From "The Grey Lady" (the NYTimes, which is groaning under "bad times" as well), news of layoffs at Macmillian, the publisher which owns Holt and of course our friends at St. Martins and Tor/Forge.
Macmillian's owned, in turn, by a German combine, Holtzbrinck. Yep, Random House is owned by foreigners as well. Nice to see folks tasked with keeping American brains trained, creative, imagining controlled by Germans. Between that and cheap Chinese garbage folk are buying at Wal mart, I'd say it's "evening" in America. "Mourning" in America? How about that play on words? Nevermind their business model is warped--books aren't Beyonce CDs. Nevermind the real reason for this crap has more to do with, by analogy, Sam Zell loading the Tribune Company with debt from his leveraging spree, or the perfidy and non-regulation of the financial sector than with "young people not reading." The result is the same. Shrink. Dummi-fy. It's a self-fulfilling prophesy.
All of a sudden, that movie Idiocracy doesn't seem so amusing. Just like Office Space is hitting a bit too close to home now.
