Just How Stupid Are We?
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This blog is run by Rick Shenkman, the author of the new book, Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter (Basic Books, June 2008). Mr. Shenkman, an Emmy award-winning investigative reporter, is an associate professor of history at George Mason University and editor of the university's History News Network. Buy the paperback here and the audio book here.
Dunce Cap Scorecard It would be stupid to say that the American people are stupid--as stupid as saying the American people are smart. It's impossible to generalize--and silly. But our politics are often stupid. And there are times when no other word, harsh as it is, seems to capture the essence of the turn politics have taken.
But what do we mean by stupid? To help determine whether a debate is stupid or not I have devised a five-part test. Call it the Dunce Cap Scorecard.
On the blog I rank debates by how stupid they get. One or two Dunce Caps is normal for any debate. Five Dunce Caps and you know you're in a deep pile of stupid.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Which poll do you believe?
From the NYT:
In recent weeks, polls kept showing solid support for a public insurance option, seeming to breathe new life into its viability as a provision of the health care legislation under way in Congress. In fact, advocates of a public option, from left-leaning groups to pundits to lawmakers, seized on each new number and trumpeted the news across the 24/7 news spectrum of Twitter, TV ads, blogs and headlines.And while those polls may have bolstered Senator Harry Reid’s decision to include the public option in the merged Senate bill this week, a closer examination shows once again that public opinion on this issue shifts and shimmies depending on how you phrase the question and what you strip away from (or add to) a compound sentence.
In nearly all recent surveys, a majority of Americans simply approve of providing coverage for the uninsured, suggesting that on an altruistic level at least, they believe people deserve health care.
But differences emerge in the details. For example, support for a public health insurance depends on the order of questions, the language and the arguments posed in favor or in opposition.
For example, in a poll that NBC News and The Wall Street Journal released on Tuesday, half the respondents were asked one question about the public option, and half were asked a different one.
Just under 50 percent favored a health care plan administered by the federal government to compete with private insurance companies, while 4 in 10 opposed. But, almost three-fourths said it was important to have a choice between a public plan and a private plan.
Comment: People aren't being stupid when they answer questions in different ways depending on the wording. But we as a society are stupid to place as much stock in polls as we do. Walter Lippmann reminded us a generation ago that polls are just a snapshot of the electorate's opinion. Why should that snapshot be given reverential treatment? That was a good question when he posed it. It's still a good question.
Friday, September 18, 2009
And Now This .... Dear Gawd!
This just in:
Only one in four Oklahoma public high school students can name the first President of the United States, according to a survey released today.
The survey was commissioned by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs in observance of Constitution Day on Thursday.
Brandon Dutcher is with the conservative think tank and said the group wanted to find out how much civic knowledge Oklahoma high school students know.
The Oklahoma City-based think tank enlisted national research firm, Strategic Vision, to access students' basic civic knowledge.
"They're questions taken from the actual exam that you have to take to become a U.S. citizen," Dutcher said.
| Question | % of Students Who Answered Correctly | |
| What is the supreme law of the land? | 28 | |
| What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution? | 26 | |
| What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress? | 27 | |
| How many justices are there on the Supreme Court? | 10 | |
| Who wrote the Declaration of Independence? | 14 | |
| What ocean is on the east coast of the United States? | 61 | |
| What are the two major political parities in the United States? | 43 | |
| We elect a U.S. senator for how many years? | 11 | |
| Who was the first President of the United States? | 23 | |
| Who is in charge of the executive branch? | 29 |
Monday, September 14, 2009
Pew reports that a majority admit not understanding the health care debate
Quoting Pew's Andrew Kohut:
Interest in the health care reform debate has remained extremely high throughout the summer, and more than nine-in-ten Americans say the issue is important to them. Still, despite the public focus on health care news, two-thirds continue to say the issue is hard to understand.
With Congress returning from its August recess, more than half of Americans (56%) say they plan to watch President Obama’s prime-time speech to lawmakers Wednesday night on health care. More Democrats (72%) say they plan to watch than Republicans (41%) or independents (52%).
