Saturday, October 20, 2007

My fight with Barnes & Noble.


Having seen the widely disseminated clip of Frau Coulter on Donnie Deutsch's show (Hannah Arendt might call Coulter's spoutings The Banality of Banality) my disdain for her, always at quite a high level, has skyrocketed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s63rzfy8FFs The day after making her anti-semitic remarks I came across a raft of her books on display at Barnes & Noble. Incensed (as always) I decided to write an email to them protesting, not that they are selling her inflammatory racism, but they have it prominently displayed. In my email, I mentioned that I believed having Coulter's trash front and center was an "implied endorsement" on the part Barnes and Noble. For instance, if there were a book called "Negroes are Dumb," having it in the window of your store, like having a certain dress if you are a dress shop, means this is something you want to sell--something you are pushing.

Of course the note I got back from a Barnes & Noble customer service person convinced me that no one at all actually read my reasoned and moderate email. What follows is a semi-logic-leap, but this to me illustrates one of the dangers of media consolidation. When a few control much, debate is stifled and one company's opinions or business practices can have undo, and undeserved, influence.

1 comment:

Tore Claesson said...

they sell anything that's lucrative enough. as long as it doesn't clash with (bushite )moral values.
although i've secretely being peeking into their art book department where many a title of interest can be ogled.
i wonder if there's any integrity left in our world at all.
They probably saw the whole fucking debacle as a great PR tool, peaking interests in die Frau's book. It's despicable.