In this article: Obama books tank while libertarian and conservative books sell; what happened to the Ignorant Twit of the Month Award (hint: Garofalo and Pelosi); Keith Olbermann shows his jackass.

There is a small pile of chickenscratch notes by my computer keyboard — notes of topics too short to post individually.  So I’ve decided to work through the pile of this-and-that topics and have included some here.

An enlightening trip to the bookstore.

Recently I stopped at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Christiansburg, Virginia, which is very college-towny because it is near to Virginia Tech.  I noticed that every book by or about Barack Obama and Michelle Obama has been remaindered and is available, in quantity, in the sale-book section.  If you wanted to waste fifty bucks, you could get a bookshelf’s worth of Obama tomes.

In the new books section, there were only three copies of Glenn Beck’s “Common Sense” left in a space that must have held three dozen when they were put out.  Then there were two copies.

Checking the New York Times best-seller lists, I found these listings for August 27, 2009:

PAPERBACK NONFICTION:

1. GLENN BECK’S ‘COMMON SENSE’, by Glenn Beck
2. JULIE & JULIA, by Julie Powell
3. MY LIFE IN FRANCE, by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme
4. THREE CUPS OF TEA, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
5. THE FAMILY, by Jeff Sharlet

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. CULTURE OF CORRUPTION, by Michelle Malkin
2. OUTLIERS, by Malcolm Gladwell
3. LIBERTY AND TYRANNY, by Mark R. Levin
4. IN THE PRESIDENT’S SECRET SERVICE, by Ronald Kessler
5. CATASTROPHE, by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

So the top slot in paperback n-f is held by a libertarian and spots 1, 3, and 5 in hardback n-f are conservatives.  Meanwhile, the Obama books aren’t selling squat.

“What happened to the ‘Ignorant Twit of the Month Award’?”

Earlier this year I had the bright idea of handing out a humorous “ignorant twit of the month”  award to public figures who disgraced themselves with dim-witted public utterances.  The winner in April was Janeane (“You’re All A Bunch Of Racists”) Garofalo and in May was Nancy (Blink-blink, Twitch-twitch) Pelosi.

Then came the problem.  The winner in June would have been Janeane Garofalo, so I skipped a month.  The winner in July would have been Nancy Pelosi, so I skipped another month.  Now, in August, Garofalo is already the hands-down winner with yet another mindless rant about “racists.” (If you’re opposed to nationalized health care, you’re a racist, because the President is black . . . get it?)  The problem is that Pelosi and Garofalo are such ignorant twits that one of them would win every month.

Normally, I could depend on Joe Biden or Harry Reid to step up and get competitive, but Biden has been sent to the movies by the White House and Reid has been keeping his trap shut because he’s plummeting in his home-state opinion polls and running way back in second in Senate race trial heats.  So I’ve decided to let Pelosi and Garofalo duke it out and simply give one of them the Ignorant Twit of the Year Award.

Keith Olbermann shows his jackass

Keith Olbermann is a smooth-talking sycophant who skewers his political targets with a “Worst Person In The World Award.” Like others of his ilk, Olbermann’s viewership has been tanking, which must be putting him in a foul mood.

So the L.A. Times ribbed Olbermann by “mistakenly” putting MTV’s program “Jackass” in Olbermann’s time slot, and then published a “correction” which speculated that viewers might not notice the difference.  Olbermann’s sense of humor is exercised only at the expense of others, of course, and so he blew his stack and did a frothing-at-the-mouth take-down of the L.A. Times. Keith Olbermann Lashes Out Over ‘Jackass’ Mixup.

Finally! Double-finally! The L.A. Times published something I enjoyed reading — and Keith Olbermann did something that made me laugh.

Oh, and check out my home video of Keith: Stop Picking On Keith Olbermann.