Posted on 08/17/2006 8:13:09 AM PDT by presidio9
Three quarters of Americans can correctly identify two of Snow White's seven dwarfs while only a quarter can name two Supreme Court Justices, according to a poll on pop culture released on Monday.
According to the poll by Zogby International, commissioned by the makers of a new online game on pop culture called "Gold Rush," 57 percent of Americans could identify J.K. Rowling's fictional boy wizard as Harry Potter, while only 50 percent could name the British prime minister, Tony Blair.
The pollsters spoke to 1,213 people across the United States. The results had a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.
Just over 60 percent of respondents were able to name Bart as Homer's son on the television show "The Simpsons," while only 20.5 percent were able to name one of the ancient Greek poet Homer's epic poems, "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey."
Asked what planet Superman was from, 60 percent named the fictional planet Krypton, while only 37 percent knew that Mercury is the planet closest to the sun.
Respondents were far more familiar with the Three Stooges -- Larry, Curly and Moe -- than the three branches of the U.S. government -- judicial, executive and legislative. Seventy-four percent identified the former, 42 percent the latter.
Twice as many people (23 percent) were able to identify the most recent winner of the television talent show "American Idol," Taylor Hicks, as were able to name the Supreme Court Justice confirmed in January 2006, Samuel Alito (11 percent).
.........agreed, up to a point, though..... can we as a people be so broadly ignorant that we cannot even identify the three branches of our government...? I'm greatly
paraphrasing a famous Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, who philosophy would most certainly have been comfortable with the thought that an ignorant people could not long remain free.....
I'd be more worried about studies showing thatr they can't name the three branches of government, or identify the subjects of a few Constitutional amendments (not even by number.)
The "news" covers the Palestinian war against Israel, American war dead, Walmart boycotts, car chases, 10 year old murder cases, and terrorist threats.
When the justices make a decision, we are lucky to hear the names of the court judges wrote the decision and the dissenting view.
You have to be a news junkie (which FReepers are) to get such details.
Not saying that it isn't important; just that the media gives this more play than the activities of the court.
I don't know if it's an obsession with things that are of no importance to their daily lives. The #1 and #2 places we spend our time in this country are work and sleep which both have legitimate importance; everything else, family, food, entertainment, knowledge expansion, has to compete with those. We only have so many hours in our lives and in the end how much we knew about SCOTUS really doesn't matter, neither does our Disney movie knowledge of course, but it's generally more fun to learn about Disney movies than to learn about SCOTUS. Maybe we should hire some Disney marketers to work on expanding knowledge of the government, nothing helps people know names and titles like plushy dolls.
Yes, no individual judge has been on SCOTUS as long as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has been around.
The importance of calling a "vertically challenged" person a dwarf is more important than remembering SCOTUS cohorts.
The "libs are smiling at their victory. You're dumb and they're not! You adhere to their verbal terrorism aka political correctness. Thery're winning the war for the hearts and mindlessness of the world's population. This is why they are compatriots with Al's Kaydedids, ( cricket! ribbit, tadah!)
Or maybe it's just people wanting to relax. Life has a lot of pressure, especially if you have a family to provide for, nothing wrong with taking a couple of hours and just enjoying the fruits of all that labor. And of course with something like the seven dwarfs you're really talking about things remembered from childhood.
You can have familiarity with the courts without knowing who the justices are, you can know what the SCOTUS does and how that differs currently with what the founders said it was supposed to do without knowing any names of any of the justices. Sure if you know some names you can rant on about it more interestingly by spewing forth which justices you think are the ones who've done the most damage, but in the end that just gives specifics. For your average American judges are faceless creatures, there's a reason for the largely featureless black robes, most of us have never met a SCOTUS justice, never will meet a SCOTUS justice, had nothing to do with their selection, and never will have anything to do with the selection of any of them, why should it matter to any of us on a personal level what their names are? The relationship between voting and SCOTUS is minimal at best, we don't know if anyone we vote for will have anything to do with the appointment of even one SCOTUS justice (remember many said Clinton was going to get to nominate 4 justices, the same line has been used about Bush, so far much closer to true with Bush than Clinton but not true for either), and even if something wierd happens and we get a crystal ball view of how many they'll get to nominate we don't know who they'll chose, and we don't know how they'll turn out (history is filled with justices that turned out to have a VERY different philosophy than the president that nominated them, often to said president's chagrine).
I haven't watched TV news with any consistency since the first time I watched Network, which would be the first time it aired on broadcast TV, I learned from that and then later Broadcast News (still watch them both every presidential election cycle, helps remind me not to take things too seriously) why the TV comes first in "TV news". But other people swear by it, their life, not my problem... unless my mother-in-law is visiting because she ALWAYS wants to watch the evening news, so I try to find a reason to be out of the room for 30 minutes.
