Friday, November 30, 2007
Metro on UPI
“The potbangers’ noise and the professors’ proclamation played well in Durham, a former mill town rife with race and class resentments that energized its 'progressive’ agitators.” Read the entire review here.
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19 comments:
Another great review, with most of the focus on UPI and Pressler's book. For a review, it does a good job of telling the story, including naming characters/villains of the 88 like Michael Hardt and Thuggabigotintellectual Mark Anthony Neal.
With all these positive reviews, it's surprising it's not doing better with sales.
This Metro review is quite comprehensive.
I just love to see my favorite professor of love Michael Hardt illuminated. Here is such a "joyful" little lover!
It is really not my preference to see UPI critiqued alongside other books.....as it has been established by all who have read it.....it's the definitive account. Not the other books.
The Baydoun and Good book is always displayed alongside UPI in the bookstores. At my local Barnes & Noble, UPI is still in one of their window displays.....now with the Baydoun and Good book.
I just skimmed through it. Didn't read it; however, many have reported that it is more tabloid than straight factual reporting. Good is more Kitty Kelly in style.
Baydoun, it has been said, talks about himself a lot throughout his book. (That's got to be strange.)
I think the bookstores try to promote sales by placing some of them together.
Very interesting:
Indoctrinate U, a documentary film by Evan Maloney, has premiered at a film festival and is being promoted for public distribution.
We should make a film about Wonderland!
This review was very thoughtfully written with much more than just a quick summary of the book.
On another note, my daughter asked me what a potbanger was this morning. She was reading UPI last night. I explained what the potbangers were. And I asked her if she originally thought that they were people that smoked marijuana - she said yes, that's what whe originally thought.
Then she asked me if what they did was illegal in that they were disturbing the peace. And I replied that it probably was illegal. They were also on the property which may have been trespassing.
I don't know if a permit is required for a gathering that large in Durham.
Outstanding review. Very apropos. The comparison to the Jacobins is spot on. The only thing not expressly made is the comparison of the tactics of the campus "progressives" to the Stalinists. Airbrushing out purged party members from photos of Comrade Stalin appears to be the model for Claire Potter's treatment of critical comments about her so-called scholarship. Of course, that sort of scholarship is much like Comrade Lysenko's work for Comrade Stalin - cooking the books, and making up the desired results on paper at least.
Mr. Chafe, and other G-88 lurkers, if you are reading this, do us all a favor. You obviously don't think you did anything wrong. Your silence about what happened is clearly a sign of assent for the treatment you accorded the players. You believe that good people support your vision of higher education. So how about a little test case to prove your point? Resign and start your own university on the progressive principles you have applied to the treatment of the Duke athletes. See how long you can support your Ministry of Politically Correct Truths on the tuition of willing students and their parents. I suspect the experiment won't last long.
Sales problem is NOT with the book, but with the marketing.
If I were KC I would be FURIOUS at the publisher.
"With all these positive reviews, it's surprising it's not doing better with sales."
In my area, it has sold well, and in many other areas.
The publisher should have been more aggressive in the beginning; however, if you think back to September, so much was going on all at once.
KC was preparing for his year in Israel and that cut short his vigorous promotion of the book.
It's my guess that because various books were coming out about the case, the publisher was more conservative in the planned promotion than need be.
A very significant issue was that the (never-ending-BS-from-an ex-president) Bill Clinton's book came out at the same time.
All the bookstores were displaying and promoting it prominently.
What a waste of space and time! I mean, do we really need to know more about Billy Jeff and Hillary Mack Truck?
I kept tabs on the local B&N stores and made sure the managers understood the need to highlight prominently this case that happened locally.
You'd be surprised how uninformed some of those people who work in bookstores are. They seem to never keep up with the news of the day.
If everyone had been more aggressive and "hands-on" with their local bookstores, UPI would have been an even bigger seller than it already is.
Let's not forget about the concept of re-publication.
HBO didn't grab it up immediately to make it into a film for no reason. Everyone knows UPI is where the real account is found.
This book will be selling for years to come.
I suggest we all buy another copy of the book and donate it to a local libary or give it a Xmas gift. I am planning to do this, if for no other reason than to push the sales figure in Claire's face.
By referencing the Jacobin Reign of Terror, Allen does a nice job summarizing the heartlessness of the ideas of the G88 and the heartlessness of Duke's response.
Who would have believed that a Jacobin Reign of Terror would even be possible on an elite American university campus where our best and brightest young people would be targets of heartless tyrants with their religion of victimhood.
I will place a copy of this review in each copy of UPI that I give this year as a Christmas gift.
::
GP
Metro's slogan is "From the Triangle to the Coast."
So I have some questions for NC residents:
How many and what sort of people read this magazine?
How influential is this article likely to be?
Are people who kinda paid attention going to read it and say "Wow, it was even worse than I thought?"
Have Duke faculty, and the staff of the HS and N&O, just been publicly insulted and rebuked in front of their peers and neighbors?
Has a serious blow been dealt?
Or is this more like a column in one of those free advertising filler publications that they stick in your mailbox whether you want them to or not, 99% of which are recycled unread?
A quick google on the reviewer, Arch T. Allen, reveals him to be a distinguished resident of the tri-city area from an old North Carolina family. He's a former Vice Chancellor of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and his name swings on the shingle of one of the state's largest law firms.
One might say that through him the North Carolina upper crust have spoken, and they are not pleased.
beckett
anonymous @ 10:38
That's only part of the problem; I just did a search of the local library system in the Cleveland area and found that there are very few copies of the book that have been purchased by the libraries. The good news is that nearly all of the copies are either out or are being transferred to fill a reservation request. The only ones that aren't in those categories have a "new book" status which often means they are being processed and aren't yet available for circulation.
I like that the Metro reviewer globbed on to the term "tenured vigilantes." It is a very powerful way to describe the 88.
The Metro reviewer also read the book in depth and provided an original take on the frame job. Very well done!
Anonymous 11:38 said...
anonymous @ 10:38
...That's only part of the problem; I just did a search of the local library system in the Cleveland area and found that there are very few copies of the book that have been purchased by the libraries. The good news is that nearly all of the copies are either out or are being transferred to fill a reservation request. The only ones that aren't in those categories have a "new book" status which often means they are being processed and aren't yet available for circulation.
::
I sent copies of UPI to B-W, CSU, Case Western Reserve University and John Carroll University in Cleveland.
B-W is using the book in at least one class.
The Ohio State Football team has several copies floating around because of their connection to B-W.
::
GP
It wasn't that the faculty at Duke became one with the potbangers, but rather, they were already one with the mob like a not so rare and ugly virus crawling out from under some disturbed rock of academia to beome a mob of sorts adept at hurling intellectual brickbats at the innocent and, for a time, hurling them at a virtually defenseless young. It is still very difficult to understand these people. It is easier to understand many other thing than the behavior of this so-called intellectual elite who seemed to be driven by their own self- devouring demons of a correct world. Apologize.
TO beckett (6:39 PM)--
Thanks for the research and analysis.
Very informative.
Debrah - had you ever heard of this magazine before?
Do you read it?
Does anyone you know read it?
TO Ralph--
Yes, I've heard of it.
I think it's kind of like the Indy.....it has a specific core readership.
I don't keep up with all the local stuff. I can't read everything!.....and my focus is often more on national news.
The critique above seems quite accurate.
Why don't you contact them from their website and ask for a complimentary issue?
I'm sure they would be flattered.
I don't live in the area and really don't care, I'm just trying to get a feel for the size demographics of its readership.
Is its specific core readership hippies or yuppies or old-money or what?
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