Chupacabra Report

News that gets my goat..

From the AP:


“One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and older people were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices.

In 2004, a National Endowment for the Arts report titled “Reading at Risk” found only 57 percent of American adults had read a book in 2002, a four percentage point drop in a decade. The study faulted television, movies and the Internet.

Among those who said they had read books, the median figure — with half reading more, half fewer — was nine books for women and five for men. The figures also indicated that those with college degrees read the most, and people aged 50 and up read more than those who are younger.

There was even some political variety evident, with Democrats and liberals typically reading slightly more books than Republicans and conservatives.”

-To quote Frank Zappa, “It’s not getting any smarter out there.”

I find this most alarming. A working democracy depends upon an informed electorate.
You don’t think it’s possible to get informed by watching television, do you? I think that the more TV you watch, the less intelligent you are. Think back to the 1990’s, how Slobodon Milosevic used state TV to whip up his people into making war on the Bosnians. Think that was just a bunch of dumb Serbs? What do you think Bush and Cheney did here in 2002.

Read all about it.