I spoke by telephone to Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom from Religion Foundation for a radio interview about my generosity article. It is now available as a podcast at http://ffrf.libsyn.com/generosity.
Archives for posts with tag: bias
We need to change the prevailing assumptions in the same way that public opinion has been reversed on drunk driving. When I was young, drunk drivers tended to be excused because, after all, they were drunk! Today, happily, we hold them doubly culpable for any misdeeds they commit while under the influence.
I look forward to the day when violence done under the influence of religious passion is considered more dishonorable, more shameful, than crimes of avarice, and is punished accordingly, and religious leaders who incite such acts are regarded with the same contempt that we reserve for bartenders who send dangerously disabled people out onto the highways.
Doubt polls. Doubt them very much. We’ll be seeing a lot of them in the next few months. They are mostly evil.
During Dubya’s reign, countless half-wits declared him to be more “likeable” than his opponents. To maximize the damage, organizations lacking a sense of shame ran polls on this topic.
A recent Zogby/Williams Identity Poll … found that 57% of undecided voters would rather have a beer with Bush than Kerry. (In Bush’s case, it would be a nonalcoholic beer.) … A new Pew Research Center Poll asked swing voters who comes off more as a “real person,” Bush or Kerry? Bush won, 56% to 38%.
—Richard Benedetto, “Who’s more likeable, Bush or Kerry?”, USA Today, 9/17/2004
It might be true that most of those polled would have had a more pleasant chat with Bush than with Kerry. I don’t care, because this is obviously irrelevant to the question of who would have made a better president.
It’s even possible that Bush treats his immediate family and closest friends–even acquaintances, let’s say–with more kindness than does Kerry. I don’t know; but this, too, is irrelevant to the question of who would have made a better President.
Here’s a poll I would love to do.
“In your opinion, should the Zogby employee who proposed asking voters which presidential candidate they’d rather have a beer with, and the Pew staffer who decided to ask them which one comes off more as a ‘real person’, be shot?”
YASHWATA 