President Sics Consumers on Another Dumb Trend

First Portuguese water dogs, now books by Thomas Friedman

It looks like the president has done for books what he did for Portuguese water dogs -- started a popular revolution among know-nothing consumers who are happily duped into making regrettable purchases because they want to be just like Barack Obama.

Stop that, consumers. You are not the president.

It's hard to raise any objection to, oh, 80 percent of President Obama's summer reading list, which he announced earlier this week to much fanfare. He's allegedly trying to get through one of the original Million-Page Monographs for Founding Fathers Fetishists, as well as some very good crime and literary fiction. But his stated intent to get through another several hundred pages of wankery by the New York Times' mustachioed master of the obvious, Thomas Friedman, leaves a person wondering.

Nearly a year ago, he said that Hot, Flat, and Crowded was "on his nightstand." And now, according to his vacation reading list, the book is still there! So either the president's on the page-a-day reading plan, or he cannot bring himself to finish what may possibly be a singularly awful book.

Not that this speculation has hurt the book's Amazon ranking, of course. It was up at No. 41 on Wednesday, after Obama announced his intention to maybe get through this clunker on vacation.

So, in essence, Hot, Flat, and Crowded is the Portuguese water dog of the literary world: an overblown trend that's a status symbol among Obama worshippers, and one that non-presidential consumers would do well to ignore.

Sara K. Smith writes for NBC and Wonkette.

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