Jack Layton's Blurbgate

Steve Janke of the Blogging Tories has gone trawling for scandal and come up with a boot:

Jack Layton and the NDP advertise Jack Layton's books on the party website. That's fine, except that the review excerpt is misleadingly quoted out of context. Instead of praise for the entire book by a major newspaper, the reality is that one columnist praised the first chapter only.

It's all very tawdry, really.

It sure is, if your definition of "tawdry" is "standard industry practice." As one of Janke's own commenters points out, review blurbs almost never cite the actual reviewer. As for a blurb being taken slightly out of context, well, what exactly does he think a blurb is? There's a reason you rarely see entire reviews reprinted on book jackets, movie posters, or CD cases.