Sunday, October 19, 2008

I am among the elite. You too.

They are better educated and much more affluent than most Americans. They are much more knowledgeable than most about what goes on inside the Beltway, and, although they are among the least trusting of federal government, they are also among the most politically engaged voters.

Dittoheads.

Regular listeners of the Rush Limbaugh radio talk show, according to a new national survey conducted by The Washington Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University, also turn out at the ballot box with more consistency than most other voters.
(Washington Post, 1996 ... cont)


Twelve years ago that WaPost article validated what I knew to be true of my homeboys, almost all hidebound Maryland Democrats. When it came to discussing politics they were  dumb as sand.  Don't need more validating to know nothing's changed, but it is nice to know someone is noticing.
The Pew Research Center conducted a survey to see what the audiences of the various political shows knew about politics, and what they found goes against the conventional wisdom about whose audience is better informed about current events. With a simple three-question survey about politicians in high office, it turned out that the audiences of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity answered more questions correctly than fans of the "Colbert Report," "The Daily Show," and CNN.

The quiz asked the names of two of the world's leaders and one party in power to determine what audience is most well informed. Survey participants were asked the names of the Secretary of State, the British Prime Minister, and the name of the party currently controlling the House of Representatives.

According to the report on livescience.com, the audiences of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report have more college graduates than that of Hannity and Colmes, yet the Hannity audience answered more of the questions correctly than did that of Colbert and Stewart. Apparently the audiences of conservative shows are more politically informed than those of liberal shows.

The results were based on ability to identify political players.  Had the study included critical thinking ability, well, there would be no  Daily Show, and no Obama, would there?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank the teacher's unions for a job well done.

I had the chance, while dating a single mom, to read her son's history book-huge gaps in our history with extensive concentration on Indian "genocide", slavery, "big business" and trustbusting, the Japanese internment, child labor and the likes of The Jungle-those kinds of episodes. Also, at 17, he did not have clue about basic economics-fungible, a word I was taught in 8th grade and what it means to trade between countries, in 1964 for heaven's sake, might as well have been quantum physics, in braille.

Further his knowledge of how our government and systems work, as well as the slightest grasp of current events, both here and abroad and how they affect us, was also paper thin. But he sure knew the latest on Linkin Park.

Did you see that Obama raised $160M!!! in September? If you find the story on ABC, read the comments to really get depressed. While it might be great fun to listen to Hannity when he does his man on the street interviews. And they reveal the 110% vacuousness of Obama's supporters. Yeah so? They get one vote just like you and me. It's almost better to be ignorant like them, to be unaware of why the economy is in the toilet and to blindly believe the 30 second TV ads blaming "the failed policies of George Bush"(God how many times have I heard that)

Yep, thank the teacher's unions for a job well done
MM

Rodger the Real King of France said...

Sounds like a Howard Zinn textbook.

Anonymous said...

Nope Rog, I had my eye out for that one-I think it's called A People's History of America, but it sure was a first cousin
MM

Anonymous said...

They should survey the readers of Curmudgeonly & Skeptical. Not only do they know Rice, Brown, and Democrats, they have 5 nicknames for the Ohio Secretary of State.

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