Is ‘Bush-Bashing Fatigue’ Keeping Bugliosi Off the Air?

Bugliosi, a Los Angeles county prosecutor and best-selling author, presents a legal argument for holding President Bush “criminally responsible” for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq in his new book, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.”

The book has made its way to best-seller lists, “with nary a peep from the usual outlets that help sell books: cable television and book reviews in major daily newspapers,” reports The New York Times.

The subject matter may be partly responsible, but is an overload of anti-Bush books on the market also to blame?

“I think there’s a kind of Bush-bashing fatigue out there,” Newsweek editor Jon Meacham said about the media silence surrounding Bugliosi’s book.

The silence is striking compared to the releases of earlier anti-Bush polemics. When former antiterrorism adviser Richard Clarke released “Against All Enemies” in 2004, for instance, the book was talked about “on every talk show and every news show you can think of,” said Bob Wietrak, a vice president of merchandising at Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Nonetheless, Bugliosi’s book is selling well thanks to talk-radio interviews and the Internet, according to the Associated Press—evidence, perhaps, that traditional marketing may not be as important as it used to be.

“If it’s selling well,” Meacham said, “it’s another sign that the traditional channels of commerce have been blown up. If a dedicated part of the Internet community wants to move something, it doesn’t need a benediction from the mainstream media and might benefit from not having one.”