The ignorance of hope

One of the things I've been wanting to draw you attention to was the Zogby poll of Obama voters (pdf of poll results here). The poll was commissioned by John Ziegler. Mr. Ziegler was filming a documentary about the 2008 election and was dismayed at the level of ignorance from those who had voted for Obama:

The 12-question, multiple-choice survey found questions regarding statements linked to Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his vice-presidential running-mate Sarah Palin were far more likely to be answered correctly by Obama voters than questions about statements associated with Obama and Vice-President–Elect Joe Biden. The telephone survey of 512 Obama voters nationwide was conducted Nov. 13-15, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percentage points. The survey was commissioned by John Ziegler, author of The Death of Free Speech, producer of the recently released film "Blocking the Path to 9/11" and producer of the upcoming documentary film, Media Malpractice...How Obama Got Elected.

"After I interviewed Obama voters on Election Day for my documentary, I had a pretty low opinion of what most of them had picked up from the media coverage of the campaign, but this poll really proves beyond any doubt the stunning level of malpractice on the part of the media in not educating the Obama portion of the voting populace," said Ziegler.

Ninety-four percent of Obama voters correctly identified Palin as the candidate with a pregnant teenage daughter, 86% correctly identified Palin as the candidate associated with a $150,000 wardrobe purchased by her political party, and 81% chose McCain as the candidate who was unable to identify the number of houses he owned. When asked which candidate said they could "see Russia from their house," 87% chose Palin, although the quote actually is attributed to Saturday Night Live's Tina Fey during her portrayal of Palin during the campaign. An answer of "none" or "Palin" was counted as a correct answer on the test, given that the statement was associated with a characterization of Palin.

Obama voters did not fare nearly as well overall when asked to answer questions about statements or stories associated with Obama or Biden -- 83% failed to correctly answer that Obama had won his first election by getting all of his opponents removed from the ballot, and 88% did not correctly associate Obama with his statement that his energy policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry. Most (56%) were also not able to correctly answer that Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground.

Nearly three quarters (72%) of Obama voters did not correctly identify Biden as the candidate who had to quit a previous campaign for President because he was found to have plagiarized a speech, and nearly half (47%) did not know that Biden was the one who predicted Obama would be tested by a generated international crisis during his first six months as President.

In addition to questions regarding statements and scandals associated with the campaigns, the 12-question, multiple-choice survey also included a question asking which political party controlled both houses of Congress leading up to the election -- 57% of Obama voters were unable to correctly answer that Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate.

I doubt this comes as too great a shock to most conservatives. We all know that to be a left-liberal you have to be either stupid, ignorant or evil.

What is obvious from the survey is that most Obama voters (and since Obama won we have to say most voters in general) use the mainstream media as their primary source for information (that and Saturday Night Live). This is surprising since the readership/viewership for the MSM is in a nosedive with little chance of a recovery.

So how is it that they were able to exercise so much power?

My best guess is that those who don't normally follow the news realized that they needed to learn something about the candidates for the upcoming election and so they turned on the TV and watched whatever network news program they used to watch or remember their parents watching back when they were kids. That and picking up a copy of the local paper when they saw something about the election on the front page.

This means that we have our work cut out for us. We know that nearly everything that issues from the MSM is a lie (anything about global warming or Sarah Palin), a coverup (their coverage of the Obama campaign) or propaganda (again, their coverage of the Obama campaign).

The question is how we get the great mass of uninterested and uninformed people out there to know this as well.

I'm afraid there's no easy answer but the place to start is by doing what we bloggers do every day. Pick apart the MSM's coverage of anything and everything. Expose their lies like Charles Johnson did with Dan Rather's forged National Guard documents. And just as important hold them up to ridicule. Almost every adult knows enough about something to be considered an expert in that area. Ask them to think about the last newspaper or television news story they saw about that thing that they are an expert in. Then ask them if the newspaper or TV reporter got it right.

Chances are they'll say that the news item had serious mistakes or omissions. Then ask them why, if the media has proven itself to be consistently wrong about something that they know enough about to call the media on its errors, they are willing to believe the media on things about which they do not have specialized knowledge.

Many people will ignore this evidence but in many other people this will plant a seed of doubt.