My mother always told me to do well in school or I'd end up in the military... Have you seen Jesus Camp? reeeeal scary.

I got an insight into the conservative machine in 2004 while working at a Borders store. We kept getting customers who were absolutely sure we were hiding copies of UNFIT FOR COMMAND. This was the anti-John Kerry book telling the story of the "Swiftboat Veterans For Truth," who were accusing Kerry of lying about his Vietnam record. Our customers would ask if we had UNFIT FOR COMMAND. I always told them the truth, which was that, while we were out of it, I could order it. The customer would almost always then ask, "Why don't you have it?" I'd say that, while we had many on order, we hadn't received the shipment from the publisher. There would be a pause and the customer would say, "Amazon has it." I'd say, "Ah-ha." Then the little smile would come across the customer's face. "I was listening to O'Reilly today," he'd say, or "Sean Hannity says..." and, invariably, I'd hear that O'Reilly or Hannity said that we were sitting on the books so the customers couldn't get them. So, I emailed some personnel at Regnery, the publisher of UNFIT FOR COMMAND. Because I didn't want to entangle Borders in any mess of my own (or lose a job for seeming to be representing the company in my inquiry) I phrased my email essentially as follows: "I work for a large chain bookseller. My customers appear convinced that we are trying to keep UNFIT FOR COMMAND from them. I assure them that the book is on order in quantity and that we are trying to get the book as fast as we can. Do you, as the publishers of this book, feel we are trying to suppress it?" Literally about twenty-five minutes later I had three emails in my inbox from different people from Regnery telling me that they hadn't printed enough copies to meet the demand which arose after the TV appearances promoting the book. The next day, I was forwarded an in-house email from one of the top people at Regnery which said, and I quote as closely as memory allows (and I've still got it in my computer if anybody wants me to send it along), "Although I WISH it were true that our enemies at the book shops were hiding the book, the fact is we haven't printed nearly enough to meet the demand." So, the staff at Regnery was happy to tell me a minimal number of copies of the book had been printed, but, somehow, the talk show hosts across the country weren't telling the public this. In fact, they were telling the public the opposite. The Republicans have propagandists who work tirelessly for them. Whether or not O'Reilly and Hannity knew the publisher (which had been a conservative publisher since the days of Goldwater) hadn't printed enough copies to meet the demand was immaterial, because O'Reilly and Hannity were not going to hint that the reason giant commercial book stores didn't have the book was because of the usual reason a giant bookstore doesn't have the hot new book: the publisher didn't print enough copies. It suited the purpose to imply that book store employees earning piffling salaries had the time, inclination and the basic gall to keep a book out of the customer's hands.

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