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"Have you dated liberals before. If so, any difference you can tell between liberal and conservative guys?"

By Ann Althouse

Right Wing News interviews conservative female bloggers about dating.

I tend not to date liberals, for a reason. Politics is so important to what I do and I follow it so much. I can't respect a guy who's liberal all that much because it makes me question his intelligence. So, that's a big minus because I'm thinking how smart can this guy be if he thinks John Kerry is a great politician? (Laughs) If he thinks Barack Obama would be a great President, I think, gee, how bright could this guy be?

Ugh. This is almost as annoying as this essay the other day in the NYT ? it's now #1 on their most-emailed list ? about these literary types who abhor love from people who don't know all the authors or don't like the right books:

Anyone who cares about books has at some point confronted the Pushkin problem: when a missed ? or misguided ? literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast....

[S]ometimes, it?s the Howard Roark problem... ?I did have to break up with one guy because he was very keen on Ayn Rand,? said Laura Miller, a book critic for Salon. ?He was sweet and incredibly decent despite all the grandiosely heartless ?philosophy? he espoused, but it wasn?t even the ideology that did it. I just thought Rand was a hilariously bad writer, and past a certain point I couldn?t hide my amusement.?...

Judy Heiblum, a literary agent at Sterling Lord Literistic, shudders at the memory of some attempted date-talk about Robert Pirsig?s 1974 cult classic ?Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,? beloved of searching young men. ?When a guy tells me it changed his life, I wish he?d saved us both the embarrassment,? Heiblum said, adding that ?life-changing experiences? are a ?tedious conversational topic at best.?

Look out, there's a lot of aversion out there. But really, my question is, what did those guys who loved John Kerry, Ayn Rand, and Robert Pirsig look like?

Full post as published by Althouse on March 31, 2008 (boomark / email).