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Pat Schroeder, former simpleton Congresswoman from Colorado, now heads the American Association of Publishers. In a recent interview here she says conservatives don't read as many books as liberals do, because "The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple of slogans." Schroeder was responding to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll that found that self-professed liberals read more than self-described conservatives.

The statistical difference, in fact, is very small: 9 books a year for liberals, 8 for conservatives. (That's an average two weeks for most readers I know.) And could it be that conservatives have found New York-based traditional book publishing such a bastion of liberalism that they find little or nothing to read in current offerings?

Some years ago, when my oldest son was little, I wrote down a series of stories I had made up to tell him, The Big Brown Bear Stories (you can find them on the Wayback Machine, mayhap). Among other things, the characters went to church. They were not preachy stories, church was just a part of their lives.

I looked over the current list of children's books to see if there was a likely publisher, and found lots of books about ethnicity and broken families and such, but nary a trace of church. Christian publishing, indeed, long ago set up an entirely separate industry outside New York -- mainly in Tennessee.

If Schroeder's comments signify anything, it is that elite prejudice against conservatives as stupid has become fully institutionalized.

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