WEDS JULY 3RD: The book has dropped to 1,417 on amazon. This must come as a terrible surprise to Carroll and to the publishers. Somehow I think there is karma in the universe, and Carroll will be vindicated. There has to be further verification out there.Â
TUES JULY 2: Today is publication date for E. Jean Carroll’s book, “Why Do We Need Men?” Ten days ago, an excerpt from the book appeared on the cover of New York magazine. Carroll, a respected writer, accused Donald Trump of a sexual attack in the mid 90s in a Bergdorf Goodman fitting room.
After that bombshell, you’d think “Why Do We Need Men” would have skyrocketed with advance sales. But after a sales spurt took the book to around 100, Carroll’s explosive memoir started sinking. This morning the book has fallen to number 996 on Amazon. No one is buying it. How did things go so wrong?
There are some theories that the public is simply inured at this point to all stories about Trump, sex attacks notwithstanding. Around 16 women have accused Trump of something horrible. At least one case is ongoing. Then there’s porn star Stormy Daniels, who’s become a low level celebrity thanks to her claim that Trump slept with her while Melania was pregnant with Barron.
There’s also Carroll herself. The New York Times did her no favors by basically ignoring her and the book when the news broke. Editor in chief Dean Baquet then apologized, saying because it was New York magazine’s scoop, they weren’t dealing with it. But then the Times interviewed the two women whom Carroll said she’d confided in at the time. They confirmed her story. But that didn’t help sales. Then Carroll herself had a bad interview with Anderson Cooper in which she seemed kind of kooky and called rape “sexy.” Things went downhill from there.
So now what? It seems like Carroll’s claims and “Why Do We Need Men?” have been muted. It doesn’t even matter that Trump himself, instead of denying the episode or decrying rape, called Carroll “not his type.”
We are living in the Twilight Zone.
