Liberals in the Humor section, Conservatives in Current Events

On Sunday, my lovely wife and I went to the Barnes & Noble bookstore near our house in Westlake.

I was looking for Ann Coulter’s How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) and Michelle Malkin’s Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild.

It was easy enough to find Al Franken’s books…his latest was one of the first books to hit me in the face when I walked in the front door. As was Maureen Dowd’s and Margaret Cho’s. All of these books were prominently displayed at the front of the store. But I didn’t see the two books I was looking for.

I found where the rest of Franken’s books were located (five different titles are carried), along with Dowd, Cho, and Bill Maher’s books. Interestingly, all of these books were in the Humor section at Barnes & Noble (and all near the front of the store). Seeing how Ann Coulter’s books are in the same vein as Franken’s books, just on different sides of the aisles (a very, very wide aisle), I assumed that I had found the section (Humor) where B&N grouped books by political pundits.

But I couldn’t find Coulter nor Malkin listed along side Cho and Dowd. So, I asked a store employee if they had either book in the store.

If you ever want to see the ugliest scowl on a person’s face, ask a bookstore employee (who—at least here in Austin—have to show their Code Pink and Cindy Sheehan Fan Club membership cards as part of the employment application process) — to help you find a Coulter book. I think the middle-aged hippie shelf-stocker threw up a little in his mouth when I asked him where the Coulter and Malkin books were located.

Not surprisingly, he led me to the back of the store, to the Current Events section. And there were the books by Coulter, Malkin, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh.

Very interesting that B&N groups essentially the same genre of books (political satire) in two different sections of the store based on their political ideology. Even more interesting is that Liberals are in the Humor section, while conservatives are in the Current Events section.

Actually, that makes a lot of sense.