From: egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges)
Subject: Re: More Nilges obfuscation (was:Re: Hate Speech Okay, says the Supreme Court)
Originator: news@ernie.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 13:54:55 GMT

In article <1992Jul20.043442.12608@samba.oit.unc.edu> Chuck.Lavazzi@bbs.oit.unc.edu (Chuck Lavazzi) writes:
>In article <1992Jul18.223150.20604@Princeton.EDU> egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges) writes:

>	Yes, Ed, some Americans of all skin hues are racist.  People are 
>flawed.  So what?

This is the essential mistake.  You want to make racism into Yet Another
flaw of individual character (like farting in elevators) whereas in
actuality it is a property of societal structures (systems.)  This
question has already been extensively discussed, and , to my mind,
resolved.  Racism isn't just a defect of character that can as readily
be ascribed to the black person's resentment of white mistreatment, for
then it is an empty concept (as well as convenient to white racists who
wish to reverse black gains.)  Racism is what society does to people not
of the approved race, which is white.  Racism is a historical artifact
of European domination.  

So if you phrase your question the way you want ("do you fart in
elevators?"  "do you approve of cross-burning?") of course you'll get a
negative answer.  This has nothing to do with the systematic racial
discrimination that people who aren't white experience in our society.

>
>>>
>>>>
>>>	I don't know about 1936, but it's ben axiomatic among statisticians

"Don't know much about his-tory" (see below.)

>>
>	Your reliance on cheap sarcasm is becoming annoying.  If you insist,
>I'll point out exactly what was wrong with those '48 polls.  They were
>conducted via telephone.  In '48 many fewer Americans owned telephones and they


HA HA HA HA HA HA.

The 1948 prediction that Dewey would defeat Truman was made by the
Republican paper The Chicago Tribune (a paper whose monopolistic
practices have since destroyed its major, more liberal competitor, the
Chicago Daily News.)  Because the editors of this rag mistakenly
extrapolated early returns into a Republican victory, engaging in a bit
of wishful thinking, early editions were available saying "DEWEY DEFEATS
TRUMAN."  There's a picture of Harry Truman triumphantly holding a
copy.  The Trib did NOT conduct a phone poll, and the Literary Digest
was out of business by 1948.

Like the Literary Digest fiasco of 1936, this was an early and bumbling
attempt by a media, which is controlled not by "liberals" (as goes the
standard hymnal of the right) but by large conservative media
corporations, to use its muscle to effectively manufacture a Republican,
or at least a conservative, majority.  The Literary Digest clearly hoped
to manufacture opposition to Roosevelt's relatively mild
redistributionist policies, as the Tribune opposed the Truman "Fair
Deal."  Whereas the Chicago Tribune was not actually able to discourage
Chicago's Dems from going to the polls, the trend was clearly in
this direction.  In 1952, Stevenson's defeat was predicted and perhaps
partially manufactured by television broadcasts and contrived forecasts
by a laughably limited computer (the Univac-I.)  Nowadays, of course, we
are deluged the year prior to the election with polls that assure us how
right-thinking people are voting, which effectively destroys the
democratic power of the November secret ballot by convincing people that
it's fruitless to cast a primary or election vote for a Jackson, a
Harkin, or even a Marrou.  How convenient for the fat cats!

If your going to steal my facts, mate, get them right.  The Literary
digest fiasco was in '36; the Trib fiasco in '48.  Beginning with the
media-sponsored defeat of Stevenson in '52, the Republicans have used
"scientific" (unexplained, Eleusinian) polls and TeeVee to Manufacture
Consent.

>>
>	Really?  Better not get on an airplane any time soon then, Ed.  Since
>early flight technology failed, obviously we should junk airplanes.  Are you
>seriously claiming that the first time something doesn't work we shouldn't
>try to fix it?  Or is this just another attempt to deflect rational argument
>with cheap sarcasm?

No, we don't junk airplanes.  But we do have a National Transportation
Safety Board.  We'd react to a National Journalistic Accuracy Board with
horror, and rightfully so.  But the fact that we cannot regulate speech
in the way we can regulated transportation should make us more, rather
than less, alert, to the misuses of media.  When I board United Airlines
for San Francisco, I am confident that the company has done a good job
partly because it is overseen by tough bureaucrats.  When I crack open
my inflight copy of Business Week, however, I read critically because
business week, I know, has a corporatist agenda.

>	It is interesting that you consider the Democratic Party "right-wing".
>I am reminded of others in these fora who have railed against that same party
>as left wing and have criticized Bush for being too "liberal".

Until their first layoff...


>>
>>The 1936 Literary Digest poll predicted a victory by Alf Landon over
>>Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was so popular in that Depression year
>>that even my rock-ribbed Republican grandfather voted for FDR.  The
>>Literary Digest, you see, made the mistake of TELEPHONING people to ask
>>them how they'd vote, and (1) telephones were not yet universal in 1936
>>and (2) poverty had forced many people to disconnect their telephones.
>>
>	The same mistake they made in '48, yes.  But as you must be aware, I
>was referring to the "garbage assumptions" which *you* claimed were part of
>*present day* polling techniques.  I'm still waiting for evidence to 
>support that claim.

In '36 and '48 the media was not as good at hiding its polling methods
as it is now.  These methods are trade secrets and protected.  It is
therefore impossible to present them, and that's part of the problem.
But the main problem is very obvious and simple.  Polls are not secret
ballots.  This appeal to "science" and "progress" obscures the fact that
the "science" of a pollster is completely unavailable to the citizen,
who has trouble with his VCR, let alone the complex models used by the
pollsters.

>
>>
>	Maybe you do, but I don't.  And polls these days routinely report
>the error margins ("confidence intervals") in their results.  The assumptions
>used are not mysterious trade secrets at all; any statistician is familiar

Not all citizens are statisticians, nor should the expected to be.  It's
not an especially reputable occupation (you have read, I trust, "How to
Lie with Statistics.")

>with them.  Or are you claiming that all the polling organizations are involved in
>some vast conspiracy ot hide THE Truth from the American public?
>

(Sigh) not a conscious conspiracy.  It's simply in the media's interest
to push political debate towards the center, corporatist right, and away
both from the left-liberal end AND from the nativist, Pat Buchanan
right.