MEDIA BOOKS BOMB AS TINA BROWN’S VANITY FAIR DIARIES, JANN WENNER UNAUTHORIZED BIO DISAPPOINT:

The big surprise is Tina Brown’s “Vanity Fair Diaries.” Released a month ago, the Diaries have failed to attract much interest from anyone other than maybe Tina’s former assistants. Total sales according to Book Scan as of December 3rd are a miserable 6,200.

Brown, who edited Vanity Fair from 1983 to 1992, is thought to have received at least a $200,000 advance. It’s notable that her book was published by Henry Holt and not Random House or Knopf. But still…Holt, part of McMillan, will wind up eating whatever was advanced. Brown’s publisher told the NY Post back in October that they were pumping out 100,000 first printing, so that could mean 94,000 copies are heading to the Strand Book Store soon.

The other book that got a lot of attention but failed to drum up business was Joe Hagan’s well reviewed biography of Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner. “Sticky Fingers,” released October 1st, has sold just 13,200 copies according to BookScan. While Hagan’s reporting was praised, it may be that Mr. and Mrs. America wasn’t so interested in Wenner’s escapades screwing over rock stars. Plus, he’d already been given the bio treatment years ago– when Rolling Stone was still popular– by Robert Draper. I didn’t understand why this was done again.

I’m surprised to see disappointing sales for Sticky Fingers given the hype the book received, the readability of the finished project, and how influential Wenner has been to rock & roll. While Wenner wrote comparatively few of the actual reviews in his magazine, the vast majority of them over the magazine’s 50 year history reflect his tastes (for better, and often for worse). For all intents and purposes, Wenner is the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominating committee, in case you’re wondering why your favorite veteran act still hasn’t gotten in. Rolling Stone the magazine is definitely Wenner, in the same sense that Fox News was Roger Ailes. That and the timing of the publication of the Wenner bio to coincide with the fall of Harvey Weinstein and the concurrent “pervnado” (a fortuitous bit of synchronicity) makes Hagan’s book a really fascinating read to understand how pop culture and the media arrived at this point in time, as I wrote over the weekend in my lengthy review at Ed Driscoll.com.

NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER SURRENDER: Ex-Gawker Employees Launch Crowdfunding Drive to Buy Website.

The campaign was launched Monday on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter and seeks to raise at least $500,000. Gawker ceased publication in August 2016 after losing a lawsuit brought by Hulk Hogan.

“This is a testing of the waters,” said James Del, a former vice president of programming at Gawker Media LLC who is organizing the crowdfunding drive. Gawker founding editor Elizabeth Spiers is also advising, while other former employees are providing input on the project.

If successful in acquiring Gawker, Mr. Del said the blog would be operated by a nonprofit foundation. If they reach their funding target but someone else purchases the blog in bankruptcy, Mr. Del, 30, said they plan to launch a new publication intended to capture the “Gawker ethos” which he described as publishing unbiased and unfiltered gossip, news articles and writing.

Given that the company was put out of business for publishing revenge porn, I’d hesitate before using “Gawker” and “ethos” in the same sentence.

HOW TO TAKE CARE OF YOUR KNIVES.

CHANGE: Trump orders NASA to send American astronauts to the Moon, Mars.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. “If being creepy is a disqualifier, almost no one would be holding office in Washington or Tallahassee.”

STILL TURNED UP TO 11: DNC unity commission blasts GOP ‘atrocities’ while touting changes for primaries.

FASTER, PLEASE: ‘Unheard of’ responses to bluebird CAR-T therapy seen in myeloma study.. “More than half of patients with advanced multiple myeloma who had run out of therapeutic options remained in complete remission after receiving bluebird bio Inc’s experimental gene-modifying immunotherapy in a small, early stage study, according to updated data released on Sunday. Of 18 patients who received a therapeutic dose of bb2121, all but one responded to the treatment, a 94 percent response rate, while 56 percent remained in remission with a median follow-up of 40 weeks after treatment. . . . bb2121 belongs to a potentially revolutionary new type of one-time treatment called CAR-T therapy that involves genetic manipulation of a patient’s immune system. A patient’s own disease-fighting T-cells are harvested and genetically reengineered to target specific proteins on cancer cells before being replaced so they can circulate seeking out and attacking the cancer, possibly for years.”

“State Drops Case Against Lucian Wintrich, White House Correspondent For Gateway Pundit, In UConn Tussle“: A moment of clarity in Connecticut, where reporter and public speaker Lucian Wintrich was attacked by Catherine Gregory, a local community college employee who stole his speaking material. Incredibly, when Wintrich tried to take his notes back, UConn police charged *him* with disorderly conduct. Says Wintrich’s lawyer:

“Free speech matters, it’s OK to be white, black, brown or anything in between,” he said. “My client came to Connecticut and was treated like a criminal for no reason. He sought to obtain his notes back when they were stolen by reasonable means, the prosecution saw that.”

