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News-Press.com, via Wonkette.

Not even tea party favorite Christine O’Donnell could draw a large crowd for her book signing Wednesday in staunchly Republican Naples during August, a month when there are few tourists and many locals are on vacation.

Still, O’Donnell took the turnout of five people — members of the media outnumbered customers — at Barnes & Noble in stride.

Note that The News-Press is struggling as hard as humanly possible to make it sound as though O’Donnell’s book reading would have been a success at some other time, in some other place. This is pretty standard ego-massaging if you work in a bookstore. Every bookseller knows what to say if an author event draws in only a couple of people: Oh, the weather is so nice outside that nobody wanted to come in; oh, Garrison Keillor is reading across town and that probably pulled a lot of your audience away from this reading; we’re heading into a big holiday weekend; I’m sure this is all our fault. But you can’t apologize this kind of a dismal failure away. Of the five people who attended the signing, one of them said he was going to launch his own presidential campaign, and another one tried to get O’Donnell to sign a book on demonology. Thank God the press was there to cover this important event—it’s like the whole tea party “phenomenon” in miniature.

16 replies on “This Is a Metaphor for Something: Christine O’Donnell Book Reading Draws Five People”

  3. Who knew there were five tea partiers who could read? Maybe they forget what kind of crowd they’re trying to appeal to – one that lives in sound bites and doesn’t want to think too hard about it.

  5. I doubt most of the 5 were even Tea Partiers. Just another sign of how the “liberal” media creates Republican superstars and perpetuating conservative narratives.

  8. Her quote on that book cover essentially says “Let’s go backwards, not forwards.”

    I don’t think she’s implying back to when we, as a nation, built incredible bridges, dams and established beautiful national parks. I think she’s thinking more along the lines of before there were gay people.

  9. Uhhhh, It was a BOOK SIGNING, not a BOOK READING…. If she had been doing a book reading at Barnes and Nobles, there would have been only three people attending…;-D

  10. If there were *more* “journalists” than attendees, do you think they’ll get the message & stop following around this non-story?

    Oh, wait, I forgot: The stories are already written, “journalists” are only paid to be warm bodies.

  12. Somewhere I read that she’d done a reading for the books-on-CD version of her book. This is bound to draw a larger audience among the illiterate tea-baggers. Failing that, perhaps she can put out a picture-book version. Charles Aadams might be convinced to illustrate – for enough money.

  13. There’s an autographed version of her book on eBay that was posted the day after the signing. You can Buy It Now for only $79.99. Free shipping! (No, I’m not the seller)

  14. The tea party was always distraction politics. It’s a way for the corporate media to divide what is really a quite politically progressive populace. If you take away the identity politics most Americans are far to the left of center. We as a country overwhelmingly believe people should earn livable wages, have safe food and water, and access to education. They focus on the Tea Party; the slim minority that hate everyone including themselves so much, they flock to politicians that openly brag about wanting to tear the government down. We get the tea party in the news not because they are powerful, but because the story of them helps the plutocrats to convince the majority of Americans that a progressive agenda is all the more impossible to achieve.

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