Letter to RedEye: Political Book-Reading

I think I'm going to start entering my reader-response letters that I send to the CTA here on my BlogSpot, since only 1 in 4 at best actually get printed in the paper. That number will probably drop thanks to the fact that I'm writing more often, due to increased boredom while in possession of the RedEye in the mornings.

Here's one I sent yesterday, in response to their call for comments about an article saying that liberals read more books than conservatives. There was some kind of poll done (which I'm sure was done haphazardly with either poor sampling or poor logic in general, judging by the results and how they're being generalized) and the end results show liberals reading more books than conservatives. So here's my response:

(UPDATE! They printed! Grab a copy of your Friday RedEye if you're in Chicago and see my response in the Powerpoints section! I have bolded the parts they printed.)

A poll showing that liberals read more books than conservatives doesn't mean very much to me. When you think about it statistically, wouldn't you have to take into account the fact that there are a lot more books being written by liberals or with liberal points of view than on the conservative side? I'd like to think that the difference between liberals and conservatives would be about the same between books available to read and the readers themselves. After all, it seems doubtful that one would pick up a book geared towards the other.

Either way, it really shouldn't matter about which political party reads more books or worrying that readership among the parties is low - it should be about making sure that CHILDREN are reading. They're the ones who need to be given access to ALL ideas, left or right, so they can learn to think for themselves and in turn become upstanding citizens and members of whatever political party they see fit. We need more Harry Potters turning kids on to reading and less books that result in older stubborn people turning against each other in a "who's more well-read than whom" spitting contest.

Aaron Samuels, 23, Bridgeport

(I sincerely hope that my response doesn't trigger a score of "President He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" jokes.)

Your thoughts? Your opinions? I know that liberals love to make more-learnéd-than-thou remarks about certain "dumb Republicans" - but doesn't MY argument make sense?