By Brian Carnell

Sunday, January 20, 2002

David Horowitz seems intent on giving people the impression that he is an absolutely fruitcake. Last week on his FrontPageMagazine.Com web site, he posted "An Open Letter to Amazon.Com" which had the imprimatur of a bona fide crank all over it. Since it was so short, here's the entire text of the letter, with my comments in italics,

Yesterday, your site listed 55 reader reviews of my book Uncivil Wars. With one or two exceptions, every one gave the book a four- or five-star review.

Today there are only 42 reviews of Uncivil Wars on your site. The text of many of those that you did not remove appears to have been edited to eliminate actual descriptions of the book. On the other hand, you now feature several vicious -- not to say lunatic -- ad hominem attacks on myself and on individuals who had nothing to do with the writing of my book but are conservatives.

I think we can safely say at this point that the main lunatic here is probably Horowitz himself. David Horowitz complaining about vicious, personal attacks is a bit like Al Sharpton complaining about someone playing the race card. Leave it to Mr. Univerisities-Are-Too-PC to whine and moan about people who disagree with him. The number of reviews for books increases and decreases with regularity at Amazon.Com.

These are clearly not reviews of Uncivil Wars, but attempts by illiterate leftists who have not read the book to prevent others from doing so. Exactly what is your editorial policy in regard to these reviews, and what are your agendas?

Illiterate leftists? Then how, exactly, did they write these reviews? Horowitz and his supporters might point out that this is a bit of hyperbole (from Horowitz? imagine that?) but if he's going to criticize Noam Chomsky for referring to him as a Stalinist, he should use language as precisely as he would like others to use it. The "what are your agendas?" line is laugh out loud hilarious. You can just see Horowitz like some latter-day Joseph McCarthy grilling Jeff Bezos, "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the vast left wing conspiracy?"

David Horowitz

David Horowitz is editor-in-chief of FrontPageMagazine.com and president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture.

Horowitz should add "Chief Clown" to that list of honorifics. Horowitz right now serves exactly the same purpose that someone like Jerry Falwell serves (though for different reasons) -- as a caricature of conservatism that is so beyond the pale that, frankly, it is becoming increasingly embarrassing to read the stuff that spews from his word processor.

Source:

An Open Letter to Amazon.com David Horowitz, FrontPageMag.Com, January 18, 2002.

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