An area where the UK lags behind the USA is in books by career wingnuts. I noticed this absence when I was looking around Borders and Waterstones in Leeds. Here, not a week goes by without some conservative blowhard publishing some shabby collection of second and third hand jibes against liberals and other enemies of America. As far as I can tell only Ann Coulter is known in the UK, simply for novelty value, but here she's just one of hundreds, part of the growing number of skinny blond variants on the blowhard genus. This week's entry in the contest to find the laziest waste of trees published by a real book company is Bernard Goldberg's 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. Goldberg's previous book, Bias was a shrill bout of indignation over the fact that people with different political views to his were allowed to work in TV and newspapers, and this is just the same old stuff, the same targets and cheap jibes.

As I said, every week almost identical books are churned out -- last week's contender was Surrounded by Idiots: Fighting Liberal Lunacy in America, in which another ugly white guy with a Fox News contract bravely and no doubt incisively tackles such new and previously sacred targets as "Bill Clinton, Michael Moore, the Dixie Chicks, animal-rights groups, Hollywood liberals, parents who won't spank their kids and immigrants who don't or can't learn clear English." I don't know who reads these books and why they need more than one indignant rich guy pretending to be a man of the people to tell them that Michael Moore is fat and Bill Clinton likes the ladies but these books still seem to be one of the few growth (and as yet unoutsourced) industries in the American economy. Publishers such as Regency publish nothing but this sort of stuff.

There are even liberal-bashing books for kids: Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed, in which Tommy and Lou "open a lemonade stand to earn money for a swing set. But when liberals start demanding that Tommy and Lou pay half their money in taxes, take down their picture of Jesus, and serve broccoli with every glass of lemonade, the young brothers experience the downside to living in Liberaland."

So England, don't get left behind. And you would-be authors on my LJ list, who still dream of getting in print -- forget that sci-fi nonsense that won't even earn your tiny advance back and start the liberal clobbering.