An article in the online magazine Slate reveals a lot about the forces of political correctness. Slate assistant editor Julia Turner was clearly in a tongue-in-cheek mood when she wrote ?Laura Bush?Why liberals shouldn?t like her.? But the article turned out to be even funnier than she intended.

Turner, you see, is bowled over by the idea that an avid reader like the First Lady is not liberal. Of course, it is well known that Laura Bush is married to a fairly influential conservative. However, Turner writes, liberal book-lovers could not believe that Mrs. Bush was on board with her husband?s policies.

Turner explains ?how easy it is to be wooed by the first lady?s reading habits. . . . More than one commentator has noted with approval and some surprise that Laura Bush?s favorite scene in literature is the ?Grand Inquisitor? portion of The Brothers Karamazov [by Fyodor Dostoevsky].? Turner quotes fellow writer James Wolcott, who asked, ?A man who would marry a woman this kind and refined couldn?t be all boor, could he??

Turner and many other liberals were disappointed this campaign season when Laura Bush confirmed that, yes?imagine it?she is a conservative. Her attack on embryonic stem-cell research, in particular, left Turner in the dumps.

Turner explains, ?When liberals note that Laura is a reader, they mean that she must be a sort of anti-Dubya. And when they hear her standing by Bush in the stem-cell debate, they wonder how a reader?someone devoted to the pursuit of knowledge?could possibly stick up for a policy designed to thwart those who seek it.?

It?s hard not to laugh when you hear this from the tolerant, all-embracing Left. (It might even break Turner?s heart to know that The Brothers Karamazov is my favorite novel too.) But Turner is not the only one surprised, as many responses from Slate readers demonstrated. One such reader lamented, ?What I and many other liberals are often guilty of is the fallacy that, if one reads the right books . . . one?s politics are bound to be progressive. What we often fail to realize is that people read the same books and come to different conclusions.?