This headline looks just awful.

Book chief: Conservatives want slogans

Certainly more so than this one which would disclose more information

Longtime liberal pol: Conservatives want slogans

Unfortunately, the first headline is the one placed on the article, while the more honest one was left on the scrapheap along. I suppose that is because it would make the criticism much easier to dismiss.

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."

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.

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."

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. Overall, book sales have been flat as publishers seek to woo readers lured away by the Internet, movies and television.

I suspect that a lot of that has to do with what is being published today. How many conservatives have given up on the publishing world because of the amount of crap coming out? And I'm also curious how many of those conservatives have, in fact read a book in the last year -- the Bible, cover to cover -- but do not count it as "reading a book" due to its sacred nature?

Oh, and speaking of my personal habits, I certainly meet the conservative average of eight books.

Oh -- that was eight books a year. I'm sorry -- I've read that many from cover to cover just in the month of August.

Posted by: Greg at 11:03 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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