Strange Times

Seeing as it is election week, and I am a political science major, I thought it seemed logical to do a slightly political based blog. I will try to stay away from stating specific political opinions, but rather analyzing the system as a whole. Seeing as politics bores the average citizen, I will get right into the meat of what I am going to say so please read on because if you don't, you will prove my point that people have no attention span. Prove me wrong.

In 1492....

So it's usually this around this time when people become political experts and/or panic. The former statement is not much of a surprise. We had an argument in my History class last week. The argument, initiated by two students, was whether the American public as a whole is more politically aware now than they were around the Founding Era. As to be expected, the argument got rather heated, and, as usual, I stayed out of such nasty arguments. Here is what I think: In America, we have more politically aware citizens than we did in the Founding Era. In America, the percentage of politically aware citizens has decreased since the Founding Era. Of course we have MORE citizens who are politically aware. That is what happens when you have 307,006,550 citizens, give or take a million. My favorite example of this is when Howard Stern interviewed people of the street during the Obama Presidential election. His intern was in a black section of town and asked people if they supported a specific Obama policy. Instead of stating the Obama policy, they would state the McCain policy. The people supported it nearly every time thinking it was the Obama policy. I say this to show the unawareness of the general public, not the people who voted for Obama. I am sure if they would have done the opposite idea in the South, something similar would have happened. The point is, yes, our general public has decreased over time as far as political awareness goes, but is that to be expected? It seems historically this has been true. Our public education system, as far as high school, has decreased incredibly in the past 50 years. Panic? No. Like I said, we have more citizens that are still politically aware. We will be fine. 

John McCain's Black Child

If your immediate reaction when I said " In America, we have more politically aware citizens than we did in the Founding Era," good; you are American. One thing to be careful about this week is how the media words statements and polls. Polling is a science, and if you are good at it you can manipulate your results by forming the question right. For example, in a poll several years ago this is what happened... 

"Do you agree the country isn't spending enough on the poor?" 63%

"Do you agree the country isn't spending enough on welfare?" 19%

Right off the bat, if you only saw one poll that would be hard to catch. This is why you have to be careful about poll bias. Follow these rules when looking at a poll. Who sponsored the poll? Who did the polling? Who is interviewed and how many? What is the margin of error? What questions were asked? If the poll hides many of these aspects, not a good sign. Finally, my favorite form of propaganda: the push poll. This is where they ask a question that is not necessarily true at all, but will plant a seed (seeding the electorate). Karl Rove did this in the Republican primary in South Carolina (McCain v. Bush), he had people call houses and ask 

"Would it change your vote if you learned that McCain has an illegitimate black child?"

American Media

No it's not worse today. The American media is kinder and less biased than it was in the Founding Era. During Adams administration, it got so bad he passed the Alien and Sedition Act, making it illegal to criticize the government. Direct contradiction to freedom of press and speech? I think yes. It was repealed in 1802. In that time, it was not abnormal for newspapers to call candidate's mothers whores or be blunt on the stupidity of the candidate. Now we have moved towards a less harsh and less biased media- an organization at Vanderbilt University started a media archive in the 50's to try and prove media bias. They have not been able to since. This is because there is a 3 to 1 liberal to conservative ratio amongst journalists, but this liberal bias is mostly washed out by editors, publishers, and sponsors who tend to be conservative. It all comes down to "Who is the audience?" Having said that, you will catch bits of bias in news, not to say editorials, but for the most part it is fair (enough) on network television. 

Interesting Facts

1. U.S. does not rank in the top 100 in voting participation (ranked 139)

2. I am not voting on Tuesday

3. You will post a comment or question

To Wrap things up...

Seeing as this post is rather lengthy, I am not going to include a section that pertains to my personal life. Today you get what I think you should know about this week politically. Tomorrow you will get what I think you should know about me right now. That is all. I love you.

P.S. Listen to The Black Keys song "Everlasting Light"