Several days later, police contacted Wintrich and asked him to press larceny charges against her, and he did. Good for him. Punch back twice as hard.

**DISCLOSURE** I have represented Gateway Pundit in unrelated media law matters.

CHECK, PLEASE: 10 Things Every Intersectional Feminist Should Ask On a First Date.

Anyone who isn’t heading towards the door after the third question — “How do you work to dismantle sexism and misogyny in your life?” — deserves whatever comes next.

UPSIDE IS, BETTER PROTECTION FROM DEADLY PANDEMIC FLU! Flu vaccine may be only 10 percent effective this year, experts say. Got my shot, but I don’t think I’d have bothered if I’d known this.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Sexbots With Full Motion Are Closer Than You Think.

SALENA ZITO: For once, the joke is on Al Franken.

For a man who was courted by everyone in the Democratic Party to headline their fundraisers — both for their re-elections as well as their state party’s coffers — fawned over for his Hollywood pedigree, and admired by progressives for his notorious grilling of Republicans appointed to Cabinet positions in the Trump administration, the mere thought of being reduced to zero status in American politics was a bridge too far for the egocentric Minnesotan.

In truth, it likely repulsed him.

He is a man used to being center stage, needed, wanted, catered to, fawned over, and courted.

If you have any doubt to the validity of this argument, consider his exit speech on the floor of the Senate when he announced he will resign his seat last Thursday; he never once admitted doing anything wrong. He also never said he was sorry.

“I of all people am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party,” Franken said.

In the end, he was defiant, blamed others, and was without the grace to show remorse.

But other than that, how did you enjoy his non-resignation speech, Salena?

DON’T THEY ALWAYS: The Next Flu Pandemic Will Appear When You Least Expect It.

If a new flu pandemic emerges, it may be easy to spot. The epidemic is most likely to appear in spring or summer, researchers have found — not in the midwinter depths of the flu season.

Normally flu strikes in winter, when children are crowded into classrooms and the air is cold and dry — ideal for transmitting the influenza virus. But historically, that has not been true of the great flu epidemics.

A half-dozen flu pandemics — including those of 1889, 1918 (the Spanish Flu) and 2009 (the swine flu) — were all first detected between late March and late July, according to a study published recently in PLOS Computational Biology by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and the Institute for Disease Modeling in Bellevue, Wash.

A person infected with the flu appears to be protected briefly against infection with any other flu virus, even genetically different ones, said Spencer J. Fox, a graduate student in infectious disease modeling at the University of Texas at Austin and an author of the paper.

That protection lasts about six weeks, Mr. Fox said. Even a highly infectious flu virus would be temporarily stymied in winter if the seasonal flu had already infected much of the population.

So maybe if a nasty flu pandemic is coming, we should deliberately infect ourselves with ordinary flu.

ENVY: A Socially Transmitted Disease.

More on this here.

PASTA PERVNADO: Mario Batali is stepping away from his eatery empire, as well as ABC’s “The Chew,” following several allegations of sexual misconduct:

Four women have accused Batali, 57, of sexual harassment and assault spanning nearly 20 years, Eater reported Monday.

A female chef alleged that an intoxicated Batali offered her a job, then groped her breasts. Two of Batali’s female former employees accused him of grabbing and groping them, with one accusing the celebrated chef of ordering her to straddle him. A third former employee claimed that Batali groped her breasts at a party, though she noted the incident allegedly occurred when she was no longer working for him.

To the left of the New York Post’s story today is this related headline from late October, a few weeks in which the first Weinstein stories dropped, which now looks very different in light of today’s news: “Mario Batali’s ‘fanciest’ restaurant has an all-female kitchen:”

“I think back in the stone ages — say the beginning or the middle of the 20th century — it was perceived as physically difficult for a woman to do the job and that was back when cooking was still iron and fire and Cro-Magnon man, and it has changed a lot since the ’60s and ’70s,” the chef, 57, said at the Fast Company Innovation Festival this week.

In fact, Batali’s “fanciest restaurant,” Del Posto, has an “all-women” kitchen, including the executive chef, pastry chef, service director and sommelier. “It’s not because they have a vagina,” he said. “It’s because they’re the smartest people for the job.”

Batali said he hates it when a member of the media wants to to run a story on one of his employees as a “great woman chef.”

“Why don’t you f–king do a piece about her being a great chef and we’ll talk about her sexuality later?” he suggested.

The Weinstein-esque faux-macho F-bomb is a nice touch.

RALPH PETERS: Why the ‘Arab street’ didn’t just explode.

In the wake of President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital last week, the “experts” crowding the media predicted strategic calamity: Vast, violent protests and a wave of terror would sweep the Muslim world in the coming days.

