Bin Laden vs. Oprah

No excelente ScrappleFace, Bin Laden Starts Book Club, Vows to Crush Oprah, 21-01-2006:

When Usama bin Laden, in his most recent threatening audiotape, recommended William Blum’s five year old book, The Rogue State, its sales rank on Amazon.com jumped from 209,000 to 20. That success has launched a new business for al Qaeda that could challenge the dominance of Oprah Winfrey in the book club industry.

Members of Usama’s Book Club will receive personal recommendations from the charismatic leader, as well as the opportunity to review the club’s latest featured selection every 30 days “at no risk to life or limb, as long as you keep the book and pay the invoice.”

The announcement comes at a difficult time for Oprah’s Book Club, following revelations that James Frey, author of Oprah-pick ‘A Million Little Pieces‘, fabricated parts of his real-life story.

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“My mission is to make this the biggest book club in the world and get people reading great books again,” said Mr. Bin Laden on a reel-to-reel tape recording released today. “This is the first step in our ultimate plan to crush the billionaire imperialist infidel Oprah Winfrey, Allah be praised, and to take the reins of power myself as America’s media darling.”

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The book club represents phase one of the “establishment of the Islamic media caliphate” through Amasu Inc., Mr. bin Laden’s production company, which previously specialized in making audio recordings of his lectures that sound like vintage 1930s radio programs.

In the coming months, Amasu Inc. will launch a magazine called ‘U’ and distribute a new TV show to challenge Dr. Phil McGraw, whose TV career Oprah launched.

Dr. Zawahiri, the new program featuring Mr. bin Laden’s personal physician, Ayman al-Zawahiri, “will dish out relationship and health advice with a folksy, common sense approach that should endear him to America’s housewives.”

“It’s really about being the best you that you can be,” said Mr. Zawahiri in a news release, “I will school the infidel’s wife to overcome negative self-talk so that she can achieve a purpose-driven life in which she martyrs herself for the sake of jihad.”