Me conservative, me no read books
This is Pat Schroeder, the old feminist Democrat who cried when she withdrew from a presidential bid in 1987, retired from Congress in 1997, and now serves as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Association of American Publishers, where they think it is wise to trash and mock conservative consumers. What does she think of you and me? We’re Neanderthals, of course:
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.”
Here’s the poll Schroeder’s referring to, but the gulf in book reading that Schroeder perceives is not backed up by the actual poll results:
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.
And then there’s this:
Who are the 27 percent of people the AP-Ipsos poll found hadn’t read a single book this year? Nearly a third of men and a quarter of women fit that category. They tend to be older, less educated, lower income, minorities, from rural areas and less religious.
No indication on what these non-readers’ political affiliations are.
This is also noteworthy:
The Bible and religious works were read by two-thirds in the survey, more than all other categories. Popular fiction, histories, biographies and mysteries were all cited by about half, while one in five read romance novels. Every other genre — including politics, poetry and classical literature — were named by fewer than five percent of readers.
So while Schroeder uses the poll to extol liberal readers as learned “policy wonks,” political books are a blip on the screen.
Can’t wait for her reaction to the fact that the Bible and religious works were the most widely read books among those polled.
Peel that onion, Patty.
***
Update: Allah links to the crosstabs–not that we Neanderthals know anything about how to read them.
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So glad you changed the picture! The one I saw this morning was really scary.
err.. ya.. you are right. I am overly sensitive about it due to the fact that liberals tend to treat stay at home moms as complete morons. Sorry.
I have no idea how many books I have read over the last year. Having been a grad student/elementary ed major, a lot of my reading over the last two years was textbooks. But, I’ve read other stuff, too. Since graduating, I’ve done reading for entertainment and reading of children’s lit. Right now, I’m reading Home of the Brave by Casper Weinburger. Most of my “heavy” reading of current events/politics comes from the internet. When I read a book, I’m generally wanting to get away from all the “heavy” of what is going on in the world today…
Point being, I wasn’t polled, and even if I had been, I’d have been hard-pressed to give an accurate count of “books read” over the last year. The fact that I’ve read at least a dozen children’s books over the last year shouldn’t count the same as someone who has read an equal number of “adult” reading. Who was it that brought up “quality vs. quantity”?? Of course, one can’t underestimate some children’s lit’s subtle (or not) attempts to indoctrinate children to liberal views. That’s precisely why I’m reading all those children’s books – I want to know what kind of reading material I’m either providing or recommending to students…
So Pat thinks that that reading nine books a year (as the average book-reading liberal does) is “peeling the onion” but reading eight books a year (the average book-reading conservative) isn’t. What does that make the five-book moderates? She must think they’re one step from brain dead.
Way to woo those swing voters, Pat.
I Perfur to be called a troglodyte
No, I don’t think I jumped to any conclusions. Those that cannot or will not read are from uneducated families. Pretty straightforward to me. Didn’t say most. You said MOST uneducated families would be democrats.. but you didn’t put any qualifiers on your statement about children that can’t read.
Oh wait.. I get it now. We are uneducated. And I am probably a democrat. THAT’s why my son couldn’t read. Silly me… guess I need to work on my reading comprehension.
I guess since you are a teacher and all no one should ever consider that you need to check your own FACTS.
/sarc
I’d like to make a gentle suggestion:
Can we drop the arguments about making generalizations and stereotypes? Sometimes, the things we actually say don’t come out like we intend. Can we just chalk it up to that, and accept that something didn’t come out the right way? I know I’ve been guilty of mis-speaking/typing…
My father used to say that if you have to keep telling people what you are, you most likely are not. The older I get the more that rings true.
All I ever hear is how from leftists is how smart leftists think they are.
Exit question, if liberals are so smart how come all their arguments start or end with “Don’t you feel?”
I average over a book a week here.
Of course, I’ll be the first to admit that I tend to read mostly mysteries. While I greatly enjoy them, the quality isn’t that great.
But if we’re going by pure numbers, I’m way over the averages of any group.
I am conservative and I read books.
I read computer manuals, classical literature, history books and the Bible. The computer manuals are usually a couple of inches thick and take me about a week and then are used for reference, the lit vary in length but I take my time and enjoy/understand them, the history usually go by too fast, and the Bible I will never be done with. So, all in all, I will probably read fifty or so books in a year. I supplement my book-learnin’ with magazines and websites.
For example, I got “Essential Dialogues of Plato” for my birthday. That one is going to take a few weeks to get through adequately. Many of my wife’s friends read primarily romance and “historical fiction” books; they can tear through these at a rate of about two a day. They can easily go through thirty in a month. They read whatever is popular or whatever Oprah tells them to. From their reading they bring away nothing of intellectual or emotional value. The books they are reading are mental chewing gum.
The amount of books one reads is neither an accurate gauge of one’s intelligence, “open-mindedness,” or desire/ability to learn.
