By Selwyn Duke

To be quite frank, many people who write books shouldn’t.  I’ve long been amazed at how most authors have little or nothing of substance say — no Truth to express, only feelings — yet they feel compelled to say it over the course of 300 pages.  Ah, ego just might be more powerful than jet fuel.

So it is with Nancy Pelosi’s ghost-written effort, Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters.  (As a writer, I hold those who use ghost-writers in very low regard.  It’s like if you discovered that Emeril Lagasse had a ghost-cook.  "Oh, yeah, but the recipes have got to be his."  Listen, if you have to do something like that, you’re in the wrong business.  And if something is ghost-written, it should only be ghost-read.)  The book is so pathetically, outrageously banal, shallow and poorly-written that it’s hard to find a positive review of it at Amazon.com.  In fact, it’s staggering how the site’s readers, left, right and center, have almost monolithically labeled it tripe (maybe it’s Pelosi who is a uniter, not a divider).  Yet just as interesting is the allegation that Amazon is censoring negative reviews of the Queen Bee’s borefest.  Writes one reviewer (I omitted his handle):

        I’ve never had a review removed before.

Wow – makes me feel like something of a rebel, and at my age that’s a
feeling you don’t get much. I reviewed this and gave it one star, so I
assume that someone is going through all the one star reviews and
reporting them to Amazon as inappropriate. Hard to believe that Amazon
would automatically delete things based on that, but it seems to be the
case. So, for the record, let me reiterate:

I read some, but not all of this book – read the first two
chapters, the last chapter, and skimmed the rest. I think that it would
be very difficult to slog through the whole thing.

It’s a poorly written, banal and self indulgent tribute to the
concept of women as victims, and the idea that it’s an example for our
daughters sends chills up my spine.

Spend your time and money elsewhere.
   

Of course, anyone can level an allegation in an online forum, but it is repeated by so many reviewers that I have no doubt it’s true.  Thus, we have to assume that either someone in the Pelosi camp pulled strings, or Amazon itself is sympathetic to her cause.  It also might occur to you that it’s hard to sell a product if everyone at your site says it stinks, but I tend to doubt that Amazon would eliminate negative reviews for that reason.  As to the latter, however, I have only one response: If you want to make sales, don’t sell garbage.

And calling it garbage might be an understatement.  I actually spent time perusing the reviews and, staggeringly, it was the seventh page before there was a reader who gave the book more than one star (you cannot rate a book lower than one).  Even that review was only two stars, and the reader had nothing good to say about the work. 

And the indictment was thorough; a common theme was that the readers simply found the book too boring to finish, and they characterized it as, vapid, shallow, ego-driven, narcissistic, and self-absorbed.  Now, sure, you may suspect that a few of the responses are from rightists who simply want to impugn the speaker, but even if that did account for a percentage of the reviews, the universality of the condemnation is breathtaking.  Why, as I said, even liberals found the book indefensible.  One said:

This was just plain sad. I am beyond disappointed. I was hoping to find something redeeming and I couldn’t. And I am a tree huggin bleedin heart lib. Well I should not be surprised, there was no action from the Speaker on any of the urgent issues facing Americans, (other than interfering in our POTUS election, hmmm??) and now we have a book of nothing to show for it.

Borrow it dont spend your dough!

Then there was this:

"This book is poorly written and boring. My sister is a hard core
liberal and even she says that this grand ma ma from Haight Ashbury
should have stayed in the kitchen. This author is a good example of the
Peter Principle. Spend your money on Daschle’s book instead, at least
his makes sense."

Perhaps the most amazing part of this is how people can be so lacking in discernment.  It is obvious to the wise that an empty vessel like Pelosi is a quintessential babbling brook.  And of course she’s boring.  It’s the banality of evil.

If you’re interested, you can take a gander at the reviews here.

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