Christine O'Donnell

We are talking only about newsstand sales, not total circulation, but this does mean that Bachmann’s incredibly controversial and very buzzy crazy eyes did not “move the needle,” as annoying people say. Of course, the actual article about Bachmann, inside of the eye-grabbing cover, was pretty bland. But since when does the quality of the journalism have anything to do with newsstand sales?

(Ad pages are also down, but that doesn’t have much to do with Bachmann.)

Meanwhile, Christine O’Donnell, the famous non-witch who lost a Senate race after improbably winning a GOP primary, is traveling the country promoting her inevitable book about the time she didn’t win an election. According to Fort Myers News Press (via Wonkette) the tour is not drawing massive crowds, even in conservative Naples, Florida.

Still, O’Donnell took the turnout of five people — members of the media outnumbered customers — at Barnes & Noble in stride.

“God bless you, Tom,” she told Tom Bruzzesi of Fort Myers, who said he’s launching his own presidential campaign.

“I like her,” Bruzzesi said. “She’s kind of a rogue like me.”

“Thank you for coming out today,” O’Donnell said to Louise Campo of Naples. “She interests me. She’s very conservative,” Campo said.

O’Donnell, a Christian, then politely turned down a request from a young man who asked her to sign his book on demonology instead of a copy of her book.

Well, that’ll happen. As Keith Olbermann reported last night, the book as thus far sold 2,200 copies, 1,500 of which went to O’Donnell supporters in Delaware:

This after a publicity blitz that notably included kicking herself off of Piers Morgan’s CNN show. (And now O’Donnell’s been disinvited, again, from a Tea Party Rally that is supposed to feature Sarah Palin.)

All this after Sarah Palin — the barometer of how America is receiving vacuous avatars of cultural resentment masquerading as Republican politicians — saw her much ballyhooed documentary open to weak numbers and quickly end up on DVD.

The last use any of these people have is as boogeymen with which to terrify liberals.

(Except for Rick Perry. That crazy corrupt jerk could end up president if we’re not careful.)

That’s what she told the crowd assembled at Women’s National Republican Club in New York, where she was apparently booked to speak at the same time that she was booked to be interviewed on cable news by that guy from “The Apprentice.” The New York Observer was there:

“I want to apologize for being so late, I know that’s not respectful of your time, so please accept my apology,” Ms. O’Donnell began. “We started out at about five o’clock in the morning at Fox and Friends and we’ve gone nonstop until the final stop at CNN a few minutes ago.” No mention was made of the walk-out that Mr. Morgan was hyping on Twitter.

O’Donnell was even asked about the unfairness of the liberal media, and she declined to bring up any sort of ill treatment she may have suffered at the hands of Larry King’s replacement.

I think O’Donnell was probably just nervous about being late for this other thing, and so she came up with an excuse to bolt early. As someone who is chronically late and frequently anxious, I can relate! Speaking to an Observer reporter after her talk, O’Donnell made her abrupt departure sound like a scheduling issue.

“We were late for this, and he wasn’t ending, and we were going, ‘Wrap up, wrap up!’ He was late and he wasn’t ending. He’s looking for ratings. He’s looking for ratings. He was being rude, and I said, ‘Piers, I gotta go!’ You know, I’m late already! He’s looking for ratings, and trying to stir up a controversy.”

Of course, then O’Donnell said other, weirder things:

There is a double standard at work for women candidates, Ms. O’Donnell told The Observer: “In the 2008 campaign, no one would have dared ask Barack Obama, ‘How are you going to control your libido. You’re a strapping young man. What are you going to do around all those interns?’ But people can ask Michele Bachmann about her migraines.”

Yes, right, of course. It is a double standard that the press would be interested in Michele Bachmann’s chronic migraines but not in Barack Obama’s strappingness and heretofore unnoticed out-of-control libido.

I understand that O’Donnell meant to call the media’s prurient-seeming interest in her past romantic escapades hypocritical, without drawing attention to That One Thing With the Ladybug Costume, but perhaps she should have come up with an actual example of a double standard, instead of just saying things that make no sense and that also could be … taken the wrong way. (“Strapping!” Is that the word you think of when you think of Barack Obama?)