Regnery Publishing

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Regnery Publishing is a publishing house based in Washington DC that is the (self-proclaimed) "nation’s preeminent conservative publisher." They "publish[...] books that are contrary to those of 'mainstream' publishers in New York" by such conservative luminaries as "Dinesh D'Souza, Armstrong Williams, Oliver North, Mark Steyn, and Steve Forbes."[1] One wonders why they left out Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Ted Nugent, and Peter Duesberg (yes, really).

Regnery was founded in the 1940s by Henry Regnery, who started his publishing career distributing the conservative newsletter Human Events. While they got involved in extreme wingnuttery by printing Bircher books, they also published a few works by socialists and Sybil, the famous book on split-personality (now dissociative) disorder. They helped launch William F. Buckley's career by publishing his first two books, God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of "Academic Freedom", and the pro-McCarthyism McCarthy and His Enemies.

Gallery of bullshit[edit]

Currently, Regnery seems to be a clearinghouse for the bullshit no other publisher would ever touch. Some of their greatest hits include:

Along with these, they offer a variety of books on fundamentalism, creationism, and Biblical pseudoarchaeology. A number of books by Newt Gingrich and Mark Skousen, the nephew of W. Cleon Skousen, are available. There is also some rather uncharacteristic woo as well, including a bunch of books on food woo, diet woo, and general quackery. And for some reason, you can still order books on Y2K.

Politically Incorrect Guides[edit]

Regnery publishes a series of books called the Politically Incorrect Guides or P.I.G.s, which are largely written to resemble the successful …for Dummies series from Wiley and Complete Idiot's Guide from Alpha Books. They are written primarily by right-wing hacks such as Tom Bethell and Jonathan Wells; it is generally agreed outside the wingnut world that they are both political (being heavily biased towards dogmatic conservatism) and incorrect (both scientifically and historically). The evolution blog Panda's Thumb initiated a series meant to be a point-by-point fisking of the PIG to Intelligent Design by noted ID advocate and would-be scientist Jonathan Wells; due to the sheer volume of stupid in that one book alone, the series never quite finished.[note 2]

Earlier editions ran with the tagline "Liberals have hijacked [insert topic here] for long enough. Now it's our turn." That last sentence was later changed to "It's time to set the record straight."

Educators may wish to get copies of the appropriate P.I.Gs to prepare themselves for misinformed students who have been indoctrinated with these books. (Yes, they are popular with parents in the home schooling movement.) At least one book from the list below[note 3] is actively recommended to Christian school and college students who want to argue back against atheist teachers.[2]

According to Regnery's website, the following Politically Incorrect Guides are available:

Parent company's publication of alleged sexual predators[edit]

In addition to platforming the works of right-wing crackpots and grifters, their parent company (Skyhorse Publishing) has also taken to publishing books written by various publicly disgraced authors and intellectuals banished from the mainstream publishing world soon after sexual misconduct allegations emerged.[10][11]

For instance, filmmaker Woody AllenWikipedia's memoir Apropos of Nothing was originally set to be released by the Hachette Book Group, but its publication date was suddenly scrapped following controversy, and an employee walkout due to the decades-long allegations of sexual abuse and incest made against Allen. That is, until one of Skyhorse's imprints, Arcade, decided to help get Allen's book published. Arcade's co-founder Jeannette Seaver justified the company's decision as taking a courageous stance for free speech while implicitly framing the controversy as a symptom of so-called "cancel culture", claiming in a statement: "In this strange time, when truth is too often dismissed as "fake news", we as publishers prefer to give a voice to a respected artist, rather than bow to those determined to silence him",[12] or to translate from corporate PR speak: "the money we would get from this credibly accused child rapist was too good to pass up, and we don't care if we end up in Hell because of it!"

Similarly, Blake BaileyWikipedia's highly anticipated Philip Roth biography was seemingly flushed down the toilet for good once several of Bailey's colleagues and former students accused him of grooming and sexual assault/rape as well as engaging in other pedophilic behavior when he worked as an eighth grade English teacher during the 1990s,[13] causing his publisher W.W. Norton to abruptly halt all shipping and promotion of Bailey's book while his literary agency dropped him as a client.[14] Not only did Skyhorse republish Blake's book, they allowed him to even write and publish his own blistering anti-#metoo memoir, fittingly titled Repellent,[15] the cheap-looking front cover of which shows Bailey's Philip Roth bio on top of a stack of burning books. Again, the tactic of diverting attention away from someone's depraved sex crime towards concerns over censorship and freedom of speech is very transparently deployed in Repellent's publicity copy as well, dubiously claiming that the allegations made against Bailey are because of the biography's overly sympathetic attitude to Roth's personal failings, who has been criticized by several feminists for misogyny;[16][17] causing the "internet rumors" that eventually lead to Bailey's supposed "cancellation".

External links[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ↑ Which is funny, given that Obama was responsible for the downfall of terror masterminds Osama bin Laden, Muammar al-Gaddafi, and many others.
  2. ↑ In fact, it seems to be ongoing. After nearly sputtering to a stop in 2010, two new titles about the British Empire (they're fans of it — their ancestors must have been Tories) and socialism were added in 2011.
  3. ↑ The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible
  4. ↑ The exclamation point is part of the tag line. It isn't added as commentary, although it could be considering that the book was written by an American. You know, those guys who were the first to fight against British colonialism.

References[edit]

  1. ↑ From the publisher
  2. ↑ How to Shut Up an Atheist from Townhall.com (surprise, surprise...)
  3. ↑ The Original Culture War, a review by Peter Bacon in the Harvard Political Review, March 4, 2009
  4. ↑ Whistling Dixie, a review by Matthew J. Franck in the Claremont Review of Books, Vol. VIII , Number 1 - Winter 2007/08
  5. ↑ Review by John F. Marszalek
  6. ↑ Review by Chris Mooney and further commentary
  7. ↑ Review by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel
  8. ↑ Review by David Greenburg
  9. ↑ Mainly Incorrect, a review by John B. Kienker in the Claremont Review of Books, Vol. V, Number 2 - Spring 2005
  10. ↑ Elizabeth Blair and Meghan Collins Sullivan, Amid Sexual Misconduct Allegations, Publisher Suspends Shipping Of Blake Bailey Book. NPR, 22 April 2021.
  11. ↑ Constance Grady, Woody Allen’s publisher canceled his memoir after staff walked out. Vox, 6 March 2020.
  12. ↑ Cornelia Channing, Woody Allen’s Memoir Finds New Publisher Who Hails Him as “Respected Artist” Slate, 23 March 2020.
  13. ↑ Jessica Winter, The Allegations Against Blake Bailey and the Shock of the Familiar. Archived from The New Yorker, 4 May 2021.
  14. ↑ Alexandra Alter and Rachel Abrams, Philip Roth’s Biographer Is Accused of Sexual Assault. Archived from The New York Times, 21 April 2021.
  15. ↑ Jessie Gaynor, Aaand, Skyhorse is publishing Blake Bailey’s memoir about cancel culture. Lithub, 26 July 2022.
  16. ↑ Was Philip Roth a misogynist? The Conversation, 23 May 2018.
  17. ↑ Steven G. Kellman, Disturbingly bigoted and irredeemably misogynistic? How will future readers view Philip Roth? Forward, 22 September 2021.
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