Comments on: Three Questions

By: DLS

DLS — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 23:28:51 +0000

I don't get the chance to (and don't choose to) listen to Hannity on the radio much, but once in a while (it may have been every Thursday at one time), the Hannity show would do a “man on the street” (person on the street) live-mike show where various people, usually young people, would be asked questions like that. Many young people (gung-ho for Obama, “knowing” the Republicans are evil, and so on) cannot name the Vice President or the Secretary of State, and laugh stupidly when confronted about this (they don't believe it's important, anyway), when not stupidly interjecting the word “like” between every other word in their sentences or otherwise behaving illogically. (But they have no problem chanting “Obama! Obama!” as was demonstrated on that show this afternoon.) (At least they weren't asked to recall a past event and weren't given the chance to stupidly describe the past in present tense, or have every other be “uh” or “um” as often on NPR's radio shows, where an “expert” on such word [mis]use claimed that those who don't engage in that kind of additional diction are uneducated[!].)

By: DurhamO

DurhamO — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:05:30 +0000

The most frightening stat to come out of this study is not the composite score of 18%, but that only 53% were able to correctly identify the Democrats as the majority in the House. There are really only two choices, so a coin flip would have performed almost as well as the American public.

Digging deeper: Of the 40 categories of “Regular Audiences,” only 9 categories scored 53% or lower on the House question. The split does not indicate that a majority of Americans fall into those categories, but that there were enough wrong answers in those 9 categories to outweigh many of the correct answers in the other 31 categories.

I'd love to see a breakdown of the readership/audience categories — what % of those surveyed do not keep up with political news in any way?

By: DLS

DLS — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:14:49 +0000

Stupid keyboard — Q U A L I F I C A T I O N (and weighting!) of the suffrage

By: DLS

DLS — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:13:58 +0000

I first drew readers' attention to this poll earlier this week.

A more broad reflection of the lack-of-knowledge problem that is honest would include consideration of qualifiation or even weighting of the suffrage. (Best of all, test scores multiplied by taxes paid or a suitable standard for this such as percentiles for the two.)

By: RememberNovember

RememberNovember — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:51:10 +0000

better yet, who is President of Georgia?
Who is President of Pakistan?
Who is President of Russia? ( it's not Putin , though for all his puppeteering he may as well be)
Who is the supreme leader in Iran ( it's not Ahmenidinajad )?

By: RememberNovember

RememberNovember — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:48:57 +0000

America the Incurious. We're a Christian Nation dontcha know ( where it says everyone must follow Christ in the Constitution I have yet to find…)

By: lotusflwr

lotusflwr — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 07:23:25 +0000

Same, Gordon Brown tripped me up for a sec since I've been so accustomed to blurting out Tony Blair! Luckily I heard his name plenty last week on Bloomberg. Other two were not really an issue.

Give me a map and I can tell you where bunches of countries are too, oooh!

I demand a cookie for being so smart though.

By: Rudi

Rudi — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 03:33:10 +0000

I wonder how many TMV readers would get 100%? I had to think a second before Brownpopped up, the other two are no problem.

By: JSpencer

JSpencer — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 01:22:13 +0000

NPR being high on the list doesn't surprise me, but overall the US is in an embarrassing position. Heck, I have a dog that can probably score higher than most of those people.