Do people choose to be ignorant?

Over the past week or so my husband has been fighting with his sister, who called him lazy for supporting the occupy wall street movement. today she posted something about seeing a picture of an occupier holding a starbucks cup and said that "guess everyone has a price". I swear, in our dealings with her, I seriously wonder if people choose to be closed minded or ignorant.

She and her husband are, well, I guess they fall under the tea party movement. They watch only Fox news for information, and she has a tendency to only look at one side of a story (her husband is a little more open to the fact that there are differences in opinion, but still a rather conservative man). I don't understand how anyone, especially anyone who has a college degree, can do that. How can anyone look at only one side, and not look at how something affects all people? How can they take the word of only one person, and not look at the thousands of stories from all sides before forming an opinion? How can a sister look at her brother, a man who served his country and is disabled because of his service, a man who has been working hard to provide for his family and can only find minimum wage work at varied hours and goes to school to get a degree that might improve his lot in life, and call him lazy?

I can see why she has the thought processes she has; she was raised with privilege and preferential treatment wherever she went. She was spoiled by her parents and given everything she wanted; a car, concerts in Montreal when her favorite bands played there, her own phone in her room, etc. That privilege has continued into her adult life, and she and her husband pull in a six figure income.  This is the same woman who, instead of coming to see her preemie nephew in the NICU or in the PICU post-surgery, thought it was more important to blow off work and drive to the funeral of an 80's star she adored as a kid, a funeral that she was not invited to and was nine hours and one country away. So clearly, her priorities are very skewed to a very selfish sense of self-importance.

But seriously, how can this person, who was raised by her parents to be very open-minded and knowledge-seeking, be so closed minded? I have been tempted to write to her and say why her brother has been so hurt by her callousness, but why bother when I know she will never take those words to heart?