According to the latest weekly News Interest Index survey, conducted September 3-6 among 1,005 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, four-in-ten Americans overall say they followed the health care debate very closely last week. About three-in-ten (29%) say they followed the health care debate more closely than any other story.
More than seven-in-ten (73%) Americans say the health care debate affects them personally, down slightly from the 78% that said the same in mid-July. Nearly all Americans (93%) view the issue as important, about the same as the 95% that said the issue was important in July. More than seven-in-ten (72%) say the issue is interesting, matching the proportion in the earlier survey.
Still, interest and media coverage notwithstanding, 67% say the health care debate remains hard to understand. That’s about the same as the 63% that said the issue was hard to understand in mid-July.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Obama's missed opportunity
As long as Obama had had the attention of school children this week he might have put his time to good use and promoted civics.
Alas, as Jonathan Zimmerman bemoans in a piece we'll post later today on HNN, the president stuck to bromides.
Too bad.
Another lost chance to do something to draw attention to the primary educational challenge of our time.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
"Most Don't Know What 'Public Option' Means"
A new AARP survey shows there is widespread uncertainty about what a "public option" means in the various health care reform bills. Just 37% of the poll's respondents correctly identified the public option from a list of three choices provided to them.Nate Silver: "If the respondents had simply chosen randomly among the three options provide to them, 33 percent would have selected the correct definition for the public option. Instead, only 37 percent did (although 23 percent did not bother to guess). This is mostly a debate being had among policy elites and the relatively small fraction of the public that is highly knowledgeable and engaged about health care reform; for most others, the details are lost on them."
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
New study finds mental phenomenon behind the belief in a Saddam-9/11 connection
Why have so many fallen for nonsense about Obama's health care plan? About his birth? About ... ?
In the online edition of Newsweek, columnist Sharon Begley has devoted two articles to try to get to the bottom of the question. She cites fresh research by sociologist Steven Hoffman that a mental phenomenon known as "motivated reasoning" is to blame.
"Fewer Than Half of Arkansans Think Obama is a Citizen"
A new Public Policy Polling survey in Arkansas shows that only 45% of voters in the state say they believe President Obama was born in this country, while 31% say they think he was not and 24% are unsure."Arkansas is the first of four states where we've polled the birther issue (Virginia, North Carolina, and Colorado were the others) and found less than half of respondents confident that the President is a natural born citizen. The numbers are particularly dramatic among Republicans with 49% saying Obama was not born here to just 23% who grant that he was."
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
More evidence of idiocy
Josh Marshall at TPM:
Public Policy Polling has a new poll out on the national 'birther' movement. And it turns out to be another fascinating look at the mystic overlap between ideological and simple ignorance.Of the 24% of the population in the 'birther' category, one interesting thing to note is that more Americans seem to think Obama was born in Indonesia (10%) than Kenya (7%), which suggests not only that a frighteningly large number of Americans are birthers but that they have a shockingly low level of basic 'birther' literacy. As you know, according to orthodox 'birther' theory, Obama was born in Kenya.
Even better, 6% fully concede that Obama was born in Hawaii. They just don't believe Hawaii is part of the United States.
Rep. Barney Frank riposte to Town Hall crazy
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Egads!
Anyone who's read my book must assume that I am appalled at what's transpiring at the town hall meetings. They're right. I am. But I'm hardly surprised. No one who's examined the stats involving the public misunderstanding of 9-11 and the Iraq War could be surprised by the ignorance on display at the town hall meetings being covered by CNN and other media companies this month.
This time around, however, opinion makers finally seem to have caught on that public ignorance is a poison that could ultimately kill our democracy.
These are just some of the pieces that have crossed my desk recently:
- Charles Blow: Health Care Hullabaloo
A Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll released last Friday found that 28 percent of Republicans don’t believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States and another 30 percent are still “not sure.” That’s nearly 6 out of 10 Republicans refusing to accept a basic truth. Then again, this shouldn’t surprise me. According to a Gallup poll released last summer, 6 in 10 Republicans also said they thought that humans were created, in their present form, 10,000 years ago.
Let’s face it: This is no party of Einsteins. Really, it isn’t. A Pew poll last month found that only 6 percent of scientists said that they were Republicans.
