Just What We Need, Another Book Club

There's the answer for the publishing world. Sales are down, but it can't be the quality of the product because publishers have their fingers to the pulse of the reading public. It must be the lack of book clubs to promote their goods.

Let's start a club, says Elizabeth Wagley, the communications advisor to nonprofits around the world. All those leftist ideas are enshrined in the printed page but no one is buying. Now, it can't be that the reading public doesn't want leftist ideas because they're not leftist. No, indeed. What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Join the Progressive Book Club and you're indentured for two years, just like all those other book clubs that bind you contractually. But instead of Danielle Steele, you'll get Steven Greenhouse. It takes a New York Times reporter to tell people how tough the American worker is having it these days. It will take the Progressive Book Club to get liberals to read all about it. Clearly the American workers aren't buying. They're too busy watching NASCAR, the low-brow Neanderthals.

Put out a product that no one wants and then create a club to promote its sales. There's a classic business model if ever I heard one. Where's the progress in that?