By Darryl Mason
The Professional Idiot has a bit of a whiny squirt here about bookshop owners, who clearly think he's an arsehole, refusing to stock a copy of his 2006 book that his publishers apparently refuse to reprint. A reader writes to tell him of his long, arduous search for The Professional Idiot's collection of old columns, through second hand book shops in Melbourne, Cooper Pedy, Adelaide, Brisbane, coming face to face with shockingly sarcastic second hand bookshop owners (are there any other kind?) who think The Professional Idiot is. quote, "a rabid right wing demon!!". Yeah, that sounds realistic. It was only when this reader returned home to France that it occurred to him to try and buy The Professional Idiot's old book online.
The Professional Idiot doesn't appear to know that if his book publisher refuses to print more copies, he can, himself, order a reprint of his old book, say a thousand copies, for only a chunk of what it would cost to take a family holiday in Italy, and he can sell his own book through his "one million hits a month" blog direct to his brethren, without having to worry about rotten old sarcastic second hand bookshop owners supplying "ideological" instant book reviews, through guffaws of laughter, to the occasional customer interested enough to ask for a copy.
Or, seeing how the book is a collection of old columns from the Herald Sun anyway, The Professional Idiot could simply just republish the intro and contents of his book on his blog, on a separate dedicated page, for free, for all readers, so they don't have to face the crushing horror of sarcastic second hand bookshop owners anymore.
The Professional Idiot takes a moment to lay out the foundation stones for a possible Anti-Conservative Big Lefty BookShop Conspiracy blog post franchise :
I’ve published this not to fluff my own feathers, but to further illustrate the stultifying group-think of the “intelligentsia”, and the institutional hurdles facing anyone who might challenge its favored myths and prejudices. Smug complacency rules too often, I’m afraid.People running second-hand bookshops are part of the "intelligentsia"? Really?
I helped run a second-hand bookshop once, so maybe I should start claiming that "I have now retired from the intelligentsia".
And I want that t-shirt : Smug Complacency Rules.
It sure does.
In the below video, The Professional Idiot would, by his reckoning, be represented by the mud farmers, while the Institutional Group Think Anti-Conservative Second Hand BookShop Intelligentsia is King Arthur. Help, Help, I'm Being Repressed! :
UPDATE : A respected polling analyst has had enough of The Professional Idiot's mutilating of statistical data and announces that The Professional Idiot should be sodomised with a calculator.
