But ain't it just sad?
Ain't it just sad, though? How can the author expect to be taken seriously when his marketing department thinks they're part of FOX News? People will believe what they believe, and there's not a whole lot we can do about it in the long run, but is there no limit to the indignity people will cast upon the world in order to make a buck? When I think of the amount of effort that goes into sham marketing, I wonder what is so fundamentally wrong with these people that they cannot devote their efforts to something more legitimate, useful, or otherwise intelligent.
How much money has gone into promoting something like The Bible Code? How much mental effort and physical labor has gone to get those millions of copies into Barnes & Noble and other stores across the US and around the world? Seriously, we could get by without this waste of people's time; we could benefit from a lack of this book's detriment. Yet this is the best they can do? Recommendation (and it's rare for me to go this far): Shoot the author, lock the agent and publishers in prison 'til Hell freezes over, and send the investment capital to Africa to pay for water and electrical infrastructure. If they can't market an allegedly legitimate scientific/religious revelation to the world, then they're not legitimate. At some point I have to put my foot down. I've always defended the right of free expression, but there's something about intentional malice that really bristles. You can't yell "Fire" in a crowded movie theater. Why should you be allowed to delude people at such a level as to negatively affect the basis for action and conscience in exchange for money? The amount of damage this kind of distracting crap does to the world warrants serious consideration. After all, I'll defend
The Turner Diaries, or
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and so forth, but books like
Celestine Prophecy and
Bible Code and a few other psychospiritual fad tomes whose titles mercifully escape me--come on, that's tampering where tampering should not be acceptable. I don't know how these fuckers sleep at night, and frankly it would frighten me to know.
Think about this: We have lobbyists arguing over the use of firearms, over abortion, over equal rights among humans,
ad nauseam. One of the most compelling factors in peoples' alignment to one side or the other of these issues is their religious outlook. Even atheists are affected in their actions by their regard toward whatever they might come to call the ultimate condition, because whether or not there is a God, even atheists occasionally wonder about the point of it all. Now we've got someone tampering with considerations of that point, and asserting ridiculous crap, and all for money.
And here's another twist: I'd probably defend the book itself if I was a little more familiar with its content. But the marketing--it's beyond soulless. It's hateful. I mean, think of how many consciences will be affected by taking a best-seller seriously.
And it matters not a whit to the people pushing it, just as long as other people buy it.
This editorial has been brought to you by a Lack of :m:
thanx,
Tiassa
