Fresh Air,

The discussion of whether B&N and Borders and Costco are interested only in money or have a political agenda is an interesting one. It reminds me of the discussion of what Soros is up to and the discussion of why Viacom is allowing CBS to go off the rails. I don’t know; but personally I think that book buying decisions are made by individual book buyers who live in New York or Seattle (is Borders still headquartered in Ann Arbor?–left of Manhattan in that case) and they have biases and sometimes they are willing to push the issue in a political way because they believe the matter is so important. One thing I think is true is that both the pro- and the anti-Bush factions believe for the most part that it’s a matter literally of life and death who wins the election. In a matter of life and death, wouldn’t you agree that a few rules could be bent?

Here’s another piece of evidence for what I’m claiming about the systematic nationwide bias of the bookstores:

A week after my book came out, a friend dragged me to the nearest Border’s bookstore. Now what is interesting about this Border’s is that it is located in Snellville, Georgia, the town that’s celebrated for its boast that “everybody is somebody in Snellville.” It is heavily Southern Baptist, and in the last election probably voted for George Bush by an overwhelming majority. In short, it is as American as apple pie and Chevrolet.

So we went to this Border’s, where my friend, after a good bit of searching, finally discovered the obligatory one copy of my book on the shelf reserved for political science — facing spine up, of course. Meanwhile I was standing at the front of the store, right where the friendly Border’s staff sets out those long tables stacked high with best sellers, among which were prominently displayed piles of Noam Chomsky’s most recent recycling of his anti-American diatribe, while next to this was Chalmers Johnson’s latest lament about the tawdry depravity of the new American Empire. Though these stacks were nothing compared to the rows of Michael Moore’s books that greeted you the moment you stepped through the door.

I have a hard time believing that those rows and rows of anti-American books make a lot of economic sense in red-blooded small towns in Georgia. It smacks of cultural imperialism to me.

As for Amazon as an alternative, yes it’s truly great, but I don’t see how relying on Amazon as our only source of books is a superior solution to relying on Barnes and Noble as our only source of books. If all we have is Amazon and if Amazon chooses not to stock something for political reasons then we’re right back to Soviet Encyclopedia non-persons, are we not?