Klein's 'Truth About Hillary' Hits N.Y. Times Again; Paper Lashes Out

From NewsMax.com 

Edward Klein's book "The Truth About Hillary" has made the New York Times best-seller list for the second week in a row - a development that has the Times book review spitting mad.

As NewsMax reported over a week ago, Klein debuted on the Times list this week in the No. 2 slot.

Despite an orchestrated campaign to keep Klein off major TV talk shows, NewsMax has learned that the best-selling author will be on the Times list next week as well, in the No. 4 position.

The liberal Gray Lady apparently doesn't like the fact that one of its own - Klein is former editor of the New York Times Magazine - penned a biting biography of one of the paper's icons, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Times has yet to review the book, but took the unusual step in Sunday's book section to publish a disclaimer attacking the book from pillar to post in a sidebar column adjacent to the best-seller list.

"'The Truth About Hillary' has united [no easy task] literary critics," Timesman Dwight Garner fumed, adding "it is easily this year's most vilified book."

Then Garner promptly joined in the vilification:

"Writing in the Book Review in 1988, Joyce Carol Oates coined the term 'pathography' to describe hatchet jobs like Klein's. Reading Oates's taxonomy of that genre today, it sounds as if she somehow had an advance copy of Klein's book rotting at her elbow."

Rotting?

Still - in what must have been a gut-wrenching admission for the paper - Garner lamented, "That hasn't stopped Klein's book from landing on beach blankets; it makes its debut at No. 2 on this week's hardcover nonfiction list."

The paper's vitriol against Klein contrasts with its first-class treatment of Kitty Kelley's works, including her recent hit book on the Bush family. Kelley's book on Nancy Reagan - in which Kelley alleged that Ronald Reagan engaged in date rape, among numerous other scurrilous allegations - made Page One coverage in the Times.

Shall we call that liberal "pathocoverage"?

Klein, a veteran journalist and editor with credentials well beyond anything Kelley has to offer, said he isn't bothered by the elite media's disdain for his book.

"My book's staying power on The Times list is testimony to the power of the Internet and conservative talk radio," he told NewsMax on Saturday. "The mainstream liberal media no longer have a monopoly on what's news and what isn't, and that's a healthy thing for America."

More healthy still, "The Truth About Hillary's" best-seller status shows that readers were willing to defy the media blockade orchestrated by the Clintons.

Hours after speaking to NewsMax, Klein told WABC Radio's Monica Crowley:

"Hillary and her people have called up ... all the TV networks and the newspapers and said to them that if you give Ed Klein exposure, we're not going to be very happy about it." The result: "I've been canceled on many of the TV shows that I was booked on," Klein said, "and have not had my book reviewed by any of the major media."

Klein appeared on Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes" the day his book was released on June 21, but the network quickly canceled three scheduled interviews with the author. A wave of other cancellations followed, and CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" and Sinclair Broadcasting's News Central were the only other programs to interview the author. But the media censorship may be working in Klein's favor. Not only is his book a certified New York Times best-seller, it also debuts this week on the Publisher's Weekly best-seller list in the No. 4 slot.