What’s a book?
Another year, another study used to make conservatives look stupid and progressives super smart. Here’s the President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers insulting half her consumer base:
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.”
Aargh. Me like book with pictures. No like big words.
Progressives, on the other hand, can’t get enough knowledge:
She said liberals tend to be policy wonks who “can’t say anything in less than paragraphs. We really want the whole picture, want to peel the onion.”
Me peel onion, me cry. No new taxes!
Given the accusation, the void must be great between the two political philosophies, no? Well…no:
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, moderates five.
Book per year make Fred Flinstone become Albert Einstein. No new taxes!
It turns out that Schroeder’s base assumption, that liberals just can’t get enough of those policy books, isn’t even correct:
…politics, poetry and classical literature — were named by fewer than five percent of readers.
So, the difference of one book per year, less than five percent of which will have anything to do with politics, makes conservatives (who most likely have never even heard of the internet) cave dwellers with the attention span for slogans only, while progressives languish full of untapped, wonky, genius.
One wonders how they manage to fit all that wonkiness on all those bumper stickers.
No new taxes!
Americans’ reading habits are just more evidence of our laziness, which seems to grow boundlessly. I blogged on this one, too.
Good stuff from the unfrozen caveman blogger - the difference between 8 and 9 books a year means nuthin’. Heck, I’ll put one Hunter S. Thompson book up against 25 Michael Crichtons, so how does that play out in the analyto-statistical machine? Then again, it says one in four adults didn’t read any books last year. Yikes. Sorry, but if someone won’t knock off at least one book a year, they’re not even qualified to discuss the weather. Richard from Dallas (who gets sleepy when he reads, which is apparently never) is a project manager for a telecom company. I’m betting Richard is an incredibly sucky project manager.