So I was looking at the Amazon page for Kos’ and Armstrong’s book, Crashing The Gate, which is about how to use the net to take back America for progressive politics (or at least I’m surmising that’s the theme, based on reviews and who wrote it), and I noticed something about the reviews. When a so-called “right-wing” book goes up (like by Michelle Malkin, or Ann Coulter, or even non-bombthrowers), the review section quickly becomes flooded by “reviews” from people who have obviously neither purchased or read the book, and are usually ad hominem attacks on the authors. Such “reviews” generally get one star in terms of their utility to the other Amazon visitors.

But I saw none of that among the reviews for Crashing The Gate. Admittedly, most of the reviews were by fellow Democrats, but I suspect that if there are any negative reviews, they’ll at least be by people who’ve actually read the book, and have something intelligent to say about it.

I’m going to keep an eye on it, and see if my prediction is born out, over the next few days. And if it is, what does it say about the civility level of the two sides of the political spectrum?

[Update a few minutes later]

It’s not at Amazon, but here’s an example of a negative review by someone who has actually read the book. It’s certainly not laudatory (though Trevino does have some good things to say about it), but it’s also not the mindless feces flinging that often passes for many “progressive” reviews of “non-progressive” books at Amazon.

[Late evening update]

There’s one other interesting characteristic of these drive-by trolls. They not only haven’t read the book, but they aren’t prolific reviewers in general. For example, consider the reviewers for Glenn’s latest book. The majority of the reviews so far are one-star, never-read-the-book reviews. And when one clicks on “other reviews by this reviewer,” one comes up almost empty in all cases.

This seems like something that Amazon could do something about. It’s almost like spam, except it’s a lot more personal.

Ideas as to how Amazon could (fairly and objectively) do something about it are welcome.