After experiencing the reflective retrospectives of Civil Rights, The Youth Movement, and Vietnam in the '60's, America stepped off the bus in Hollywood from Hayseed KS in 1970 and immediately walked off into the darkness with Mr. Sugar Daddy Pimp.
I have known a lot of flaky people throughout my life, but the so-called left-wing progressives of modern America have taken the pie crust to an all-new level! Just a few short years ago, I continually felt that this preconception must have just been the result of my misguided imagination, but early last year I learned that the pie in the sky was most definitely real. The Babygate phenomenon had taught me this cruel lesson. The right wing press didn't teach me this lesson; the flakes, con artists, and marks populating my own side of the political spectrum did.
Recent events made me laugh so hard that I nearly fell out of my chair! First Shailey Tripp says she is going to answer questions on her blog for the last time. Then she proceeds to not answer any questions of any significance. Then she removes all the comments from the post. Then she reinstates them. Her particular blogger pals claim to still vigorously support Shailey because only they are fully aware that she is doing the right thing by removing her blog. A few questions arise, but for the most part, only the crickets are chirping. Then the editor of Shailey's book posts in extravagant detail how she had personally given a copy of Boys Will Be Boys to a well-known, award-winning journalist with The New York Times. This blog post was celebrated with great delight by both the blogger and her readers. (Oh, Todd Palin will get his comeuppance now! Break out the orange jumpsuit in his size because this story is about to go viral!) The celebration lasted about three hours, until the word got out from Kathleen Baker precisely why Shailey Tripp had closed her blog. For the ridiculously low, low price of $14 a minute ($30 minimum per call) you, too, can converse directly with the ex-prostitute/masseuse who self-published two small books and now works for an ex-porn star! (Good job, Kathleen. The truth needed to be reported.) The celebratory blog post and its comments mysteriously disappeared! Within an hour, a short post was put in its place. Of course Kathleen's report, and the obvious truth of the whole mess, was not mentioned.
Let's review, shall we? According to the text of Boys Will Be Boys, Shailey Tripp was offered at least $100,000 for her story by The National Enquirer. The editors of the paper later rescinded this lucrative offer and reduced their proposition to an undisclosed amount, most likely a few thousand dollars. Months later Shailey Tripp attempted to auction off her e-mail collection one at a time in what turned out to be an uproarious late-night extravaganza of bidding that shocked even me! I cannot recall exactly what the final high bids were, but they were in the thousands for single messages of very short duration. The portions of the messages publicized for the bidders were of laughable insignificance. One can only hope that the actual full messages offered for sale in this overnight fiasco offered genuine material of value, but who knows at this point? The particularly flaky part is that not only did the bidding go into the stratosphere, but none of the bidders produced the cash after the auction was completed. Maybe one or more of the bidders made an after-hours deal on the side, but if so, I am not aware of it. So ends another flaky fiasco spawned by Babygate.
The next big money-making scheme hatched by Shailey Tripp was to self-publish her material. There is nothing at all wrong with that idea. She should have done that in the first place instead of slapping her credibility upside the head by initially involving herself with The Enquirer. Did her lawyer give her bad advice? I definitely think so. I personally provided Ms. Tripp with extensive advice about self-publishing. Did she heed this advice? Yes, except in issues in which my advice conflicted with Ms. Tripp's inflated view of herself and her desire to make as much money as easily as possible. She priced her CreateSpace book at the absolute maximum she thought she could get away with. $21.50 for 280 spacious pages of a self-published book on any subject except how to pick up girls (for boys) or how to have sex with vampires (for girls) is ludicrous. Anyone who has been around the block a few times in the current publishing climate knows this. It is also quite obvious that any book by an unknown author needs a Kindle version priced very low for that special Amazon market that absolutely dominates the sales of most any self-published book of recent years. Selling your Kindle, and other e-book formats for $18.95 only from the author's website utilizing PayPal is a patently absurd marketing strategy. Any book can be priced at $3-10 in the Kindle format and Amazon pays the author a 70% royalty, which is more than fair. Can you spell g-r-i-f-t-e-r?
Not only has Shailey Tripp obviously chosen a path not designed to bring the most readers to her book, therefore expanding the knowledge of her subject matter to large numbers of American voters, she has shut off the most cost-effective marketing tool available to any self-published author, a blog. Does anyone remember the temper tantrum she threw when she absurdly surmised that the Lifetime network had stolen her story when it produced a movie about a prostitute masseuse on the loose in Odessa TX in 2004? That was almost as absurd a rant as Dr. Brad Scharlott claiming that Trig Palin must be related to Trooper Wooten because a detailed photo analysis of their ears looked alike! Shailey Tripp is far from the only flake on this pie. She is just the most recent to expose her flaky crust in such sordid detail.
NIAFS is an equal-opportunity public service site. No punches are pulled and no one is immune to investigation just because he or she is apparently speaking from the left side of the political spectrum. Nothing has changed concerning my opinion of Shailey Tripp or her book, Boys Will Be Boys. I still think she is basically telling the truth about the most significant parts of her story. However, I have viewed her as one of the flakiest people I have ever encountered since I first learned of her story. What is shocking to me is not that she is a flake, but that she is far from alone among the Babygate bloggers in this respect. What is even more shocking is the degree to which most of the blog cult members continue to put up with this level of extreme flakiness.
Let me reiterate. There will be no Wild Ride published by Fred, at least not as a book successfully marketed nationally the way most of us would so desperately like to see. One of the following issues would promptly halt its commercial success dead in its tracks. First of all, Fred does not own the photos and e-mails you want to see published. Secondly, no one is going to believe that the real Fred is a person who has been consumed by the subject matter of Babygate or is qualified to discuss the topic. The third reason is that real authors do not publish ghostwritten books, and that is precisely the scam certain individuals are trying to pull. Lastly, even if the scam could be successfully launched, the media would uncover the obvious weaknesses in Fred's past in about five minutes with Google. Sean Hannity would personally go apeshit on the air as soon as he learned the identity of Fred's ghostwriter! If you think the right wing media trashed Joe McGinniss in a hurry, wait until they get a whiff of Fred and his pals!
Why is Paradigm Shift the only book that discusses Babygate in detail? I truly do not know. All I do know is that there are no flakes on Floyd. I arrived in California the first time crossing the border into Lake Tahoe on a motorcycle in 1971, and my progressive thought processes were in place long before that. America will never turn itself around in any significant, lasting manner until the left wing stops following flaky leaders. Until that point, we are all trapped being just Bozos on This Bus.
