20131228
Purple America versus Political Pollsters and Partisan Spin-Masters
Dear Pollsters and Spin-masters of USA:
As you get an extra-early start on assaulting our attention with your incessant measurements of "public opinion" regarding who might vote for whom, we must disclose to YOU what we, the audience have gathered from the past 3 election cycles.
First, the "polling" nearly always has to do with "spinning" public opinion in order to divert media from actual news. You know, like our military engaged in perpetual war or millions of homeless in the winter streets of our cities. The mainstream media seems to have endless capacity for repetitive speculation of questionable percentages of possible candidates, as long as they can sell more corporate ads in between. Addressing crucial issues, not so much.
Second, we have realized that months of corporate polling data, slanted to increase drama and conflict, in retrospect of the day after elections, is almost completely full of shit. In fact, one could argue "let's ask Twitter" is a more practical public opinion gauge than partisan polling competition and "spin."
Third, we know now that the polling companies, like Fox News and its many fasco-corporatist NewsMax type clones, are owned by big business, militarists, pro-petroleum-pharmo-industrialists. So expecting anything less than being assaulted, manipulated and warred upon would be to tune out all American media. And even when our hopes for "change" have been met, Washington DC politics and the White House will still be dominated by the Pentagon, CIA and NSA.
And by the way, everyone with a cell phone or smart device, without a landline, is NOT included in the polling. PPP http://publicpolicypolling.com/ has a request for proposal currently on how to include cell phone users.
This means landline users only, who tend to be older folks and conservative, have been skewing every poll taken in the past 10 years. http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2013/Info/polling-faq.html That explains a lot, but not why mainstream media keeps allowing political party coverage and spin to dominate and subdue real news.
In summary, our bullshit umbrellas are now deployed, even before any candidates have actually been announced, because you, the corporate spin-masters, have already begun your mind-fuck assault the day after Xmas. Plugging in to our minds how we Americans can be relied on to consume conflict at every turn, even if we don't really understand what the hell is going on in the world.
Yers truly, Selfie Liber8 2014
The shamans paved the way for the first politicians, who finally mastered the art of putting the blame for all kind of disasters on neighboring tribes and their vicious gods, justifying potential wars with claims of cultural superiority. Thus blatantly egotistic military campaigns could be disguised as altruistic missions to civilize wild barbarians long before the time of George W Bush.
History is a strange creature. It has the amazing ability to blind us with our own reflection when we peek over its deep mysterious waters. Many of us drown in it just like the mythological Narcissus, whose infatuation with his own beauty was stronger than his survival instincts. Those who don’t know history may be bound to repeat it. But even people who know it may follow the same fate if they interpret it exclusively in their own favor.
Inevitability aside, in the end, all it takes to be less prejudiced is to exercise our brains a little bit more often. If we refuse to accept the prêt-a-penser ideas which are constantly regurgitated in endless PR campaigns and advertising agencies, and take responsibility for our own choices, we will not only minimize our snap judgments but ultimately improve our way of life.
In an interconnected global society, where information flows faster than thoughts, prejudices can turn out to be just a side effect of intellectual laziness.
The phrase Purple America refers to the belief that a more detailed analysis of the voting results of recent United States national elections reveals that the U.S. electorate is not as polarized between "Red" America (Republican) and "Blue" America (Democratic) as is often depicted in news analysis. The term reflects the fact that news organizations generally use the colors red and blue on maps to indicate when a state orcongressional district has been won by a Republican or Democratic candidate, respectively. Because the American political system often awards a state or congressional district entirely to one candidate ("winner take all") without regard to the margin of victory, it results in a map that does not reflect the true distribution of "red" or "blue" votes across the nation. The distortions contained in these maps, the argument goes, contribute to the misperception that the electorate is highly polarized by geography.
Robert Vanderbei at Princeton University made the first Purple America map after the 2000 presidential election. It attempts to reflect the margin of victory in each county by coloring each with a shade between true blue and true red. In light of the general absence of overwhelming victories, this technique results in mostly shades. This map was reprinted in US News & World Report a few months prior to the 2004 election. After the2004 election, Vanderbei and then others made similar maps summarizing the results. Quickly thereafter, the term Purple America permeated the political blogosphere and entered the public lexicon as a way of stating that the United States is not as divided as the political pundits would have the people believe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_America
Robert Vanderbei at Princeton University made the first Purple America map after the 2000 presidential election. It attempts to reflect the margin of victory in each county by coloring each with a shade between true blue and true red. In light of the general absence of overwhelming victories, this technique results in mostly shades. This map was reprinted in US News & World Report a few months prior to the 2004 election. After the2004 election, Vanderbei and then others made similar maps summarizing the results. Quickly thereafter, the term Purple America permeated the political blogosphere and entered the public lexicon as a way of stating that the United States is not as divided as the political pundits would have the people believe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_America
What good are polls?
