Fragments of McClellan: Peter Osnos on His New Bestseller

Over at HuffPo Rachel Sklar has an interview with Peter Osnos the founder and editor-at-large of Public Affairs, also known as the publisher of Scott McClellan‘s new book What Happened (we keep thinking there should be a question mark there, as in, What Happened??). The book, completed just six weeks ago, has created a “firestorm” of coverage since being picked up in a DC bookstore a week ahead of the “requested” pub date of June 2 by Politico’s Mike Allen. In it McClellan accuses the White House of, among other things, deceiving the American public when it came to the war in Iraq. Overnight it went to number one on Amazon. Regarding the effects of the “new-media political frenzy” on the release of the book, Osnos had this to say:

The new media issue is a major one. Within minutes of the Politico post, everyone had an opinion about a book that none of them had read. There are hundreds of blogs holding forth without reading the book, just the fragments on Politico.

Don’t look a gift former Press Secretary in the mouth! Also, we sort of suspect this is about to change.

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