In Defense of Lunacy

Over the weekend, I had a bit of an angry meltdown after reading an NPR interview with the author of a book titled In Defense of Looting.

I was briefly tempted to smash my computer into tiny bits when I realized that a major publisher had given enormous credibility to the ravings of a lunatic. Fortunately, I remembered that I can’t afford a replacement before I did any permanent damage. The first words that came to mind were, are you freaking kidding me? 

But then I asked myself, why are you surprised? 

Writing can be a very frustrating business. The easiest (and hardest) part is putting ink on paper, or in this modern era, type into a computer. Self-publishing services have made getting a book into print fairly easy.

The biggest obstacle to success for a writer is learning how to find their ideal target audience and market their book in order to reap the fruits of their labor. To get a book deal from a major publishing house like the Hachette Book Group, the writer’s only real hope is finding an agent willing to represent them. The Hachette Book Group publishes a whole slew of famous and best-selling authors such as James Patterson, Michael Connelly, Jeffrey Deaver, Malala Yousafzai, Admiral William McRaven, Newt Gingrich, and JK Rowling–some of the bigger names in the industry.

Having been down this same road several times myself and once on behalf of another writer, I would imagine the agent had to like the book and Ms. Osterweil had a social media following of at least thirty thousand people. I’ve witnessed the experience and disappointment firsthand of having an agent express interest, solicit samples of finished material, and ultimately decline to represent a very talented writer for lack of a sufficient presence on social media.

Normally my attitude toward the initial breakthrough success of another writer is to think, good for him or her. We probably aren’t even fighting over the same piece of economic pie unless our books are in the exact same genre. I try not to envy the success of others, and to be patient about my own relative degree of success. Writers want to be read, but professional writers also want to get paid. Eventually.

Earning a positive reader review can be quite gratifying. Winning a literary award for writing a book is a most exhilarating feeling, but nothing beats the feeling of receiving a check from your publisher and getting paid for your work. I certainly don’t begrudge Ms. Osterweil getting paid for her work, but I am angry about what she’s getting paid to write.

I can’t claim to have actually read Ms. Osterweil’s book and therefore cannot comment on her talent as a writer, but I have read her interview on NPR and thus can comment on her utter insanity. In Ms. Osterweil’s world, every criticism of rioting, looting, and other destructive behavior can be casually dismissed as a myth or a trope. It’s the “outsider agitator myth” that says many, if not most of the protestors are actually from other cities and states and not local residents and a “trope” to argue that looters and rioters are not the exact same thing as peaceful protestors.

So, why did the Hachette Book Group make a deal with Vicky Osterweil? My best guess is greed. Some literary agent managed to convince the publisher to offer Ms. Osterweil a contract, probably due to the recent “popularity” of the Black Lives Matter movement and Antifa riots. After all, journalism is famous for the cliche “If it bleeds, it leads” and so the nightly riots have become part of the daily news cycle. Clearly, the riots have attracted a great deal of attention but the question is, what profit is there in rioting? Obviously, Hachette (and NPR) is selling this BS, but who is buying it?

There can be no defense for looting. It is stealing, which is behavior known to be wrong since the Ten Commandments were committed to stone. It is taking property that belongs to another and that is criminal behavior, plain and simple. In the past, people have had their hands cut off and even hanged for stealing property from another person.

Only a blithering idiot, an insane radical liberal, or a thoroughly unscrupulous capitalist would ever suggest otherwise. Why, even Democrat Senator Brian Schatz has admitted that looting cannot be defended because it is “immoral, dangerous, illegal, counterproductive, and politically insane.”

With all due respect to Senator Schatz, any attempt to defend looting prior to the November elections would be criminally insane and political suicide.

Obviously, the insane radical liberal in this case would be Vicky Osterweil, because any defense of looting means being willing to defend the murder of David Dorn–looters shot and killed him after being caught in the act of ransacking a pawn shop. Any defense of looting means trying to defend murder in Portland. It means defending what has happened in Minneapolis, Seattle, and Kenosha. You can’t separate the looting from the arson and the murder and claims these crimes are unrelated to each other. Also, insisting that looters are only interested in stealing life-saving essential needs is debunked when looters are carrying Gucci handbags and big screen televisions instead of food and medicine. And it’s patently absurd to suggest that only big corporations, insurance companies, and greedy business owners get hurt by violent riots, arson, and looting, when people are now discovering that insurance is only reimbursing a fraction of their losses.

The unscrupulous capitalists in this example would then be the agent involved and the Hachette Book Group, for publishing and promoting this garbage in hope of profit. The content of this book as described in the NPR interview is pure anathema to civilized society, and using taxpayer-funded resources like NPR to do so is tantamount to stealing from the general public, adding insult to injury.

And of course, the blithering idiots would be anybody stupid enough to shell out $16.99 for a Kindle e-book that attempts to justify grand larceny. It is a logical absurdity to pay that kind of money for a book with a title that seems to suggest it should be shoplifted instead.