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Judging books by their covers,
Treason: Liberal Treachery Imagine you’re a book cover designer, working for a major publisher, and you don’t necessarily get to pick and choose your projects. And then the latest from Ann Coulter lands on your desk. You don’t really agree with her politics. You could even be politically conservative, but you disdain Coulter’s more-Limbaugh-than-Limbaugh, Michael-Moore-of-the-right, anti-intellectual attack-dog style. What’s a poor, hapless designer to do? Exactly what this designer did, that’s what. This cover is nothing short of perfect. First of all, everything is centered. This is a gross misrepresentation of Coulter, who couldn’t be further to the right. That’s a bit subversive, but the designer has only begun. A side note: in the attached image, there’s one line that’s off-center. The image, admittedly, was lifted from Amazon’s page about the book. When checking the actual book in a bookstore, however, I found that the line was actually centered, which likely means that either the cover was originally printed with an error that has since been fixed, or an erroneous image was supplied by the publisher. At any rate, it represents the sloppiness with which Coulter forms her arguments. Even worse, the offending line, which touts her previous dominance atop the charts, is slightly to the left of the other text. The horror! What kind of Communist is this designer, anyway? But I digress. Moving on, we come to the weird appearance of Gill Sans at the bottom. After having Trade Gothic Bold Condensed do everything else on the cover, the designer suddenly, and without warning, switches over to Gill Sans, as if there weren’t a non-condensed version of Trade Gothic Bold available. Mixing two sans-serif fonts together in such a small space? That’s definitely more intentional, highly indicative sloppiness. Brilliant! Finally, and most damning, is the main image. There’s Coulter, all smarmy for the photo shoot, resting her hands on something that will later be edited out and replaced with the title of the book. Maybe Coulter even knew how the photo would be used; I have no idea. Even if she knew, she was duped: this is a brilliant illustration of how Coulter can’t even stand up on her own; she has to use inflammatory words just to prop herself up. Judgment: don’t buy this book, but do compliment the designer if you happen to run into him at a party, that is, if he cops to it.
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