But you're entitled to your feelings and your perceptions. I recognize that
I'm hard to please in bookstores, so I don't complain--I was able to find
Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism at the La Canada Bookstore & Coffee House,
but there's a lot of dreck out there that's "conservative" or at least
looked at that way (Bill O'Reilly's just a populist, though I would have
gone on his show to talk about this in a minute). And I've got no interest
in it. Ann Coulter? Please.
What I want is Virginia Postrel, Thomas Sowell, Popper, Mencken. Stuff like
that.
So I walk out with a copy of Foreign Affairs, and order what I want online.
I mean, I'm happy that Michelle Malkin sends me traffic, but that doesn't
mean I'm going to read one of her books. (I don't even read books by media
people I like: Larry Elder is great on the radio, but he can't write worth a
damn.)
Still--if I'm willing to spend the money, there's always something wonderful
at a bookstore. Like David Sedaris. Who can quarrel with David Sedaris?
--J
On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 8:21 AM, Alex Melnick <aemelnick_at_yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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 <xof%40chanticleer.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 <aemelnick%40yahoo.com> --
> http://www.geocities.com/alexm_94109
>
>
>
--
Joy M. McCann
Goddess of Ink and Paper
(But pixels obey me, too.)
Mistress of proofreading, fact-checking,
Line-editing, and copyediting
Copy Write Editorial Services
818/429-9806
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Received on 2008-10-10 11:55:56