My name is aj and I’m a bookoholic.
IF YOU CAN READ THIS THEN YOU ARE A LIBERAL.
Get your mind outta the gutter, soap-box.
You’re blocking my light…
Nope. Exit question; If liberals are so smart, how come this congress has the lowest rating ever?
They had better. I read them to my kids (a million times) and they all vote Republican and are conservative!
What does that say?
On August 22nd, 2007 at 5:49 pm, swj719AWG said:
Get your mind outta the gutter, soap-box.
You’re blocking my light…
Did anyone consider nine comic books?
I would like to buy a liberal for what they are worth and sell them for what they think they’re worth. I would retire a rich man.
3Steps;
GIVE IT A REST WILL YA?
I quote; “Most would fall in the category of DEMOCRATS, I dare to say.”
referring to those that cannot/will not read”.
If you child has a reading problem that is not due to having uneducated parent(s), children having children, then the shoe does not fit.
You are most defensive on a topic that IS NOT THE ISSUE HERE.
Get OVER yourself, please!
3steps; NO ONE was insulting your child’s learning disability.
Your insulting me was deliberate and my FACT finding is due to WHAT I do know about the SOUTH.
You can now turn OFF your sarcasm.
I believe most on here that are reading the posts will know EXACTLY what I meant. Perhaps you’re looking for an argument? Having a bad day, I don’t know. I was not talking about you, to you, or at you……this is regarding DEMOCRATS reading MORE than Republicans….knowing that is NO truth in the “research”.
I hope you have a better understanding now. Heavens!
Mario Cuomo once said that “conservatives right with crayons, liberals right with fine point quills.”
That was his justification for why liberals keep failing in talk radio. I guess despite my advanced degree (and a real one at that, an MBA), I am too dumb to understand that liberals are intellectually superior.
Or perhaps they are just pompous, arrogant gasbags that nobody of consequence listens to at all.
Didn’t Patricia Schroeder come in 11th in a field of 10 lilliputians, where the strongest one was Michael Dukakis?
Now if that isn’t insignificant, I do not know what is.
The ideological bigotry continues.
http://blacktygrrrr.wordpress.com/2007/08/22/for-liberalism-success-requires-failure/
http://blacktygrrrr.wordpress.com/2007/04/10/ideological-bigotry-part-ii-how-many-jewish-liberals-continue-to-make-the-klan-proud/
http://blacktygrrrr.wordpress.com/2007/05/27/ideological-bigotry-part-iv-the-cancer-eating-away-at-liberal-jewish-souls/
Respectfully,
eric
What about there stats, Pat?
* Hollywood, where the most mindless tripe is passed off as important entertainment, is about 95% hard-core liberal. And you know who gets far less preportionately paid for the work than just about anyone else in Hollywood? The screenWRITERS.
Television is mostly run by liberals, too. No brains there either.
And publishing houses are mostly lib-run as well. And guess what? The novel biz is in the tank.
So given that presepvtuve, forgetting that the polls don’t support her arrogand remarks, I wonder what he basic world-view consists of?
Oh, by the way, several polls show conservative talk radio listeners are extremely well educated and tend toward affluent.
Of course, if most novels weren’t filled with liberal think tank junk, more people might actaully be reading.
if you take out comic books in that survey, the Democratic side would fall dramadicly (sp?)
Oops. pardon the typos. I could say I’m not well-educated, but the truth is that unlike Pat, I have a life, and time to post is sometimes highly limited.
HHmmm….
I am a full time college student carrying an average of four classes a semester, with three in the summer.
I read the Commerical Appeal everyday, Townhall.com, check in with MM at least twice a day, read three magazines of personal interest (Popular Photography, USBC Bowler, and Armed Citizen) and at least 6 conservative or books on social issues every year outside of class.
In addition, I am also reading the NKV Bible, and the book for my sunday school class. Additionally also this year read the koran, sun tu’s The Art of War, and the Hagribe
This is in addition to working part-time and reading the required pubs for the job, doing homework and maintaining my house. So the it adds up to:
365 newspapers
36 magazines
11-12 text books
6 conservative or social issue books
Plus five religious books
This is not counting that depending upon the class, I might re-read a book to gain some more info to counter my lib profs assine assertions.
If all of this reading makes me a moron, then I hate to see what I have to read to be intelligent.
Gun, I’m tired just reading what you wrote…whew…
I am offended you are using a racist character to make your point. Mabe th-a r wright! Read a book and Eat More Chicken!
Phonetics. It’s not just for ebonically able, novel readin” liberals…Kech it!
aj-
thanks for comment-I have been taking my writing lessons from MM
yw,
I’ve never met a liberal who didn’t consider liberals in general, and themselves in particular to be intellectually advanced people, and most particularly, intellectually superior and better informed than people who don’t subscribe to their incoherent opinions (conservatives, libertarians and others alike).