- Bill Mahr: New Rule: Smart President ≠ Smart Country
People bitch and moan about taxes and spending, but they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes 24% of our federal budget. It's actually less than 1%. And don't even ask about cabinet members: seven in ten think Napolitano is a kind of three-flavored ice cream. And last election, a full one-third of voters forgot why they were in the booth, handed out their pants, and asked, "Do you have these in a relaxed-fit?"
And I haven't even brought up America's religious beliefs. But here's one fun fact you can take away: did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.
And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy? Please, this country is like a college chick after two Long Island Iced Teas: we can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget town halls, and replace them with study halls. There's a lot of populist anger directed towards Washington, but you know who concerned citizens should be most angry at? Their fellow citizens. "Inside the beltway" thinking may be wrong, but at least it's thinking, which is more than you can say for what's going on outside the beltway.
I would prefer that the tone of the public critics was less rhetorical. And Charles Blow needs to read my book; he'd see that Democrats are also beholden to myths and misinformation. But finally we are having a public debate.
Why the Iraq War didn't trigger this debate I'm not sure. But the health care debate is. For that I'm grateful.
Related Links
White House website debunks myths about health care Chicago Trib Q & A on health care myths
Tim Egan blog in the NYT: Palin's poison
Thursday, July 30, 2009
"Is health bill too complex to grasp?"
That's the headline at politico.com.
Here's the story:
Olympia Snowe, it seems safe to assume, is following the health care debate a bit more closely than the average American.So it is saying something that the Maine senator — a key figure in health care negotiations — admits she is stumped by the task of crafting a simple explanation for legislation of mind-numbing complexity.
“If anybody can give me an easy, 30-second solution to this multitrillion-dollar problem, be my guest,” said Snowe, a moderate Republican .
A Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, agrees. “The members don’t even understand what’s in it,” he confessed of the legislation. As for his constituents? They are “not exactly sure what this is about, and they’re not really sure whether they like it or not.”
The most far-reaching domestic legislation to move through Capitol Hill in decades has engaged the minds of many of the country’s smartest and most-informed economists and public policy engineers.
But, as the health care battle enters a critical phase — with lawmakers about to greet constituents during summer recess — the reality is that the outcome will probably be shaped less by the intelligence of advocates on any side than by the ignorance of most Americans.
It may go too far to say that Americans are too dumb to understand concepts like “bending the cost curve.” Or too preoccupied by “America’s Got Talent” to decide whether “evidence-based medicine” is a euphemism for rationing.
But all sides of the debate are facing the same essential challenge: How to boil down arguments that flummox even veteran legislators into simple appeals that will engage an easily distracted, easily flustered electorate.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Global warming -- our reaction is stupid
From the NYT:
In “The Age of Stupid,” a frightening jeremiad about the effects of climate change, the craggy-faced British actor Pete Postlethwaite plays the Archivist, a finger-pointing, futuristic voice of doom in 2055. Peering into a retrospective crystal ball that shows scenes from the early 21st century, he scolds the human race for having committed suicide.The curator of the Global Archive, a storage site of human knowledge in what is now a melted Arctic, the Archivist presses a rewind button on a touch screen to show documentary scenes related to climate change that were shot when there was still time for humanity to save itself. At the end of “The Age of Stupid,” which uses crude animation that depicts London underwater, Sydney burning and Las Vegas buried in sand, the Archive is sent into space.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Americans aren't alone in their ignorance
London's Telegraph headline this morning:
Apollo 11 hoax: one in four people do not believe in moon landing
Money quote
A quarter of Britons believe the Apollo 11 mission moon landings in 1969 were a hoax....The survey was conducted for E&T magazine, published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology.
Editor in chief Dickon Ross said: "The Apollo moon landing is mankind's most outstanding engineering event so it's deeply worrying that such a large number of people should think the first moon walk never happened and that the public's belief in the legitimacy of science and technology seems to be declining over time."
Conspiracy theorists have pointed to a number of flaws in the pictures and footage from the Apollo missions as proof that the moon landings were staged. For instance, the US flag planted by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin was said to be waving in a breeze, which should not have been possible on the airless moon.
