German Publishing’s Man in the White House
The publicly funded Franco-German “cultural” channel Arte did not waste any time celebrating the dawn of a new era in transatlantic relations. This is the same Arte, incidentally, whose earlier contributions to transatlantic understanding have included a report accusing American soldiers of beheading Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War and a portrayal of President George W. Bush with devil’s horns and fangs. On the day after the election of Barack Obama to succeed the outgoing demon-president, the channel broadcast a 70-minute-long special, live from Washington, with the highly imaginative title “A Black Man in the White House” [Un Noir à la maison blanche]. (To their credit, the editors at Arte-Germany chose to abjure the racist impulses of their French counterparts and titled the show instead “Obama: A New Wind in the White House” [Frischer Wind im Weissen Haus].) The guests on the program included Annette Heuser, the executive director of the Bertelsmann Foundation’s new Washington, DC, office. The influential German foundation set up shop in DC just this past spring, presumably in anticipation of the impending “change.” Host Daniel Leconte revealed that the foundation had even helpfully prepared “a little aide, a little white book” for the incoming president on how to conduct his relations with Europe. He was careful to interject that the “white book” had been prepared for both candidates.
In any case, Bertelsmann can be sure that Mr. Obama will read its “little aide, its little white book” very carefully. For — as Ms. Heuser failed to disclose and as was not mentioned either in an op-ed on Obama that she published in the Washington Post in July — the Bertelsmann Corporation happens to be the president-elect’s principal source of income. It was Bertelsmann, namely, that agreed to pay Obama a reported $1.9 million in advances for a three-book deal that the then-senator-elect signed with its fully owned American subsidiary, the Random House publishing group, in December 2004. And who knows? The real amount of the deal might well be more than the reported amount. After all, it was only in April of this year that we discovered that a reported $10 million book deal signed by former President Bill Clinton with Bertelsmann/Random House in 2001 had in fact been worth $15 million. (See my earlier PJM report on “Bill Clinton’s German Paymasters.”)
Change we CAN believe in. To the left of corruptness. Yay.
Check your reporting: It is not unusual for agents to “pay authors” as you say. The royalties from the publisher go to the agent who takes his or her 10-15% and then pays the author. I suspect Jane Dystel’s money is for the first book, for which she still gets a percentage of royalties even if Obama fired her before his second book. Check your reporting.
The change is that the self-and-own-cuture-loathing mobbed-up Marxist murtadd Muslim manifestation of Arab-African evil, B Milhous bin B Hussayn bin Hussayn Muhummad Ubambi’s so obscenly profiting from his close companionship with RICO racketeers, ratbag terrorists and from every other imaginable and unimaginable enemy of America and of Individual Liberty is so open to inspection.
This elitist empty galabia has learned from America’s worst and doesn’t care what we see.
Brian Richard Allen
Los Angeles – CalifOBAMAcated 90028
Silly numbers are used in quoting book advances (I know from experience) A “million pound book deal” could mean “Here’s £5000 towards expenses, you get £80,000 for 100,000 sales £100,000 for 250,000 sales and then extra guaranteed sums for fiml rights, serialisations etc.
But who can blame Obama for milking his fame. If he is impeached for accepting illegal campaign contributions he is virtually unemployable. His CV barely qualifies him to stack shelves or flip burgers and what minimum wage employer would take on a man who spent most of his career as a civil rights agitator.
Surely you jest. He won’t even cough up his Birth Certificate, and having gotten one lawsuit to produce it dismissed, is currently fighting to get another lawsuit dosmissed.
Transparency? Are you kidding?
YOU OUGHT TO TRY FICTION
Egad. We’re finally starting to see the obots here crack up just like in this news report:
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/obama_win_causes_obsessive
Hurley, I think there are 12-step programs.
ooh la la, I smell a conspiration
I happened to watch Arte, cuz it’s one of the “cultural” medias left in the nowadays medias cafarnaum, didn’t see that they were “anti-americans”, OK Im not a TV watch, but bizarely our immigrants-pro Pals would rather say that Arte is sold to the Americano-sionism lobbie, cuz they can’t see their cause well spread
Truth is stranger than fiction.
This is just another area in which Obama and his leftist illuminati practices are questionable. There are going to be a lot of interesting things that come out of the woodwork over the next four years.
Help me understand this controversy. A very public and popular politician and his agent sign a book deal with Random House and (OMG!)they get paid for it. That payment is fully disclosed. Because Random House is owned by a German company, you suspect that this politician is now under the direct influence and control of this foreign corporation and its investors. I am all for full disclosure but this article is wingnuttery at its best.
Of course, these questions will never appear in any newspaper or TV channel.
“There are none so blind as they who will not see.”
–– Jonathan Swift, 1738, in his ‘Polite Conversation’
@Lee
The advance on his book isn’t exactly coming from an unbiased, non-political source, is it? Bertelsmann ain’t Random House.
So the puppet-master is himself a puppet? Who would have guessed!?
For those of you reading German here an article about The Bertelsmann Stiftung and its activities in Islamization of our society. Here you find an article from their site in English: “Muslims in Germany are very religious”. Watch the photo, please, to get an idea, how they are thinking about Muslim women: two joung ladies with headscarfs.
Obama should do what Bush did with the proceeds of “A Charge to Keep” while he was in the White House: donate them to charity.
I am curious. How many of Obama’s books sold and did that number justify his advances or the continuing payments of large sums?