Poll positions
Call it Geiger counting
THE FOLKS at the Pew Research Center are always polling this or that, asking fresh questions, and generally making a media of themselves. Bless them all to pieces. If it weren’t for the Rasmussen/Gallup/Pew types, how would we know how unpopular Congress is? Or the president’s approval rating? Or that Roy Moore would win the Alabama Senate race by nine points?
Sure, polls can be wrong. (See 2016, November.) But they do provide the rest of us a view, if sometimes blurry, about what our fellow Americans are thinking. And give us a starting point in all these debates. Also, they’re fun because those who disagree with them go apoplectic and call in to radio shows. And what’s more entertaining than listening to sputtering and overwrought callers on talk radio?
A writer for Pew—Abigail Geiger— put together a report the other day of 17 particular polls her outfit published this year. A lot of it makes for interesting reading, especially for pointy-headed newspaper types who find polls interesting reading. Some of it was obvious stuff: Women and men see things differently. Black folks and white folks have different takes on matters. But there was some remarkable polling this last year, too. As in, somebody should remark:
Most of those who claim to be (or lean) Republican told pollsters that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country.
This can’t be healthy. Colleges and universities can and should be criticized for many things. See about a dozen Walter Williams columns from this past year. Professors are much too liberal (in one sense) and the institutions don’t provide enough of a liberal education (in another sense). That is, too many colleges and schools worship diversity in everything except thought. And too many other colleges consider themselves only job training facilities.
But overall, colleges and universities are good for this society. It’s scary that that needs to be written.
Without them, where would we get our doctors? Our clergy? Our visiting poets? Our book translators?
Surely this past year has been one in which the established institutions in this country were rocked by the electorate, and in many cases deservedly so. But let’s not lose our tranquility and tell pollsters something we’ll regret later. Think: baby, bathwater and all that.
Pew also found that in America, “Hispanic identity fades across generations as distance from immigrant roots grow.”
But of course. First-generation immigrants are busy working and making life better for their kids. Then their kids grow up speaking two languages (fluently), go on to college, and become Americans, no hyphens included. It’s always been thus. Sure, most of us suddenly find Irish roots on St. Patrick’s Day, and a Cajun great-grandmother in crawfish season, and German ancestors during Oktoberfest, but the rest of the time we’re just Americans. With all-American names like Schwarz and Nguyen and Romano and Kowalski and Patel. Why should those from a Hispanic background be any different?
It’s an American tradition: Come to this country, dissolve into the roux, celebrate your heritage on specific dates— and adopt the heritage of others whenever you please. What a country! And pass the latkes, egg rolls and French bread.
Pew analyzed the news coverage of the first few months of the Trump presidency, and found that most of the news was negative.
No surprise there. But the man really does bring a lot of it on himself. We don’t remember other presidents picking fights with minor politicians in other countries, Rosie O’Donnell, and Gold Star families. Some of us, however, think this president doesn’t mind the coverage as long as the press is spelling his name right.
Many Americans say they fully expect a lot of professions to be automated soon enough, but not their jobs, naturally.
“Surely a robot can’t do my job.” Some of us would like to think that even if grocery clerks, bank tellers and, yes, pollsters are replaced by machines, that we ourselves have jobs that might withstand a robotic takeover.
Such as writing.
Except . . . We’ve already seen machine writing, and it’s among us. Like the monster in the movie The Thing, these robots—from who knows where—assimilate, infiltrate and imitate, until they’re at the throat of real people. Right now we’ve seen this “writing” mostly in sports, mostly on websites, mostly describing fantasy games. But how long until a formula can be written for politics, crime and even education?
OK, we’re scaring ourselves. So . . . .
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