Browsing through the “New Non-Fiction” section at my local Borders today, I came across the following cover:

Yes, believe your eyes! It’s the latest publication from the trustworthy narrators of history at CBS News–who are cravenly attempting to cash in on President Reagan’s death in time for the holiday book-buying season. I just about spit my decaf Cara Mocha all over the book when I saw it. From the Amazon.com description:

Three of CBS News’s most respected journalists — Dan Rather, Lesley Stahl, and Mike Wallace — offer original essays drawing on their personal experience of Reagan in action. Many of the speeches of the president known as The Great Communicator are collected on the special full-length DVD — including the address to the nation after the Challenger disaster in 1986 and the 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin — along with classic interviews with Reagan and his family…

What head-in-his-derriere editor at Simon & Schuster came up with this idea?! Here is a simple exercise: Draw a Venn diagram of two sets. Set A is the book-buying population that considers Rather, Stahl, and Wallace “respected journalists.” Set B is the book-buying population eager to spend money on a positive remembrance of Ronald Reagan and ever-mindful of the MSM’s deeply-held hatred for Reagan and his legacy. The result is what even a mathematically-challenged person like me remembers from from grade school…a disjoint set:

Translation: This one’s going straight to the remaindered bargain books section. (Current Amazon.com rating: #165,548.)

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