Who keeps buying these books?

We didn’t read the Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama or Going Rogue by Sarah Palin. You know why? Because they just reached the point where their lives have received notice, deserved or otherwise.

Sure, autobiographies have to be written within a person’s lifetime, so there’s obviously some time for an update, but:

  1. Who cares how you got into the career you enjoy, especially politics?
  2. Can’t it wait until you’ve accomplished something other than win (or lose, in Palin’s case) an election? Or are these the new Nobel Peace Prizes?

Proving that no politician who makes the news is above this trend, nor are the idiots that eat these books up, newly-elected U.S. Senator Scott Brown (R-Mass.) has started shopping his life story out to publishers.

Barry Obama and the Stone of Alternative Power

Book publishers have finally found their new Harry Potter to sell what children’s literature pedlars call “a f#$kton of books”: 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama. In fact, they started publishing the books before he was even elected.

So far, they’ve been biographies, including:

  • Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope by Nikki Grimes
  • Barack by Jonah Winter
  • Yes We Can by Garen Thomas
  • Change Has Come: An Artist Celebrates Our American Spirit, a collection of black-and-white drawings by Kadir Nelson (Why do the pictures have to be black and white, Kadir?)

To put this in perspective, the linked article only mentions one book about John McCain, and his daughter wrote it. (Nepotism?)

Of course, once kids are tired of the biographical route, we’re sure some more interesting books will follow this refreshing new character.