Nasa's response was that the flag waved a little when deployed due to residual momentum from contact with the astronauts, not because of windy weather. Alleged light and shadow anomalies were the result of the highly reflective surface of the Moon and the wide-angle cameras used by the astronauts, said the space agency.
Another question mark over the lack of dust kicked up by the lunar module was explained by the fact that the craft's rocket exhaust fired out sideways rather than straight down.
Leading space scientist Professor John Zarnecki, from the Open University, said: "I think it would have been a far greater achievement to have mocked the whole thing up AND to have kept it quiet for four decades. "If one in four Britons today don't believe the moon landings ever happened, then I'm afraid that says a lot about one in four Britons. And what it says isn't very complimentary."
Monday, July 13, 2009
Richard Dreyfuss speaks about the necessity of civics
MJ
My silence over the last few weeks is owing wholly to a feeling of utter helplessness in the face of the MJ torrent.
I simply have been too demoralized by the extravaganza to summon up the energy to blog.
Every shallow inclination of the modern media has been on display.
But you don't need me to point this out.
Monday, June 29, 2009
CNN Political Ticker
You can download this for your blog. Click here.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Jon Stewart's my hero
Anyone reading this blog will want to watch this "news story" by Daily Show "correspondent" Jason Jones, who was sent to Iran to report on the recent election. It includes a gag modeled on Jay Leno's regular skit, "Jay Walking." Watch it!
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Jason Jones: Behind the Veil - Ayatollah You So | ||||
| ||||
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Cheney finally admits no connection between Saddam and 9-11
As anyone who has read my book knows, it was the Bush administration's success in making people believe that Saddam was behind 9-11 that triggered my decision to write Just How Stupid Are We.
Now along comes Dick Cheney to say--7 years too late!-- that Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11.
Here's the money quote from CNN:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he does not believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the planning or execution of the September 11, 2001, attacks.He strongly defended the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq, however, arguing that Hussein's previous support for known terrorists was a serious danger after 9/11.
Cheney, in an appearance at the National Press Club, also said he is intent on speaking out in defense of the Bush administration's national security record because "a clear understanding of policies that worked [in protecting the United States] is essential."
"I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11. We had that reporting for a while, [but] eventually it turned out not to be true," Cheney conceded.
He's still insisting that:
the evidence was "overwhelming" that al Qaeda had a relationship with Hussein's regime in Iraq, and that media reports suggesting that the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks reached a contradictory conclusion were "irresponsible."
I guess we couldn't hope for him to completely abandon his ill-considered views.
Cheney wants to blame George Tenet and notes that Tenet in open testimony before Congress declared that Saddam and al qaeda had a relationship. But who's Cheney kidding? We know from numerous books that it was his office that was responsible for pushing the Saddam/9-11 angle over the objections of people like Richard Clarke.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Investors fall for accounting change
It's not just voters who, in the absence of information, who can be fooled, as this NYT news story today shows:
Investors eagerly looking for the “green shoots” of a recovery lapped up the news when Prudential Financial announced this month that it was profitable again, after six months of big losses.The insurer’s stock jumped nearly 30 percent in the two days after its earnings report. What was largely overlooked: the first-quarter profit came solely from accounting.
Prudential was an early adopter of a new accounting guideline that gives all companies greater flexibility in valuing their sagging investment portfolios. Without the change, Prudential would have reported a loss of at least $400 million for the quarter instead of a $14 million profit, according to Peter Larson, an analyst with Gradient Analytics, a firm that examines the quality of corporate financial reporting.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Now David Souter's sounding the civics alarm
This is from Legal Times blog of Tony Mauro:
Recent Entries
- Which poll do you believe?
- And Now This .... Dear Gawd!
- Pew reports that a majority admit not understanding the health care debate
- Obama's missed opportunity
- "Most Don't Know What 'Public Option' Means"
- New study finds mental phenomenon behind the belief in a Saddam-9/11 connection
- "Fewer Than Half of Arkansans Think Obama is a Citizen"
- More evidence of idiocy
- Rep. Barney Frank riposte to Town Hall crazy
- Egads!
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