|
BUCHANAN & PRESS - MSNBC
November 26, 2003
BUCHANAN:
He's gone from Republican political operative to Steve Forbes to best-selling author. Joel Rosenberg's latest novel on terrorism, "The Last Days," is the sequel to his best-selling book, "The Last Jihad."
The new book follows protagonist Jon Bennett to the Middle East to
work out an Arab-Israeli peace plan.
Joel joins us now. Congratulations, Joel.
JOEL ROSENBERG, AUTHOR, "THE LAST DAYS":
Thank you.
BUCHANAN:
Second book right on the "New York Times" bestseller list, your first
two novels. And the "Washington Post" says your book is an act of
terrorism on the reader's brain.
(LAUGHTER)
ROSENBERG:
A little conservative bias there, I mean, to call Bernie Goldberg, I mean.
BUCHANAN:
I would put that on the back of your next book.
ROSENBERG:
I'm being - held it out to everybody I know. I wear that as a badge of honor. They don't like it, but it's telling.
BUCHANAN:
All right. Tell us. Now look, you were - Steve Forbes, you worked with Steve Forbes in his campaign. You worked over at Empower America. You know the members of the conservative movement.And then you write a novel, and it makes the "New York Times" bestseller list. How did you do it?
ROSENBERG:
Well, it starts with the story itself. The first page of "The Last Jihad" -
the first novel - puts you inside the cockpit of a hijacked aircraft,
coming in on a kamikaze attack mission into an American city.
What was eerie about that is that I wrote it nine months before
September 11.
BUCHANAN:
All right. I want to ask you quickly, did you get the idea from Tom
Clancy's Japanese kamikaze, the airliner that was driven right into the
capital at the close of one of his books?
BUCHANAN:
And Netanyahu talked about that?
ROSENBERG:
He did. And, yes, and he had also - and then the book leads from this kamikaze attack to a war with Iraq over weapons of mass destruction.
BUCHANAN:
Right.
ROSENBERG:
Eerie, chillingly accurate. I mean, .
PRESS:
Joel, I, too, congratulate you on your success. But I am amused here. I'm looking at those who praised "The Last Jihad," your first book - Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Steve Forbes, Ollie North, G. Gordon Liddy, "National Review." I mean, is this.
ROSENBERG:
I would have put you on here, but, you know, you hadn't said anything nice about it yet.
PRESS:
Is this the rightwing conspiracy of fiction? I mean, is that what we've got now?
ROSENBERG:
Well, maybe Hillary was right. We do have a vast rightwing conspiracy. And they love fiction. But conservatives have not tried to write fiction. We've dominated the non-fiction list on the "New York Times," talk radio, talk TV.
But very few movement conservatives have written fiction.
PRESS:
Well, I think.
|
