Sunday, March 18, 2012

Another Sunday, another Doonesbury Strip

Another Sunday, another Doonesbury strip. And yet more problems.

In Sunday 18-MAR-2012’s strip, we “learn” that there is data showing that Fox News views are the most ill-informed. Excuse me, the strip actually says “…poorly informed.” Yet the result is the same: the strip claims that most Fox News viewers really don’t know about what’s going on out there.

Comics typically write their strips several weeks in advance, so I’m going to assume that the “data” he’s referring to came from the November, 2011 Fairleigh Dickinson poll. The poll was conducted in the state of New Jersey and polled 612 people. New Jersey, in case you didn’t know, tends to vote heavily Democratic.

But it turns out that the results of this poll have been called into serious question. When you break down the poll into the sub-groups (White, African-American, etcetera,) the margin of error becomes so high as to be truly laughable. Plus or minus three percentage points on a poll is around the norm. But when you get above 9, you know you’re in trouble. When you go into DOUBLE digits, something is seriously wrong. (Yes, libs, double digits is any number between 10 and 99. Lower than 10 is single digits, and higher than 99 (USING ONLY WHOLE NUMBERS) is THREE digits. (I added the whole number thing because I know somebody is going to say “well what about 6.27%? That’s three digits! Or what about 1.3%? There’s a double-digit!” (So that’s why I added the only whole numbers.))

So the “poll” Mr Trudeau was referring to, I believe, is the one that I just discussed. You know, the one with the absurdly high margin of error. Add to that the fact that the state of New Jersey tends to vote heavily democratic, and … there you go. But before we discuss the next panel in that strip, I do need to add this. According to that same poll, viewers of MSNBC tended to believe that the “Occupy” “protests” were heavily Republican. ::sigh:: Of course, we expect that from the network that bills itself as “Lean Forward,” and whose President said they’d become the place for progressives.

Then we come to the very next strip. This one I’m going to quote: “This recent study from Canada links low intelligence and conservatism to prejudice and racism.”

For this study, I’m going to assume he’s referring to the January, 2012 study from Brock University in Ontario (not Ohio, Canada.)

This study also suffers from troubles. And for this, you need to look at the types of questions that were asked and the way in which they were phrased.

I’m not about to deny that there is some racism … on both sides of the divide … out there. I will note, however, that this study does note the exceptions that there are Conservatives with higher IQs and Liberals with lower IQs. (Mine, as I’ve stated before, is at 127, which is three points shy of “gifted.”)

And I’ll also be quick to point out that there are a plethora of other studies that suggest the exact opposite. I think it’s safe to say that the data is nowhere near consensus on this issue.

For closing, I’m now going to quote from the Wikipedia article about Doonesbury:

“ Frequently political in nature, Doonesbury features characters representing a range of affiliations, but the cartoon is noted for a liberal viewpoint. The name "Doonesbury" is a combination of the word doone (prep school slang for "someone who is out to lunch") and the surname of Charles Pillsbury, Trudeau's roommate at Yale University.[1]
Doonesbury is written and pencilled by Garry Trudeau, then inked and lettered by his assistant Don Carlton.[2] (*) “ (Links are Wikipedia’s and are left intact.)

(*) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doonesbury

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