Sunday, August 28, 2011

Here Comes Condibook Number Three

What a weird week it's been for Condi! We found out that Dick Cheney called her naive and a stupid crybaby (basically) and that the currently most hated man in the world (other than Dick Cheney) kept a bizarre custom-made lad-mag filled with dreamy Condirazzi superpics for his own personal amusement. Buried beneath all this odd and funny stuff was the news that Doctor Ferragamo's not-particularly anticipated memoir of her years in the Bush administration has been scheduled for release by Crown. This will be Condibook #3, thus finishing off her lucrative contract with the publisher. When I last wrote about the Condibook industry,  I revealed that it didn't turn out so great for Crown after all, so I'm assuming they are totally crossing their fingers and hoping this last one will be a hit.

Here are some adjectives Crown uses to try to convince us that Condibook 3 won't be boring: vivid, forthright, unique, consequential, harrowing, candid... you get the picture, and if you are a long-time reader of this blog, you already know that this book will be none of those things. It will be thoroughly dull, I promise you. So far media coverage is fairly flat, with outlets simply reporting that the book will exist and that it will be quote candid unquote. I don't think the Guardian really believes the book will be candid, or that it will "shed light on the Bush administration."

The title is telling: No Higher Honor. The focus appears to be on the honor Condi achieved for herself –becoming the first female national security advisor, becoming the first African American female secretary of state– and on the honor she felt in serving in those positions, rather than on pesky questions about her effectiveness as the national security advisor or her accomplishments as secretary of state. Remember, this is a woman so famous for running around and spending tons of time arranging complicated, time consuming meetings which produced zero results that the Israelis literally coined a slang term based on her name which means "to run around and spend tons of time arranging complicated, time consuming meetings which produce zero results."

The one and only thing I'm curious about is if she'll mention anything about "blogs that follow her hairstyles and shoes."

The cover is OK, fine, Condiface with nice pearls and conservative fonts. Yawn. I hardly expected Klingon Condi. I thought it would be fun to go with a more "Wacky Packages" approach:


Where does Condi go in the publishing industry now? She did her flop kid's book, she did her underwhelming early years memoir, and now she's done with her Bush Years™ and done with her Crown Books contract. If this one isn't a big seller, it'll be strictly the lecture circuit for her from now on.

UPDATE:

5 comments:

Nameless Cynic said...

Meh. Could've done better on the cover shot. Anybody remember Leather Condi? Maybe they could have done one better?

Lulu Maude said...

Insomnia sufferers: this one is for YOU!

Cranky Old Batt said...

This and Going Rogue. Bookends for insomniacs.

Anonymous said...

Nothing could be funnier than finding out that her samesexspouse was a woman named Bean.

samael7 said...

A long time ago, I spoke a little Hebrew. I'm trying to conjugate her verb. Let's see, it's a quadriliteral (c-n-d-l), so...

ani/at m'condel/m'condelet
anachno m'cond'lim/m'cond'lot

Hebrew is fun!