Mark Steyn redux, the myth of Regnery Press "bestsellerism" and some homework for my readers.

As Ti-Guy suggests in an earlier comments section, there's more to Regnery Press' "bestsellers" than meets the eye. It doesn't take much work with Google and the phrases "regnery" and "bulk purchases" to come up with the scoop:

In a quick smack-down, Sidney Blumenthal has flattened Ann 'Thrax' Coulter over her phony best-seller, Treason.

In case you haven't noticed, Coulter’s book stands alone on the New York Times Best Seller List with a dagger next to its title – signifying bulk purchases.

It’s been that way with all of the right-wing alleged best-sellers from Whacko Regnery (Thrax's former publisher) to Crown Books, a division of Random House, whose 'Crown Forum' is the current shame of publisher's row.

Each and every one of them – Limbaugh, Gary Aldrich, you name it – lands on the list because right-wing angels buy up huge numbers of copies in bulk. What they do with the books – hand ‘em out to ditto-heads, salt 'em away in warehouses – is anybody’s guess. Just as long as it keeps up the appearance that demented lunatics like Coulter have a huge popular following out there that buys books.

At long last, someone has exposed this racket – who else but the intrepid Sidney Blumenthal?

'What I think the key question is for Ann Coulter and all these other right-wing writers is, why is there a dagger in the New York Times best-seller list next to their books?' Blumenthal recently told the New York Observer.

'That means that someone is buying their book in bulk to put them on the best-seller list. These are bogus best-sellers,' Blumenthal said. 'I want to know why [Ms. Coulter] won't come clean and explain which rich right-wing sugar daddies are putting her on the best-seller list.'

Now, I'm a bit swamped today so I'm going to leave it as an exercise for my readers to pick up the thread here and start nosing around to see what the deal is with Steyn's book. Think of it as showing Steve Janke how to do real investigative journalism.

All comments welcome, but I draw the line at anything involving Cindy Sheehan's private parts. After all, we here at CC HQ have standards and, every so often, we take the time to remind ourselves what they are.