Quite a lot of them hear about Rand from condemnatory secondary sources, and for them that's good enough. Back when Publius and I were hammering the Atlas Shrugged threads we'd get an anti-Rand poster throwing a Bob The Angry Flower cartoon in, which mocked Rand's characters for not realizing that they needed to grow food to eat. In fact, she spent two chapters on that topic - the critic had never read the book he was mocking. Funny cartoon but not for the reasons intended.
Rand is one of those authors - Machiavelli is another - whose popular reputation is quite at odds with the actual body of their published works. There's plenty to criticize with respect to the novel, but dismissing it as intellectually barren is a mark of ignorance. Which brings us back to Chrissy Matthews...
There I was in 1978 in a Philosophy of Education class when we were put into groups and assigned to form the perfect society. This was following out reading Brave New World and Plato’s Republic. The professor gets to me and sees I am wearing a tee shirt with the name of my rock band ANTHEM on it. She knew I was going to be trouble.