releases for July/August. I would recommend you give O'Donnell complete control of Trident Media's index page much in the same way that your client Stephen Colbert took over Major League Baseball's Twitter account for a day (Btw, I'm not sure that you're aware of this but Colbert isn't a real conservative). Think of the possibilities, Danny Boy.

Thirdly (and, admittedly, this would be tricky), we could claim that Christine O'Donnell is actually a close relative of the far more popular, better-informed and saner Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC. I know, I know, the network that employs Joe "Dead Interns Society" Scarborough and Pat "America was founded on caucasian principles, dad gummit!" Buchanan is a liberal bastion and evil twin of Fox News. But with a bit of persuasion (and perhaps a lifetime membership in the Hair Club for Men), I think we can get O'Donnell to play ball and claim they're siblings or first cousins and that they just wanted Christine to succeed, and spectacularly fail to succeed, on her own merits.

#4: Your newest client's 42nd birthday is coming up in four days. You might want to mention that on your website so she can get some much-needed pity sales.

#5 You might want to enlist the aid of every coven in America to put a hex on anyone who refuses to buy Ms. O'Donnell's book. Perhaps your other clients Penn & Teller can help you with that.

#6: Might I humbly submit my own book proposal (I know you often prefer to sell books at auction sight unseen to unwary publishers such as St. Martin's Press but hear me out), Bedazzled: The True Story of the Man Who Stood in Line Behind America's Most Beloved 42 Year-Old Virgin at a Sex Shop While She Was Buying a Medieval Chastity Belt. After all, since your proposed upgrade of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann has proven to be so lucrative (at least in the first 24 hours of her book's release), I am sure that a book by anyone even remotely affiliated with Christine O'Donnell will sell like hotcakes (witness Joe the Plumber's fabulous success after his nation-shattering Obama rope line conversation, as well as Bristol "Dancing With the Real Stars" Palin and promising porn star Levi "Hizzoner" Johnston).

In summation, I'm sure, Danny boy, that if you were to take even half these suggestions under advisement, Christine's plummeting book sales will begin to rise again like the penises of horny, lonely Republican men in their Ford pickups and plumbing vans who love her for her common prejudices.

Your humble and obedient servant,

JP