Tuesday, January 20, 2004

State of the Union

The Top Ten words that did not appear anywhere in George W. Bush's State of the Union address tonight...

1. Mars
2. environment
3. global warming
4. Colin Powell
5. equality
6. Halliburton
7. fairness
8. Enron
9. withdraw
10. Osama

And when he condemned "Activist judges [who] have begun redefining marriage by court order, without regard for the will of the people and their elected representatives," he was lucky no one jumped up and asked, "How do you feel when they stop votes from being recounted?"

• Posted at 10:46 PM · LINK

Correction

The first Moon landing occurred July 20, 1969. The Potato Crisps and the Prisoner finale both pre-dated it. I should have realized that because Nixon did his famous split-screen phone call with Neil Armstrong, and Nixon didn't take office until the beginning of 1969. I am shamed.

• Posted at 9:35 PM · LINK

Non-Sequitur Memories

I ate the one and only box of General Mills Potato Crisps I ever ate on a Saturday evening in 1968. I know this because for some reason, I remember trying them out and not liking them as I watched the final episode of The Prisoner. General Mills Potato Crisps were advertised as having "a taste like french fries" and their commercials even suggested you dip them in ketchup to get that full, wondrous french fry flavor. So I had my mother get a box and then I emptied a glump of ketchup into a little dish and took both out into the living room to watch the grand finale to Patrick McGoohan's odd spy series. I knew that if things went anything like they usually did, it would be Monday's hot topic of discussion at my high school, and everyone (myself, included) would be pretending we understood precisely what had happened in the episode.

And sure enough, the following Monday, I did a decent job of bluffing and double-talking...enough to have a semi-intelligent conversation about the show with friends who weren't entirely sure what they'd seen, either. (Only months earlier, we'd all practiced by feigning some comprehension of the ending of 2001.)

Oddly enough, I recall more about the Potato Crisps than I do about The Prisoner. Though made from an odd array of ingredients including a smidgen of potato flour, they did taste vaguely like french fries. Or at least, they did in the sense that almost anything that's edible, salted and crunchy tastes a little like french fries if you dip it in enough ketchup. Overall though, I was disappointed...enough to never again try them. And my mother, sensing my disappointment from the next room, came in and lovingly offered to make me real french fries if that's what I wanted. I told her no. What I wanted was a ready-made snack food that tasted like french fries...and obviously, the package before me proved that this was still and perhaps forever beyond the reach of Science. Not long before, they'd put a couple of men on the Moon but the important stuff still eluded them. Ever since that evening, when friends mention The Prisoner, I think of General Mills Potato Crisps. There's some sort of metaphor there between show and snack but I've never quite figured it out. Or, for that matter, the end of The Prisoner.

• Posted at 11:51 AM · LINK

Polling Place

A couple of folks wrote to say I was being slightly unfair to the Zogby poll since, after all, it's a caucus vote not a popular vote. The rules are different. For example, once a candidate is adjudged non-viable, meaning he has under 15% of the vote in a given caucus, his supporters can move on to someone else. This is all true but it still doesn't change the fact that the polls, whatever they were estimating, did not gauge how well Kerry and Edwards would do, nor how poorly Dean and Gephardt would fare.

I actually do not believe polls are entirely worthless. I just think we take them way too seriously and are too quick to forget the big "misses." We're now paying an undeserved amount of attention to how the candidates look to be faring in New Hampshire...as estimated by the same people who were so far off in Iowa. If Clark's numbers start going up, everyone will say, "He's gaining support," whereas it could just be that his support is steady or even declining...but the poll is disconnected from that reality. These things need more Warning Labels on them.

• Posted at 10:46 AM · LINK

Worth Pointing Out...

What I believe was the last Zogby poll on the Iowa caucuses had Kerry receiving 25%, Dean at 22%, Edwards at 21% and Gephardt with 18%. Allowing for the margin of error, that's pretty much a tie. Now, for reasons explained back in this article, the final totals are not exact but they're going to be (give or take a point) Kerry with 38%, Edwards with 32%, Dean with 18% and Gephardt at 11%. Even with all the caveats, the polling was pretty far off.

The Zogby poll is the one that, back in 2000, predicted the New York Senate race was coming down to a dead heat. Here's a quote from the day before that vote...

The Colgate/Zogby International Poll also paid carefully attention to the equally close senatorial race between Lazio and Clinton. "I think we're looking at a one point race," Zogby said. "I have no idea what's going to happen on Tuesday." Zogby observed that even although Lazio leads in the polls, it is not the lead that he would like to have over Clinton.

The next day, Hillary Clinton beat Rick Lazio 56%-44%. And yet the media still subscribes to the Zogby poll and pundits still discuss its projections as if we can learn important data from them.

• Posted at 12:19 AM · LINK