Baseball legend Pete Rose (you know, the fellow who’s not in the MLB Hall of Fame) acknowledged some time back that he has in his lifetime read only one book. It was the one he wrote, titled Pete Rose: My Story.
For what it’s worth, Charlie Hustle thought it was pretty good.
That little nugget sprang to mind when it was revealed the Sage of Monroe County, our own Rep. Jamie Comer (R-TheFrankfortLoop) is considering adding writer to his curriculum vitae with a book centered on his madcap adventures as a junior grade G-Man pursuing The Biden Crime Family™ to the ends of the earth, even though his time as an Eliot Ness wannabe has resulted in the biggest flop since Heaven’s Gate.
Axios, an online news source, reported recently that a page on book publisher HarperCollins’ website displayed what was referred to as a placeholder cover for a Comer-penned tome titled, provocatively, All the President’s Money — any similarity to Woodward and Bernstein’s All the President’s Men is purely coincidental — with a publication date of Sept. 10.
It should be noted, before the Pulitzers and Nobels are set aside in rabid anticipation, that Comer spokesman Austin Hacker told Axios that HarperCollins put up the page in error.
“It was not authorized by Congressman Comer and he immediately requested it be taken down,” Hacker said.
But don’t abandon all hope. Hacker told Axios that Comer “has been in discussions with Harper Collins about a potential book” but the deal hasn’t gone down yet. And there’s always the possibility other publishers might have an interest.
So roll over Tolstoy and tell Dostoyevsky the news. Comer Pyle’s writing a book. Rumor has it that discussions have reached such an advanced stage that Crayola has been contracted to provide Jamie’s writing utensils.
But, as noted, that’s just a rumor.
A lot of questions remain unanswered. For instance, what part of the fiction section at your local bookshop will you be able to locate this magnum opus? Is there a rack set aside for comedy? Or will it be better placed within the fantasy collection, right next to Tolkien?
And who’s going to play Jamie, our courageous warrior, in the resulting major studio film production? As noted in a previous column, fellow Kentuckian Jim Varney is, sadly, dead. Maybe Tom Hanks can be convinced to revive Forest Gump.
Regardless, Comer might have plenty of time to put crayon to paper. His impeachment inquiry as chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee into President Biden’s non-existent business dealings with his son, Hunter, and a non-existent $5 million bribe from a defunct Ukraine energy outfit appears to be, thankfully, slogging to a halt.
Despite Comer’s best efforts, it appears Biden will remain safely ensconced in the White House until at least January 2025 while our boy Jamie makes some baseless criminal referrals to the Justice Department that will be summarily ignored, and rightfully so.
The Biden White House has already moved on, declaring the probe dead and buried, unworthy of the administration’s further consideration.
In a letter to Comer rejecting his invitation for Biden to appear before the committee, Richard Sauber, the president’s special counsel, reportedly said, “Your Committee’s purported ‘impeachment inquiry’ has succeeded only in turning up abundant evidence that, in fact, the President has done nothing wrong.
“Your insistence on peddling these false and unsupported allegations despite ample evidence to the contrary makes one thing about your investigation abundantly clear: The facts do not matter to you,” he added.
A fellow congressman who spoke to Comer told CNN that he is ready to be “done with” the probe.
“Comer has grown increasingly frustrated as his investigation appears to be at a dead end, with Republicans resigned to the reality that they don’t have the votes to impeach the president, multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation told CNN.”
It’s curious that Comer has extended the agony for as long as he has. It’s been obvious, despite his over-hyping of incidents that didn’t even rise to the status of peccadillos, that he simply didn’t have the goods on President Biden and that he never would because those goods simply don’t exist.
Even former President George W. Bush cried uncle over his claim that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction. But Comer keeps hitting himself in the head with a hammer, apparently unaware how good it’s going to feel when he stops.
Claims fell apart almost as quickly as they were voiced. The $5 million bribe allegation to supposedly protect the Ukraine energy company that employed his son, Hunter, as a board member, fell apart when the primary accuser was indicted for fabricating the whole mess. Money that exchanged hands between Biden and his brother that Comer hinted was the president’s take from a huge, illicit business payoff? It was a loan repayment.
Comer elevated relatively innocent encounters – engaging in small talk with his son’s business associates via speakerphone during meetings or breaking bread with Hunter and the folks he sought to cut deals with – to Armageddon levels. Yet he consistently failed to show the president was intricately involved in any of his son’s business affairs or that he benefitted monetarily from any of those deals.
It’s been a joke from the beginning. Yet there was Comer during a committee hearing last week insinuating that China had provided a $9 million bribe for the Biden family – a claim that has long been discredited. When Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD, aka The Smart Jamie), the panel’s ranking member, challenged the claim, the two engaged in a shouting match.
That led to this exchange:
Raskin: We have spent millions pursuing this.
Comer: That is not true. We haven’t spent hardly anything.
Raskin: Then we get what we pay for because you got nothing.
Now, with a book deal looming, Comer senses a generous payday, an opportunity to portray himself the hero and target all the schnooks who keep MAGA writers in high cotton. With his gift for bloviating and willingness to sell cheap lies, it might even help our boy win the governorship this next go-round.
It’s too bad Mark Twain used it many years ago, otherwise Comer could title his book, The Private History of a Campaign That Failed.
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Written by Bill Straub, a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame. Cross-posted from the Northern Kentucky Tribune.
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