I was going to stay out of this, but there were some comments in Joy's
blog about bookstores hiding conservative authors that have got me
riled. I'll admit that it's possible that individual clerks may be
hiding books, but the notion that there's any sort of organized
movement to do so seems absurd. In the stores where I've worked,
nearly every worker would rather sell a book they despise than no book
at all. It's simple economics.
On the other hand, bookstores face a big problem with conservative
customers who vandalize displays of liberal or even non-partisan books.
It's gotten to the point that our Anaheim store got rid of our
election display, which was scrupulously balanced between liberal and
conservative best-sellers, because customers kept messing it up.
They'd take any books with Obama on the cover (even the anti-Obama
titles like "Obama Nation") and move them to other parts of the store,
hiding them behind or underneath stacks of unrelated titles, or even
tossing them up into the rafters. The McCain books, meanwhile, sit
untouched (and, notably, unsold).
Our clerks also have to deal with a constant stream of complaints about
the "liberal" leanings of our products. I worked the counter during
much of the 2004 general election, and I got really very tired of
dealing with this. It didn't matter how prominently displayed the
conservative books were, the fact that we had even a single liberal
book anywhere in the store was cause for complaint.
Grumble. Sorry if this is a bit of a rant, but this is a sore subject
with me.
--- Christophe <xof_at_chanticleer.com> wrote:
> If anyone has managed to come up with a way of getting hundreds of
> teenagers to silently participate in a nation-wide conspiracy, they
> could be doing much more interesting things that suppressing the box
>
> office on a movie.
>
Alex Melnick
aemelnick_at_yahoo.com --
http://www.geocities.com/alexm_94109
Received on 2008-10-10 08:21:30