Conservative Cavemen--and Women

Pat Schroeder, president of the American Association of Publishers (yes, old GIs, that Pat Schroeder), comments on a poll which seemed to indicate that Liberals read more books than do Conservatives or Moderates.

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…

It's pretty hard to write a book saying, 'No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes' on every page.

(Psst! Ms. Schroeder! Karl Rove retired. You can get off of his jock now.)

Schroeder, who as a Colorado Democrat was once one of Congress' most liberal House members, was responding to an Associated Press-Ipsos [telephone] 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."

AP didn’t call me. As it happens, however, the news agency didn’t call that many people of any political stripe.

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.

Now I’m no statistician. However, I’d say that no valid conclusion could be drawn from that particular poll. Just a guess. But Ms. Schroeder probably knows that the sample size is inadequate and is merely taking the opportunity to do a little sloganeering of her own.

For the record, here’s what I’ve read this year:

Mexifornia and Carnage and Culture, Victor Davis Hanson

The Force of Reason, Oriana Fallaci

Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, William L. Shirer (a re-read)

Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves, Brian Michael Jenkins

A few Western Civilization Classics and, of course, the Bible

If you want to assist this non-reading Republican in lengthening my short attention span and proneness in the face of sloganeering, click on my Amazon Wishlist and help a sista out! (Sort the list for books.)

(Thanks to Hot Air, where, in the post’s comments, an impromptu book club has begun)

Comments

[Walter E. Wallis]

Libs count as read all the books their unions bought from helpful politicians.

[Dirty Dingus]

Not sure if the trackback worked so here's a manual one:
http://www.di2.nu/200708/23.htm

[ErikZ]

(shrug) Or it's possible that the statistic is correct.

You can draw all the conclusions you want from it, but at this point it's about as interesting as hearing "Liberals walk 11% more!"

[Michael_Tyson]

J,
Looked at your amazon wish list and I just have to ask you. Are you planning a national emergency over there? You've got a lot of survivalist stuff on that list!
M

[baldilocks]

Mike,

I might be. I do, after all, live in earthquake country.

However, if you want to hook me up with (another) book :-D, sort the list for books.