Posted on 08/21/2007 11:56:43 AM PDT by peggybac
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."
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.
Rove, President Bush's departing political adviser, is known as a prodigious reader. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Schroeder was "confusing volume with quality" with her remarks.
"Obfuscation usually requires a lot more words than if you simply focus on fundamental principles, so I'm not at all surprised by the loquaciousness of liberals," he said.
"As head of a book publishing association, she probably shouldn't malign any readers," said Mary Matalin, a GOP strategist who oversees a line of books by conservative authors, Threshold, at Simon & Schuster. Matalin said conservatives and others aren't necessarily reading less, but are getting more information online and from magazines.
The AP-Ipsos poll found 22 percent of liberals and moderates said they had not read a book within the past year, compared with 34 percent of conservatives.
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.
By slightly wider margins, Democrats tended to read more books than Republicans and independents. There were no differences by political party in the percentage of those who said they had not read at least one book.
The poll involved telephone interviews with 1,003 adults and was conducted August 6 to 8. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
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AP Manager of News Surveys Trevor Tompson and AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.
We don’t need any more slogans OR RINOS!
Always wondered what happened to ol’ Patsy. Hasn’t changed her stripes I see.
It’s hard to think of a more annoyingly arrogant leftist than Jimmy Carter, but Patsy fills the bill.
HMMMM...How come conservative books out sell others?? Must be those smart libs reading books by Anne and Rush etc.
Very true. I notice this in reading legal opinions - the longer the opinion is, the more likely it is that the court is having to twist and turn in order to reach its desired conclusion.
Is that why Democrats pushed The President's "Comprehenive Immigration Reform" behind closed doors with little or no time for public review?
“The head of the book publishing industry’s trade group says she knows why”
BREAKING NEWS!!
A leftist that has concluded that leftists are more intelligent and more well read than conservatives.
Liberals read more books than conservatives
But if they are written by Al Franken or Michael Moore, they are wasting time.
This poll, and the whole article, is crap, and the fact that they arbitrarily lumped moderates in with liberals to change the numbers is all I had to see to dismiss it as such.
No barf alert? Seriously, I know why conservatives (allegedly) read fewer books.
Walk into Barnes and Noble, Waldenbooks, etc., and try to FIND books by conservative authors or on conservative topics.
I rest my case.
It is the liberals who believe the solution to any perceived problem fits on a bumper sticker.
The reason liberal talk radio doesn’t work is because their ideas can’t stand the light of day.
Any in depth discussion of a liberal concept quickly exposes it’s inadequacy.
I thought that old fossil croaked years ago!
Nothing worse than fart gas from an old fart.
Someone who reads several dozen different books of the quality of Rush Limbaugh Is A Big fat Idiot loses to the first reader both in complexity and variety of material read.
So, reading a liberal book is going to change my mind and I'll see the light: "Raise MY Taxes!"
D'oh!
I bet she doesn't know anybody who voted for any Bush or Ronald Reagan.
Oh no! I read three to eight (mostly fiction) books a month. By her logic, I am now a Liberal.
I wonder if they discounted textbooks how the results change. There are certainly a lot of Liberal professional students and they do dominate the academic ranks.
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