In other words they all seem certain that they are the smartest people around, and are breathtakingly smug and arrogant about it. From their point of view it just goes without saying that they are smarter.
What’s amazing about all this is that I am in a line of work that DEPENDS ON rigorous logic and obsessive attention to facts. My living, and that of my colleagues depends on our thinking.
We get it wrong, we lose money. Simple.
So over the years I have done damn near everything I could think of to sharpen the old noggin.
And lo and behold, I get better at what I do and, dare I say it, actually, by tiny baby steps, become a tiny bit smarter.
And the further I go down this path, the clearer it becomes to me, that liberals are plain dumb!
They are the weaker minds of my acquaintance, across the board.
Now there are liberals who have trained themselves to become very proficient in one particular mental task, or maybe two. Like for example, dentistry, or estates law, or stock projection and company valuation. All of which are very hard mental work indeed.
And those are the better ones. Most of them never rise to that level, and get by on mediocrity.
But what I see in the liberals I meet, is that once they get off their special turf they are just as dumb as a sack of hammers.
Other folks, conservatives and objectivists in particular, are better able to apply their hard won mental skills to whatever subject comes under their eye — and consequently come up with better, clearer more reliable answers to tough questions on a consistent basis.
Liberals are good at word games and striking poses.
Conservatives are good at thinking.
So many book lovers. Awesome! Am a book-oholic too.
Fun Erasmus quote, one of my faves:
“When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.”
Joe Blough got it 110% right.
Somehow, in some strange – almost supernatural – way, there has become a societal mindset among the liberal quasi-elite that seems to believe that they are superior because they’re right and vise versa. What is so very vexing about that is that like Joe and I’ll bet everyone else here, arguing on the basis of facts and common sense with a liberal is actually like taking candy from a baby, and I mean that literally, because when you take it, they cry! It’s very strange how they somehow came to believe that they are intellectually superior, not by proving it, but assumptively!
When Republicans are faced with a debate, they run for the facts. When liberals are faced with a debate, they run for nonsequitors and easy air displacers: “Awwww COME ON!”, “Oh, that’s CRAZY!”, etc. Of course, when faced with a debate on FOX NEWS, they RUN AWAY!
Does “Harry Potter” count?
As usual, Schroeder doesn’t know squat.
She was anti-military, a blowhard, post-menopausal rager, and a liberal and a liar (I know, I’m repeating myself) as a Congresscritter. She was actively loathed by many officers and enlisted while in office. It was said that she commandeered “perks” beyond what was customary and usual for a vising congresscritter. The dislike of her was so bad, that when Miramar still was “fightertown”, they had a very long building that they used to boresight the M61 Vulcans in the jets. Their favorite target downrange at the backstop was, allegedly, a large picture of Peppermint Patty. ‘Til she found out about it and raised a hissyfit. It was all fallout and backlash from the Tailhook pseudo-scandal.
That was the convention where an admiral was denied another star and run out of the service by Patty because of the convention. A highly decorated CAG was dumped as well. Many good men got their careers ruined because Patty and some other raging feminazi libs got the “vapors” over a few jetheads “overindulging” and acting like jerks.
This is not to excuse the pilots for their obnoxious behavior, though it is common knowledge that some “nosegunners” do get stupid when off duty. But it was the phony “scandal” and rank hypocrisy that was directed at the Navy in a raw extortion attempt by Peppermint Patty and Hillary (and others) to get the admirals to give in to the feminist agenda. That still rankles many to this day.
Too bad for Admiral Kelso-He was a pretty good CNO (albeit briefly)
I read somewhere (maybe over at NRO) that “Jeopardy” did a celebrity series some time back, with Schroeder appearing as a contestant. Apparently she had her clock cleaned by a famous former Marine Colonel with a gap-toothed grin, one Oliver North.
Judging from her ditizness, I suspect Schroeder spent the formative years of her life reading books of cigarette papers, if you get my drift….
Peel that onion, Patty!
My sentiments exactly!!
Hey! Don’t be dissin’ my comic books!
The comments about the libs being “self-appointed elites” and deciding that they’re smarter than everybody else are dead on. Back when my awareness of politics first bloomed, that was one of my first insights . . . the left commonly seems to hold the idea that we poor dumb moderates and conservatives would be so much better off if only we were as smart as they are and could understand their lofty intellectualism.
Anyone who has to tell you how smart they are . . . isn’t.
I think it would have been interesting to know what liberals and conservatives learned from reading those books. If Patty thinks liberals read more, she probably assumes they are reading brilliant books by liberal authors who come to remarkably liberal conclusions that just happen to coincide with what the liberal readers already believe. But to tell the truth, I fear many conservatives may do the same thing. Maybe conservatives should promise to read one liberal book a year if liberals will read one conservative tome. Nah…
I read very quickly and so rack up a hundred or more a year. That includes fiction, non-fiction, biographies, religious books, etc. I would challenge Pat to a read-off but I don’t think she could keep up.