>
> But Teddy Roosevelt wrote some serious books; Bill Clinton
> wrote his memoirs.
Few of the people who were sold by Clinton's chicken-fried accent read any books at all; they weren't even aware that Clinton had ever been in contact with those dubious things, much less that he was the type to someday write one himself.
Teddy Roosevelt was in a different era, when there was no teevee. And back then, books _were_ mass entertainment, not, as today, the exclusive preserve of snooty innalectural types such as populate this here mailing list. So Roosevelt being associated with a book was no more weird and offensive to the snob-hating public than Clinton tooting his sax in front of Saturday Night Live's video cameras. It's different today. As a Floridian myself, I _know_ that if Al Gore hadn't made it so obvious how he was just the type to read book after book with no shame at all, he'd have drawn an extra half a percent which even Jeb! and Cruella couldn't have made disappear.
Yours WDK - WKiernan at ij.net