The online reviews for Mark Judge’s Wasted are getting predictably weird

We’ve seen this play out before. An item strikes a chord in the news cycle and suddenly people are flocking to Amazon to leave ridiculous reviews for a product they’ve never actually ordered. Remember the Mizuno running shoes Wendy Davis wore to filibuster an abortion bill? (Five stars: “Excellent Protection for the Foot and the Womb,” one reviewer raved.) Or Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women”? (Two stars: “Not as useful as the Trap Her, Keep Her,” one review warned for the Avery Durable View Binder.)

Well, it’s happening again, this time with Mark Judge’s liquor-soaked memoir “Wasted: Tales of a Genx Drunk” — a book that’s come under scrutiny for its depiction of “Bart O’Kavanaugh,” who sounds a lot like Judge’s old Georgetown prep buddy, Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Although you can now download the book for free, it’s fair to say that most of the reviews on Amazon were probably written by people who hadn’t read it. After all, the only copy available until recently was being sold for $1,849 (plus $3.99 shipping) by Books on Tap — a seller who recently received a review for another book that read: “price was a little high however product it prefect condition.” (Amazon’s chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Over on the “Wasted” page, one fivestar review perplexingly reads, “step up and testify.” Another sleuthing perfect score bestower writes, “1997 book and 99% of 1 star reviews happened Sept 2018, coincidence or liberal frenzy?”

Predictably, many of the reviews simply take sides on the Kavanaugh debate: “Judge Kavanaugh is a fine, upstanding man” on one side and “Judge Kav’s drinking buddy and accomplice reads as a confession” on the other.

Some of the reviews have even sparked conversations. When “Happy’s Mom” wrote in her three-star review that she read the book long before the current news frenzy, someone replied, “Save your copy Mom ... it looks like it will be worth mint second hand.” Another offered, “I would love to either borrow your copy or purchase your copy or even swap your copy for another book of your liking; my reason is that this book cannot be found ANYWHERE.”

Did Happy’s Mom really read “Wasted” all those years ago? We’ll never know. But at least one of the reviews appears to be authentic. It dates back to Nov. 7, 1999 and claims that “Wasted” is a must-read. “Mark tells of his own battle with alcoholism and his determination to become sober,” the reviewer writes.

“He gives a good insight on the root of alcoholism. His recovery alone is inspiration for anyone to believe that they too can be sober.”

It’s a strange reminder that before it became yet another way to debate the fitness of a Supreme Court nominee, “Wasted” was once nothing more than a little-read recovery memoir.