We can hope. He has caused a lot of grief in his tenure.
But they don't wind up in the news that often, especially non-chiefs. Once the confirmation process is done they become rather anonymous, really when was the last time Alito made major headlines? He got sworn in 6 months ago, I think he's written a few decisions or decensions and that's been it. Remember also what you're looking for is backwards name recognition, probably a lot of the people who couldn't remember the names cold if you listed off 6 names, two that were justices and 4 randoms could pick out the right two. There's an easy excuse for not knowing the branches of government: how does it really effect you? Do the labels legislative, executive and judicial alter the daily life of the average person? Given that none of them are limited the way the founders designed anymore, they all over step their bounds, and how little control we actually have over any of them, it really doesn't impact the average life of the average person.
What they're going to be voting for is a career politician, someone who is inherently a whore and a liar, who might or might not actually do the stuff they say they will, who might but probably won't limit themselves to what the founders say their job title should be able to do. Honestly it's a nerds vs non-nerds thing. There are news nerds who also tend to be government nerds, they pay attention to all this stuff and know a lot of names and definitions. But just like with any other brand of nerd they're the minority and spend a lot of time on stuff the rest of the world doesn't consider important or interesting. I'm a nerd, I'm many different types of nerd actually, including a news nerd which is why I spend so much time on news websites like FR. But I recognize that most of the people aren't nerds, and for most folks the three branches of government have no more direct impact on their daily lives than the 3 breeds of Klingon. Congress is no less filled with crooks and dipsticks if you don't know they're the legislative branch and what the limits of their power are supposed to be than if you do, and one way or the other you only get to vote for 3 out of 540 so you really don't have that much say.
But the fact of the matter is that who's on the SCOTUS has almost as little direct effect on the daily life of the average person as the average person has effect on who's on the SCOTUS. All our interactions with SCOTUS are very indirect, they allow bad laws to stand that somebody else wrote, that another set of somebody elses passed, and that still another set of somebody elses will enforce. That lack of direct relationship is why the average person has very little interest in them.
No what makes it on the nightly news is whatever makes good TV. It's always TV first, and charcoal drawings of blackrobed people don't make good TV, which is why SCOTUS doesn't get on TV much.
Notice that's all indirect, especially since the goverment gets their taste of your paycheck first, you don't actually pay into medicare; your employer pays into medicare, partly from your check and partly from their own coffers, on your behalf. There's no direct interaction on your city not getting blown up either, friends and relatives in the service is not a direct interaction with the central fed gov either. Really the primary direct interaction most of us have with the federal government every day revolves around our mailbox.
The citizens have never truly understood their government and what it is up to, not in America, not in any other place, and it will never happen. Government by it's very nature is too fuzzy, too ill defined, and does far too much behind closed doors. Most people in the government don't understand how it really works, between the crooks at the top and the beauracrats that really get stuff done government is really an undefinable thing. The best we can hope for is a serious understanding of the founding documents to get an idea of how are government is supposed to work, but doesn't really.
Snow White's dwarfs more smart and honest than US judges: poll
How about an 'on the street poll' like Hannity does. Just ask who the Pres or Veep. is. Or who ran in the last election.
Those pools are sickening. Supposedly bright people, who have the vote, but don't have a clue.
Read the rest of that sentence, I outline how SCOTUS has an effect on your life without being a DIRECT effect. There's a difference between manifestations and DIRECT effect.
No you don't. You yourself do not activly give money to medicare, your employer pays money on your behalf. If you directly pay it show me the check stubs.
I said nothing about secretive, I said large and many faceted. Every single year during the budget argument somebody in Congress complains that the budget is too large and they can't possibly read the whole thing. Everything the fed gov does has a budget line that appears somewhere in that budget, but they don't read it all, if the budget of the government is too large for them to read all of then the actions of the government are too large for them to know them all, and if they don't know what the government is doing then they can't know how the government works. And if the guys that are supposedly in charge don't know how the government works then you and I certainly don't have a clue.
You're missing on the active verb. I said medicare comes from your check, but you do not write medicare a check, your employer writes medicare a check, therefore even though it is your money you do not pay (active verb meaning to give money in some form) medicare. Your employer pays medicare with your money. It's not slicing and dicing, when talking about direct interaction with the government that needs to be limited only to active verbs performed by the person. Any interaction you have with the government (or anybody else for that matter) that does not have you as the subject or direct object of an active verb is not direct interaction.
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