The Reading Habits of the Common Liberal
Mar. 3rd, 2008 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseAccording to a recent survey done about American reading habits, people who identified as "conservatives" were significantly more likely to say that they had not read a book in the past year than people who identified as liberals (34% to 22%).
This doesn't exactly surprise me - almost every avid reader that I've met has been socially liberal. Librarians are almost universally liberal in their politics, sometimes excessively so. This country was founded by intellectual liberals who read avidly - Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin. (Which is, in large part, why I don't get Americans who act like "intellectual" is some sort of insult, but I digress.)
However, this particular gem from the article, quoted from "White House spokesman Tony Fratto", made me laugh:
"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.
Never mind the fact that "fundamental principles" are often far more complicated once they're applied to, y'know, actual situations. For example, "Stay the course" sounds all well and good as a fundamental principle, but hasn't done a lot of good to solve...bah, you all know what I'm saying.
On the other hand, maybe Brian was correct in offering this (rather simpler) translation: "In other words, 'books have lots of words and words are hard'."
This doesn't exactly surprise me - almost every avid reader that I've met has been socially liberal. Librarians are almost universally liberal in their politics, sometimes excessively so. This country was founded by intellectual liberals who read avidly - Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin. (Which is, in large part, why I don't get Americans who act like "intellectual" is some sort of insult, but I digress.)
However, this particular gem from the article, quoted from "White House spokesman Tony Fratto", made me laugh:
"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.
Never mind the fact that "fundamental principles" are often far more complicated once they're applied to, y'know, actual situations. For example, "Stay the course" sounds all well and good as a fundamental principle, but hasn't done a lot of good to solve...bah, you all know what I'm saying.
On the other hand, maybe Brian was correct in offering this (rather simpler) translation: "In other words, 'books have lots of words and words are hard'."
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no subject
Date: 2008-03-04 01:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-04 07:32 pm (UTC)Postmodernist essayists seem to believe that they should never give readers an idea in one sentence to chew on, but instead, write a whole paragraph that diffuses the idea into a thin, murky soup whose flavor is somehow reminiscent of the original idea, but so mixed in with watery verbosity that you can't really taste it. You have to use a mental strainer to sift out the actual ideas from the rest of the essay, and you end up saying "What, that's it? That's all you were trying to say?"
Granted, some ideas are hard to communicate without lots of explanation. But I've read papers that communicated such ideas, and without exception, they tried to simplify the language as much as possible, because the ideas were enough complexity.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-05 05:23 am (UTC)Apparently, I am the exception to the rule (imagine that)... a conservative that reads.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-05 05:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-05 05:44 pm (UTC)