Rhone is irked:
” Even though I understand that people read for confirmation, not information…”. You consistently underestimate your readership: Franken, Alterman, Iran post,Syrian TImes, Al Quiada websites [translated] as well as the usual: WND [damn i’m as tired of hearing their crap about how terrible the Dems are as i am the other side-verbage is almost interchangable] and the rest of the ‘conservative'[sic] stuff: even read the stock guys, to see what they’re saying about metals and to hear them lie about the market. If you only read what you agree with, how can you ever know your enemy, or how he/she thinks, plans, reacts? Besides, one actually ‘learns’ from these disparate views…just like listening to Keynsians, contrasted with Austrian School. Your arrogance in these regards is unbecoming and unwarrented. No one’s got a ‘corner’ on the truth: not ann coulter, al franken, or vox day.
Methinks you took the statement too far. I would be a massive hypocrite were I to advocate not reading viewpoints opposed to one’s own. I not only read the American Left, I also read the European Left as well as the original source material. I was speaking only of the mass preference to read for confirmation, as any analysis of non-fiction bestsellers will show. A woman who buys the Lizard Queen’s book is not reading for information, she is reading it to confirm her opinion of Hillary’s sainthood. A conservative who buys Ben Shapiro’s book is not reading for information, he is reading it to confirm what he already knows from his own experience: that academics are liberal.
I would submit that while I do not have a corner on the truth, I do have hold of a much larger portion of it than darling Alice.