(My ego and I sit in the bars… – promoted by ek hornbeck)
Incredible.
Did you watch Chris?
Did you watch Andrea?
As incredible as Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Betrayed by the polls and hour after hour of Beltway…
You know.
Scrambling for shreds of credibility. We are Villagers. Serious and important people. This can’t be happening to us.
Move along.
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in a cultural and intellectual wasteland…
But how can anybody take any of the cable news or newspaper pundits so seriously? I have a theory that they all just read one another and self promote for the purposes of employment. If I want conventional wisdom or some semblance of what middle America is talking or thinking about I chat up work colleagues. I don’t necessarily agree with my work colleagues, but the pundit cliques don’t have a flipping clue what makes average Americans nervous, excited, or worried about because none of them have even ever met an average American. Just sayin….
The Statistician.
Has no one ever read Mark Twain?
The learned scholars discussing p values and confidence intervals are much like the learned scientists that once determined that the Irish were particularly well adapted to fighting and little else because of their thick skulls. Later, of course, it was Jews and Africans that were of similar low intelligence because of smaller skulls. Today’s learned scholars have begun to include women with the benighted races.
The confidence interval is not just another divine truth but, as usual, a judgment that means – that reporters and other ignoramuses should have confidence that the statisticians know what they are talking about. “Statistically significant” means you really should believe though there is no particular reason to do so except that the statistician has even fooled himself into believing that he is probably right.
When we were randomly selected many long years ago in St. Louis as a precise model for 10,000 or 100,000 or 1,000,000 other robots so that the other robots didn’t need to be asked their opinion, our pollsters were a more faithful daily caller than a bill collector. They could be quite tricky. I couldn’t always be sure I was giving them the wrong answer but I tried my best.
I find it only disheartening that pollsters so often guess the right answer. Don’t much cotton to living with all those non-thinking robots like me.
Best, Terry
way more reliable. Short answer: maybe now we can stop watching the punditocracy. To be frank, I’m finding better, quicker, clear analysis on the Intertubes. And if I could just break the habit of flipping the channels, I’d be home free.
was watching Tom Brokaw telling Tweety that we ought to not pay attention to the polls and instead just talk about the issues then wait for the people to vote. Tweety responded with:
“…but…but…but, there’s lots of people who make their living off those polls…whole universities dedicated to them.”
Time to go back to the drawing board folks.
on Morning Joe? Quite the opposite of the ridiculous coverage. He treated Obama with respect and discussed the aspect of the events no one seems to be addressing: the fact that Obama was miles behind Hillary in the summer and to come that close was a victory in itself (although Obama did flash the smile and admit he would have rather won).
Joe, who I am usually no fan of, told Obama that his speech had been in service to America because it was one of hope, which was missing from the other candidates. It was interesting.
if this was only true of their coverage of poor Britney…
on the pundit front, however, perhaps it means that people are starting to STOP listening to them
as John Edwards said last night, there are two races down. 48 more to go.
i agree with him.
are partly responsible. They keep the debate and the issues focused on non issues and personality they assume people are stupid. Last year I heard a lecture at our City Club which was a panel of top state consultants all explaining how to win was to never ever act like your smarter then constituent. Empty politics gets us what?
turned out to be. After the first five minutes of MSNBC’s coverage i switched to watching the entire evening on CSPAN where i got to see and hear, without interruptions, from every single one of the candidates.
KO has been one of my heroes, he suddenly seemed to be bitten with the anti Hillary venom that spilled over into some really sarcastic vituperative comments. I guess it is ok when they are being aimed at bush and billo but this seemed so unfair.
That probably is more of a reflection on my own tolerance for negativity than for the realities of ratings. Still, it was disappointing and will definitely keep me well away from MSNBC for the rest of the primary and general season. I don’t need to feel i need a shower after watching the evening news.
Ah well, never mind, their loss, not mine. Don’t have to buy any of the products they are touting. Advertisers beware!