Two Obvious Reasons RH Can't Back Off DVC's "FACT" Claims
I received an email this morning that asked a question that was SO obvious that I am ashamed not to have thought of it myself:
"Don't you think that -- aside from their lust to sell more books (and movie tickets) -- one key reason Random House cannot afford to publicaly admit that the "FACT" in Code is fiction is that if they do this, then suddenly all the reasons the judge threw out your case will vanish?
"And don't you think another reason is that if they admit this, then they admit that they deceived book buyers and there goes the class action cases against them. Don't you think?"
"Don't you think that -- aside from their lust to sell more books (and movie tickets) -- one key reason Random House cannot afford to publicaly admit that the "FACT" in Code is fiction is that if they do this, then suddenly all the reasons the judge threw out your case will vanish?
"And don't you think another reason is that if they admit this, then they admit that they deceived book buyers and there goes the class action cases against them. Don't you think?"
posted by Lewis Perdue at 11:30 AM
5 Comments:
I never bought the "fact" claim in DVC. I read it as the paintings locations, and the sects were real, but not the scope and context. I think people are confused about that claim, in part at least.
Yes. Confused is right.
The fact that SO MANY people took SO MUCH time to write books about how SO WRONG the "facts" were in DVC is a measure of how many people were suckered in by the false and deceptive marketing.
It's easy to say they should not be so gullible, but when you're the average person and you've got a BIG NAME like Random House telling you it's TRUE, then you start to trust.
Obviously trust in Random House is misplaced.
Well the books arguing against that truth claim are self-interested from a religious and academic pespective. I do agree that peopel are easily co-opted, and mislead. As my buddy journalist Phil Garlington said in the hilarious true memoir The Propwash Chronicle, "Just because I said I had a gun, the gas pump thieves believed it. Amazing. It's the same principal that sells used cars."
Many of the religious books do have an agenda, but the many articles in the NYTimes and elsewhere pointing out the ridiculous mistakes in art, art history and history in general are simply showing the indisputable fact that Brown did NOT conduct the "extensive research" he claims.
In the religious history field, there is at least one book on the subject that does not have a religious agenda: Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code by Bart Ehrman.
I've read a number of other books by Ehrman and, for the life of me, can't tell if he's a Christian, an atheist or believer in God as a UFO ...
The bottom line is that even relatively skeptical people are subject to being scammed when a supposedly reputable company is behid things.
Yeah, yeah, I KNOW people should know better.
Yes Erhman is the best. No question. A professor in North Caroline State I believe. No, I agree with the reader as victim meme. It's along the lines of the writers duped by Publishamerica. If I can be taken by deliberately deceptive advertising anyone can.
You can't blame the victim for a scam that went as planned.
I think people are taken in by the Bible as absolute truth angle too. It's metaphorical in nature, but they see it as "spoken from the sky" literally. It wasn't, no matter the value contained therein. It shows how gullible people are at their base, which is what this is about really:Deceptive peddling of lies for large sums of money.
I understand Nan Talese and Frey will be on Oprah soon. That should be interesting. I hope Gay got through to her.
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