Polls seek to measure public opinion and document the experiences of the public on a range of subjects. The results provide information for academics, researchers, and government officials and help to inform the decision-making process for policy makers and others. Much of what the country knows about its media usage, labor and job markets, educational performance, crime victimization, and social conditions is based on data collected through polls.
Do pollsters have a code of ethics? If so, what is in the code?
The major professional organizations of survey researchers have very clear codes of ethics for their members. These codes cover the responsibilities of pollsters with respect to the treatment of respondents, their relationships with clients and their responsibilities to the public when reporting on polls.
Most of the Pew Research Center’s pollsters belong to the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) and subscribe to AAPOR’s code.
Some good examples of a pollster’s Code of Ethics include:
American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR)Council of American Survey Research Organizations (CASRO)
20131219
Glad He Lived Among Us: Rising Up to Madiba's Challenge
His Day is Done
A Poem dedicated to Nelson Mandela by Dr. Maya Angelou
His day is done.
Is done.
The news came on the wings of a wind, reluctant to carry its burden.
Nelson Mandela’s day is done.
The news, expected and still unwelcome, reached us in the United States, and suddenly our world became somber.
Our skies were leadened.
His day is done.
We see you, South African people standing speechless at the slamming of that final door through which no traveler returns.
Our spirits reach out to you Bantu, Zulu, Xhosa, Boer.
We think of you and your son of Africa, your father, your one more wonder of the world.
We send our souls to you as you reflect upon your David armed with a mere stone, facing down the mighty Goliath.
Your man of strength, Gideon, emerging triumphant.
Although born into the brutal embrace of Apartheid, scarred by the savage atmosphere of racism, unjustly imprisoned in the bloody maws of South African dungeons.
Would the man survive? Could the man survive?
His answer strengthened men and women around the world.
In the Alamo, in San Antonio, Texas, on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, in Chicago’s Loop, in New Orleans Mardi Gras, in New York City’s Times Square, we watched as the hope of Africa sprang through the prison’s doors.
His stupendous heart intact, his gargantuan will hale and hearty.
He had not been crippled by brutes, nor was his passion for the rights of human beings diminished by twenty-seven years of imprisonment.
Even here in America, we felt the cool, refreshing breeze of freedom.
When Nelson Mandela took the seat of Presidency in his country where formerly he was not even allowed to vote we were enlarged by tears of pride, as we saw Nelson Mandela’s former prison guards invited, courteously, by him to watch from the front rows his inauguration.
We saw him accept the world’s award in Norway with the grace and gratitude of the Solon in Ancient Roman Courts, and the confidence of African Chiefs from ancient royal stools.
No sun outlasts its sunset, but it will rise again and bring the dawn.
Yes, Mandela’s day is done, yet we, his inheritors, will open the gates wider for reconciliation, and we will respond generously to the cries of Blacks and Whites, Asians, Hispanics, the poor who live piteously on the floor of our planet.
He has offered us understanding.
We will not withhold forgiveness even from those who do not ask.
Nelson Mandela’s day is done, we confess it in tearful voices, yet we lift our own to say thank you.
Thank you our Gideon, thank you our David, our great courageous man.
We will not forget you, we will not dishonor you, we will remember and be glad that you lived among us, that you taught us, and that you loved us all.
An Essay dedicated to Nelson Mandela, by Bono
As an activist I have pretty much been doing what Nelson Mandela tells me since I was a teenager. He has been a forceful presence in my life going back to 1979, when U2 made its first anti-apartheid effort. And he’s been a big part of the Irish consciousness even longer than that. Irish people related all too easily to the subjugation of ethnic majorities. From our point of view, the question as to how bloody South Africa would have to get on its long road to freedom was not abstract.
Over the years we became friends. I, like everyone else, was mesmerized by his deft maneuvering as leader of South Africa. His cabinet appointments of Trevor Manuel and Kadar Asmal were intuitive and ballsy. His partnership with Sowetan neighbor Desmond Tutu brought me untold joy. This double act—and before long a triple act that included Mandela’s wife, the bold and beautiful Graca Machel—took the success of the anti-apartheid fight in South Africa and widened the scope to include the battle against AIDS and the broader reach for dignity by the poorest peoples on the planet.
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Mandela saw extreme poverty as a manifestation of the same struggle. “Millions of people … are trapped in the prison of poverty. It is time to set them free,” he said in 2005. “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome … Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. You can be that great generation.” It certainly fell to Mandela to be great. His role in the movement against extreme poverty was critical. He worked for a deeper debt cancellation, for a doubling of international assistance across sub-Saharan Africa, for trade and private investment and transparency to fight corruption. Without his leadership, would the world over the past decade have increased the number of people on AIDS medication to 9.7 million and decreased child deaths by 2.7 million a year? Without Mandela, would Africa be experiencing its best decade of growth and poverty reduction? His indispensability can’t be proved with math and metrics, but I know what I believe …
Mandela would be remembered as a remarkable man just for what happened—and didn’t happen—in South Africa’s transition. But more than anyone, it was he who rebooted the idea of Africa from a continent in chaos to a much more romantic view, one in keeping with the majesty of the landscape and the nobility of even its poorer inhabitants. He was also a hardheaded realist, as his economic policy demonstrated. To him, principles and pragmatism were not foes; they went hand in hand. He was an idealist without naiveté, a compromiser without being compromised.
