Conservative Books in Liberal San Francisco

Every once in a while, a conservative book hits the bestseller lists, and a customer will come in and complain that we don't stock it. Such was the case recently with Mark Levin's Liberty & Tyranny (that link actually leads you to abebooks.com, since we don't have the book in stock at the moment). A nice man came into the store asking for it the other day wondering why we wouldn't stock a bestselling book. I explained that mostly it is because we don't have much luck selling such books here in old lefty pinko San Francisco, but that I would order it.

Sometimes the folks who come in demanding to know why we don't stock the latest bestseller by Coulter, Savage or Hannity aren't so polite. But I have a stock response for them: it is because we are capitalists, and we only stock books we can sell and thus make money. Not much room for argument there. Green Apple doesn't not stock any particular book because we don't agree with the content therein, and we'll buy the conservative books used when they come in over the buy counter.

All of this reminds me of a time about 10 years ago when Michael Savage's first book came out, and we were rather surprised at how many requests we were getting for it. Since we didn't want to not have the book for our customers, but found the author's opinions so odious, we thought up a tidy solution: we put a little sign on the book saying that we would be donating all of the profits of the book to the A.C.L.U. The reason for choosing the A.C.L.U was that I had recently heard Mr. Savage on the radio stating that, were he to find himself running things, one of the first things he would do is put the head of the A.C.L.U on trial for sedition. In the end, we were able to send them a check for around $100.

Now Mr. Savage has been barred from entering Britain, and the A.C.L.U. is one of the organizations defending him, because that is what they do, defend the civil liberties even of odious people. And so in a way, the people who purchased his book at Green Apple contributed to the Michael Savage legal defense fund.