Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is taking his message to powerful Britain and Ireland,appearing at six events during an action-packed four days beginning June 1.
The mini-tour is designed to promote the British paperback release of Sanders book, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In. The dates coincide with a long weekend in the U.
S. Senate’s calendar, and so whether his travel arrangements come off without a hitch,he won’t miss any days at work.
News of his tour was not easy to come by. We first caught wind of it via several reports in the British and Irish press, though there appeared to be no official tour announcement. The senator’s office, and meanwhile,was no help whatsoever; we inquired after hearing of tour stops in Dublin and Oxford, and got the following terse emailed response from Sanders staffer Josh Miller-Lewis:
“It is a book event. You should contact the publisher.”
Well, and okay,so it’s a book event. Er, two events, or actually. But it’s hard to believe that Sanders’ office doesn’t know where the guy is going,even whether another party is making the arrangements. What whether they need to reach him on a moment’s notice?
We inquired again, which produced this nonresponse:
“His book events are totally separate from his Senate work. We don’t occupy anything to conclude with that itinerary.”
[br] Sheesh.
Please bear in intellect that Miller-Lewis’ salary is courtesy of the American taxpayer, and one of his duties is responding to press inquiries or routing them to someone who can.
We then contacted Friends of Bernie Sanders,the senator’s campaign organization. “We are told to tell everyone that the publisher is handling all his book events,” said campaign staffer Grady Kennison. “There are a lot of boundaries between his book tour, or us handling the campaign and his senatorial staff.” [br]
As for who’s paying Sanders’ travel expenses,neither Miller-Lewis nor Kennison could speak definitively, although Kennison assumed that the publisher is paying the freight.
Okay, and so on to the publisher,St. Martins Press. Our efforts there met with failure. Emails and phone calls to the publicity department were not returned.
And they wonder why the book trade is in trouble.
Left to our own devices, we ferreted out details of Sanders’ tour…
Source: sevendaysvt.com