Surely the refrain “Africa rising” should be attributed to Madiba—the clan name everyone knows him by. He never doubted that his continent would triumph in the 21st century: “We are not just the peoples with the oldest history,” he told me. “We have the brightest future.” He knew Africa was rich with oil, gas, minerals, land and, above all, people. But he also knew that “because of our colonial past, Africans still don’t quite believe these precious things belong to them.” Laughing, he added, “They can find enough people north of the equator who agree with them.”
He had humor and humility in his bearing, and he was smarter and funnier than the parade of world leaders who flocked to see him. He would bait his guests: “What would a powerful man like you want with an old revolutionary like me?”
He could charm the birds off the trees—and cash right out of wallets. He told me once how Margaret Thatcher had personally donated £20,000 to his foundation. “How did you do that?” I gasped. The Iron Lady, who was famously frugal, kept a tight grip on her purse. “I asked,” he said with a laugh. “You’ll never get what you want if you don’t ask.” Then he lowered his voice conspiratorially and said her donation had nauseated some of his cohorts. “Didn’t she try to squash our movement?” they complained. His response: “Didn’t De Klerk crush our people like flies? And I’m having tea with him next week … He’ll be getting the bill.” (On other occasions, I heard Mandela praise the courage of F.W. de Klerk, the last President of apartheid South Africa, who had his own prison to escape: the prejudice of his upbringing. We should not forget his role in this historic drama).
Mandela lived a life without sanctimony. You try it; it’s not easy. His lack of piety helped him turn former foes into friends. In 1985, U2 and Bruce Springsteen responded to Steve Van Zandt’s call to lend our voices to an artists-against-apartheid recording titled “Sun City.” Sun City had been set up on the border of Botswana to bypass the cultural boycott of South Africa. Sol Kerzner’s casino there had become a pretty busy venue. Years later, when I chastised the music producer Quincy Jones about his friendship with Kerzner, Quincy replied, “Man, you know nothing about Mandela, do you? He wasn’t out of jail seven days before he called Sol Kerzner. Since then, Sol has been one of the largest contributors to the [African National Congress].” I felt like one of those Japanese soldiers who came out of the jungle in the 1950s still fighting World War II.
Laughter, not tears, was Madiba’s preferred way—-except on one occasion when I saw him almost choke up. It was on Robben Island, in the courtyard outside the cell in which he had spent 18 of his 27 years in prison. He was explaining why he’d decided to use his inmate’s number, 46664, to rally a response to the AIDS pandemic claiming so many African lives. One of his cellmates told me that the price Mandela paid for working in the limestone mine was not bitterness or even the blindness that can result from being around the bright white reflection day after day. Mandela could still see, but the dust damage to his tear ducts had left him unable to cry. For all this man’s farsightedness and vision, he could not produce tears in a moment of self-doubt or grief.
He had surgery in 1994 to put this right. Now, he could cry.
Today, we can.
Mandela lived a life without sanctimony. You try it; it’s not easy. His lack of piety helped him turn former foes into friends. In 1985, U2 and Bruce Springsteen responded to Steve Van Zandt’s call to lend our voices to an artists-against-apartheid recording titled “Sun City.” Sun City had been set up on the border of Botswana to bypass the cultural boycott of South Africa. Sol Kerzner’s casino there had become a pretty busy venue. Years later, when I chastised the music producer Quincy Jones about his friendship with Kerzner, Quincy replied, “Man, you know nothing about Mandela, do you? He wasn’t out of jail seven days before he called Sol Kerzner. Since then, Sol has been one of the largest contributors to the [African National Congress].” I felt like one of those Japanese soldiers who came out of the jungle in the 1950s still fighting World War II.
Laughter, not tears, was Madiba’s preferred way—-except on one occasion when I saw him almost choke up. It was on Robben Island, in the courtyard outside the cell in which he had spent 18 of his 27 years in prison. He was explaining why he’d decided to use his inmate’s number, 46664, to rally a response to the AIDS pandemic claiming so many African lives. One of his cellmates told me that the price Mandela paid for working in the limestone mine was not bitterness or even the blindness that can result from being around the bright white reflection day after day. Mandela could still see, but the dust damage to his tear ducts had left him unable to cry. For all this man’s farsightedness and vision, he could not produce tears in a moment of self-doubt or grief.
He had surgery in 1994 to put this right. Now, he could cry.
Today, we can.
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