One last thing:
Thanks to everyone for refraining from commenting on the word
corrupt in this phrase: "It's a question not of
NYTBR's being corrupt but of its fraud markers being bypassed."
I would argue that virtually all mainstream publications are corrupt to varying degrees, and I personally would neither single out nor ignore that aspect of the
NYTBR. My point is that the fallibility of the
NYT's Bestseller list is due not to
inherent corruption but rather system-gaming which could apply to
virtually every list at any level.
* * * *
We tend to malign a false consensus by attaching stereotypes of the kinds of people we assume must comprise it:
People whom the heckler feels are dangerously wrong must also be visually and socially apparent -- or so the stereotype implies. They must be people with unlikeable and/or threatening attributes.
Ergo academics = inbred intellectual bullies passing awards back and forth to one another; classical music fans = disingenuous
tsk-tskers in whiskers and black turtlenecks who tend to brandish opera glasses or Herbert Tareytons* fitted into ludicrously elongated cigarette holders; genre fiction readers = white-eyed consumers with tentacled sucking mouths.
I won't even touch on the stereotypes favored by people on both sides of the political loyalty divider (as if all politics were Boolean). It's a divider which is nearly always arbitrary.
Suffice to bray this:
Every one of us is a closet Lilliputian.
When seeking out systemic ills, resorting to the stereotypes we associate with those ills is nearly always a mistake.
A thief can emerge from any group or stratum. The devil is in the distinctions between that individual and the people they might resemble. The sociocultural aspect of their existence is probably camouflage.
By extension, we ourselves are implicated by those same ills.
Our sociopolitical position doesn't matter. If we're willing to mischaracterize, stigmatize and demoralize people with antipodal ideas, then our de facto argument is for a culture in which debate is sacrificed to domination.
=================
* See this
'50s Teryton ad campaign.