Duh: Liberals Read More Books Than Conservatives

You see these books by Coulter and O'Reilly and Hannity at the top of bestseller lists sometimes and you get disgusted and scared, right? Well, it turns out that that's really all these conservatives are reading.

Which is kind of scary, I guess. But I'm willing to bet that the sales are due to the heavy promotion on conservative talk radio--free advertising that's the conservative equivalent of the Oprah Book Club...

Book Chief: Conservatives Want Slogans

Aug 21, 2:40 PM EDT
By ALAN FRAM

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Liberals read more books than conservatives. The head of the book publishing industry's trade group says she knows why - and there's little flattering about conservative readers in her explanation.

"The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: 'No, don't raise my taxes, no new taxes,'" Pat Schroeder, president of the American Association of Publishers, said in a recent interview. "It's pretty hard to write a book saying, 'No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes' on every page."

(No it isn’t. A book with “no new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes” on every page would be dead easy to write. Even Gertrude Stein could do it.

And it would sell pretty well; better than anything else I ever wrote. You could market it at local GOP events as a kind of novelty gift. Give it some fancy title like “The Way Things Oughta Be,” or “The Secret Of Good Government.” They’d buy it. Anyway:)

Schroeder, who as a Colorado Democrat was once one of Congress' most liberal House members, was responding to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll that found people who consider themselves liberals are more prodigious book readers than conservatives...

(Now there’s another shocker for you. Conservative books regularly appear at the top of the bestseller lists, but the conservatives who buy them hardly read anything else. Who could have predicted that?)

...The book publishing industry is predominantly liberal, though conservative books by authors like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and pundit Ann Coulter have been best sellers in recent years...

(Well, that’s because Gingrich and Coulter’s track record on giving out political, military, economic, and foreign and domestic policy advice is so good. There’s always a market for thinkers with a track record like that.)

...White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Schroeder was "confusing volume with quality" with her remarks.

(Yeah. That’s right. I pity the liberals who read some thick piece of wordy junk like “Moby Dick” or “Anna Karenina” instead of Sean Hannity’s pithy latest. You can learn more about the human condition from Bill O’Reilly’s bumper sticker hatred than all of Tolstoy, and that’s the sad truth. Of course, to learn anything from the O’Reilly and Hannity stuff you have to read it critically, and the people who buy those books flat-out refuse to do that...)

"As head of a book publishing association, she probably shouldn't malign any readers," said Mary Matalin, a GOP strategist...

(Why not? It’s not like the conservatives will ever read it.)

...Matalin (who oversees a line of books by conservative authors) said conservatives and others aren't necessarily reading less, but are getting more information online and from magazines...

(True, true...the “Why liberals hate America” Website, the “Country Club Economics on a Cocktail Napkin Update,”the “Rush O’Hannity Home Page,” the “Evolution is a Lie” Interactive Online Video Game Page, the “Official “END TIMES ARE HERE” newsletter...)

...

Among those who had read at least one book, liberals typically read nine books in the year, with half reading more than that and half less. Conservatives typically read eight...

(But four of those eight books were pop-up books, another three were by Anne Coulter, and the remaining one came with a package of crayons included. And all of the authors read by conservatives last year supported a surge in Iraq. So maybe they should stop reading altogether. Garbage in, garbage out, as Tolstoy used to say.)