There’s a book in everyone it seems these days, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf today took the unusual forum of a joint presidential press conference to announce the upcoming release of his memoirs.
It was just the latest of the many head shaking moments of the last week, from the collection of international leaders gathering for this loony season of the fall session of the UN.
The Pakistani President who has released a little tease for publicity with his “they would bomb us to the stone age” quote for this Sunday's 60 minutes (a program and network (CBS) affiliated with Simon and Shuster by the way), declined to expand on a few of the questions posed to him during Friday morning’s press conference, because “he promised his publishers that he wouldn’t comment”.
Which no doubt is something that Tony Blair and George Bush might wish to utilize the next time that some heated questions get thrown their way. “Sorry, can’t comment on that, we’re working on chapter five right now!”
The Pervez press tour can now get underway we guess, now that he’s launched his tome (In the Line of Fire: A Memoir) from the Presidential podium, it’s time to get out there and flog (uh, hmm, can we use that term here, in these trouble times?) his book.
Pervez has a pretty busy couple of days ahead, making the tour of the talking heads and book reviewers in the big Apple, including what should be a wild night with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show!.
His book is apparently an anticipated literary event as the world wonders if he really knows where Bin Ladin is (Cave number five, west wing), why he reversed field on the Taliban (hmm stone age comes to mind) and where he sees Pakistan going in these tumultuous times. The expected release does come with some warnings that the book will be combed over for all sorts of political nuances, compared to some of the other Pakistani epics or our times.
Frankly I think his publishers missed the PR boat completely, if they had been on their game they would have slipped a copy to Hugo Chavez two days ago, who could have featured the soon to be released memoirs just before he launched into the sulfur commentary at the UN.
Chavez’s comments have done wonders for books sales of late he helped Chomsky to return to the Amazon top ten list this week just by waving the book around at the UN and putting it on his must read list, just imagine the boost to pre-sales that he could have done for Pervez!
However, all was seemingly not a lost opportunity, apparently not to be out shilled by Hugo Chavez, President Bush brought to an end one of the more bizarre joint press conferences of late, by suggesting that everyone go out and “buy the book”.
Finally he and Hugo Chavez have some common ground; they both apparently like to recommend reading material. Maybe they should start book clubs!
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