O'Donnell Walks, America Yawns

Former Senate candidate and sometime dabbler in witchcraft Christine O'Donnell walked off Piers Morgan's show last night after a line of questioning that she didn't like. Morgan's questions--about gay rights--were perfectly reasonable and O'Donnell (as she often does) came off as unhinged and more than a little bit mean.

As a publicity stunt however, O'Donnell's actions seemed to make a lot of sense: it landed her, the most covered Senate candidate of the 2010 election cycle, back into the headlines. Her bona fide fans (and those, like me, who slow down traffic by staring at accidents) should have lapped it up and bought thousands of copies of the book she was selling. So far, at least, it doesn't seem to be working.

As of the morning of August 18, O'Donnell's book doesn't even rank in top 2,000 Amazon bestsellers. Even in the tiny category of State and Local Government (where most bestsellers are classics or textbooks) at least one textbook is outselling O'Donnell's tome even though the textbook author is not a regular cable TV guest. Kindle sales--which one could expect to be even more responsive to immediate events--remain similarly sluggish.

Things could change. Maybe O'Donnell will end up becoming a best-selling author. Maybe Barnes & Noble and Wal-Mart are selling her book in enormous quantities. The early returns, however, seem to indicate that America just doesn't care about what Christine O'Donnell does.