Saturday, December 16, 2006

Then and now.......or
Google Bombing Michael Crichton

John Fleck
points to an article in TPMuckraker where, in his new fishwrap, Cricheton gratuitously slanders a critic (behind the Lexis-Nexis wall) as a child molester. This sort of thing has a long history, not only with Crichton, who has practiced it in the past, but with some rather famous authors. However, this is not without risk, and the critic, Michael Crowley, could sue and get Cricheton's book pulped, at least in England.

Still, the calculus has historically been that the targets, either shrug it off, as not being worth the expense to sue, or as the last link points out, hire some thugs to beat on the artiste. As emotionally satisfying as the later may be, today the tables have turned. Even with good sales, Cricheton's book will only reach a few thousand who buy it and read it. If made into a movie, the studio lawyers will see that the extraneous scenes never make it to the script, let alone the screen. In short, Cricheton's reach here is limited.

But folks, Google is everywhere, and it would only be just if every time anyone used the term Michael Cricheton, there was a link to the TPMuckraker article. A Real Climate article on clueless Michael already is number four on the MC list. However, this is not really in the spirit of true Google bombing. Perhaps we should link fishwrap to some article on MC, much in the spirit of the original Google bomb "talentless hack", which, though descriptive has already been taken and would be hard to dislodge. Still, dear friends, Eli is confident in your cleverness and quite willing to lend an ear.

You might be interested in leaving a review at Amazon, and elsewhere, pointing to MCs bad behavior (it actually was not such a bad review, the skin Crichton skin is thin) and leaving a few links.

Rabett Run is open to suggestions, but as a stopgap we are going to add this to our blogroll:)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

In the past few years, Chrichton has destroyed his own reputation (the one he had the day he graduated from Harvard medical school) all by himself.

No help from anyone else is required.

He undoubtedly thought that meeting with the Prez was going to earn him respect with the public -- back when Bush actually had a couple supporters.

llewelly said...

I recommend: Conspiracy theorist.

Anonymous said...

After reading "State of Fear" I wondered what Crichton had against depressive English singer-songwriters...

M.J. S. - (Wacki) said...

Is there anything interesting behind the Lexis-Nexis wall that isn't in the articles? Linking to items that are for Harvard members only doesn't help me a whole lot.

M.J. S. - (Wacki) said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
M.J. S. - (Wacki) said...

Eli,

Read the title of my post on this subject.

Crichton condones pedophilia

There is more of a little bit of irony to this matter.

M.J. S. - (Wacki) said...

ugh... I meant "more than".

Damn typos.

EliRabett said...

Actually, the review is not a terrible one, especially if you define terrible as what Langlands did to Mlodinow. That's what makes the whole thing worthy of a response.

On the otherhand, I am by disposition more inclined to the subtle sword thrust than the club, but I have not yet come up with a better idea.