NYTimes Book Review Sr Editor Cries About Finding that Libs Read More than Wingers

[BurtWorm]

Nice to know the review industry has no bias, eh?

(Let me know, ye nonsubcribers to Times Select, if this blog is not accessible to you. I can PM you the whole piece if you're interested.)


http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/23/reading-the-right/index.html?ex=1345521600&en=5c1e6d0f3b9b1cc3&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll released this week indicated that liberals read more than conservatives, and Pat Schroeder – the president of the American Association of Publishers, and the former Democratic House member from Colorado – made headlines when she tried to interpret the results.

“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.”

Liberals, Schroeder added, “can’t say anything in less than paragraphs. We really want the whole picture, want to peel the onion.”

(A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, more or less knocked that one out of the park: “Obsfuscation 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.”)

Whether or not liberals read more than conservatives, there’s no denying that, historically, the publishing industry - from writers to editors to reviewers to booksellers - has been dominated by people who are at least mildly left-of-center politically.

...

As it happens, Goldwater’s book is out in a new edition..., one that comes with plenty of intellectual armature: a foreward by George F. Will, an afterword by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and an introduction by Sean Wilentz.

For what it’s worth, the biggest reader I’ve ever known was a conservative - Kurt, my best friend in high school. Granted, all he read were books about Churchill and the Battle of the Bulge. But they were, by far, the biggest books I’d ever seen anyone, anywhere lug around.

:eyes:

[HereSince1628]

1. We MUST read more in order to generate all those cookoo tinfoil theories!

Since Rove is gone, it's only fair to feed the elephants memes of our own making! :rofl:

[shain from kane]

2. Know thy enemy. I also read books written by conservatives, or whatever you want to call them.

[BurtWorm]

3. I want to call them assholes.

And I usually do.

;)

[Xipe Totec]

4. loquaciousness? Somebody better take his thesaurus away,

before he quips again.

[enki23]

5. wait... what does "loquaciousness" have to do with anything?

let me get this straight. supposedly liberals read more because liberals *write* more? can't we get the supply side bullshit out of our heads long enough to honestly consider some fucking data?

there is enough written, liberal, conservative, and otherwise, that there is truly no question about supply. even avid readers don't get to nearly, *nearly* all of it. when we consider just how few books we're actually talking about most people reading, it should be obvious this has nothing whatsoever to do with supply.

[Bitwit1234]

6. Hey why do you think newspapers are going down the tubes????

cause they print so much crap about the republicans are wonderful, the people that read them, won't buy them anymore....I have said that for the last 7 years.

[frylock]

7. i'm reeling from the irony of this quote:

“Obsfuscation 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.”

Can you dumb it down a little, numbnuts?!