Instead, the largest demonstration anywhere this weekend was the funeral procession for Johnny Hallyday, the “French Elvis.” Nothing in the Middle East came close.

We have witnessed, yet again, the carefully phrased anti-Semitism of the pristinely educated; the global left’s fanatical pro-Palestinian bias; and the media’s yearning for career-making disasters.

Rather than waves of protest, the waiting world got tepid statements of disapproval from otherwise-occupied Arab governments; demonstrations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that, combined, barely put a thousand activists in the streets; and yes, four deaths: two demonstrators and two Hamas terrorists hit by an Israeli airstrike.

I wrote at Hot Mic the other day:

The most important two Arab states are Egypt (population) and Saudi Arabia (wealth), and neither seems likely to retaliate beyond a pro forma protest. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman can’t afford to derail his modernization effort by emboldening a bunch of reactionary hotheads, and Egypt can’t afford to do much that isn’t bankrolled by the Saudis.

Erdogan would probably love to stir up a mess for Israel, but the Turks aren’t exactly loved in the Arab world. And Iran was going to continue arming Hezbollah whether Trump recognized Jerusalem or not.

Trump’s move ought to have been seen for the low-risk no-brainer it was, but those kind of things always seem to shock Washington.

REALLY MAKES YOU THINK:

ANDREW MCCARTHY: Forget Collusion. Can Mueller Even Prove Russia Committed Cyberespionage?. “We have paid too much attention to the so-called collusion component of the probe — speculation about Trump-campaign coordination in Russia’s perfidy. There appears to be no proof of that sort of collusion. Because it has been our focus, though, Mueller has gotten a free pass on a defect that would be fatal to any related prosecution theory: He cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Russia is guilty of hacking the Democratic National Committee and prominent Democrats.”

MY DATA, MY CHOICE: Congressman Says Google, Facebook, Amazon Should Pay Consumers for their Harvested Data.

STEPHEN L. CARTER: Star Wars’ Gross Galactic Product Problem: Something to ponder during “The Last Jedi”: Why did this technologically advanced society have such poverty and slavery?. Because it was dreamed up by Hollywood folks, who are feudalists at heart?

THIS IS CNN: 40 Minutes After NYC Terror Attack, CNN Obsesses Over Trump’s Diet Coke Habits.

All the more reason, as Roger Simon wrote last night, it’s “Time to Get CNN Out of the Airports, etc.”

JAMES ROBBINS IN USA TODAY: Suspend Robert Mueller’s politically tainted investigation into Russia-Trump collusion: It is dangerous to subject the office of the president to a gravely biased probe undertaken with a reckless spirit.

JAY CARUSO: CNN’s Reliable Sources Segment On Media Distrust Swings And Misses.

Frum’s argument is a straw man in which he suggests the news consumer demands 100 percent accuracy from the media. He also suggests the dogged determination by reporters to deal with an administration so hell-bent on lying makes it understandable they would overshoot in an attempt to get at the truth.

Investigative reporters and political reporters are well-versed in the culture of lying that exists in Washington. They know the game, and they know how it works. To suggest they screw up because they take on such a burden dealing with an administration that lies like none other does a disservice to their work.

So what should the media do to earn back some of the trust they’ve lost knowing they will still make mistakes from time to time?

First, members of the press have to stop being baited by President Trump.

I never got to the second step, and suspect neither will the Washington press corps.

WOULD YOU TELL HIM HE CAN’T? North Korea’s newest claim: Kim Jong Un can control the weather.

HISTORY: The U.S. Army Had a Special ‘Suicide Squad’ Ready to Strike Russian Forces.

Had the Cold War turned hot, there would have been no escape for the U.S. garrison in West Berlin. Marooned in a city more than 100 miles inside Communist East Germany, the U.S. Berlin Brigade—and the British and French garrisons as well—would certainly have been overwhelmed by Soviet and East German troops. Their presence helped keep half of Berlin free from Communist rule. But it was no secret that theirs was a suicide mission.

Yet there was a unique American unit with an even more hazardous mission: a small Special Forces detachment whose job it would during wartime to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Soviets and their puppet armies. That sentence bears repeating: Deep inside East Germany, in the midst of a vast Soviet military and secret police apparatus, a small group of U.S. commandos would attempt to blow up Russian supply depots and lead local resistance groups.

The phrase “suicide mission” doesn’t even apply.

The unit had many names over the Cold War. But as James Stejskal, a veteran of the detachment, describes in his book Special Forces Berlin: Clandestine Cold War Operations of the US Army’s Elite 1956-1990, they always knew what they were getting into. “They were aware of the odds against them and the threat posed by the Warsaw Pact forces stationed just kilometers away. Despite that, no one wavered in their commitment to face and deter the Soviet war machine.”

Fascinating stuff, if you have even the slightest interest in this sort of thing.