Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Unhealthy Competition

"Obama and McCain in a statistical tie". So read this morning's Los Angeles Times headline. Do I need to see this before I've even had my coffee? Then I read the article. Turns out that it means that those polled were divided on which candidate would be better on certain issues. The article also mentioned that, among those polled, if they were to vote today, 45% would vote for Obama and 43% for McCain. Now, I was terrible at math in school, but I'm fairly sure that 45 is a higher number than 43. Lastly, when you read the fine print at the bottom of the pretty charts, you find that this was a random telephone sampling of 1,375 adults around the country. So the Times' solemn proclamation of the dead heat between the candidates is based on the opinions of enough people to populate a condo complex or a very small town.

The print media in this country are having a rough time and I know they need to sell papers, but I wish they would stop trying to generate excitement by turning the presidential election into an Olympic event. No less than the future of the United States is at stake, and they call it "the race for the White House". Get serious, would you?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does anyone but me see that in spite of or because of everything John McCain has been through, he has an ax to grind as a former POW? What we see is also what he doesn't want us to know???? Who will he get back at first if heaven forbid he gets into office?

Anonymous said...

What about the citizens of the U.S. Aren't we tired of always trying to vote for the lesser of two evils? I'm sick of it.