What happens when someone who thinks Sean Hannity delivers the news meets the most accurate poll cruncher in politics (or baseball?) Calamity, that's what.
It all started when a rather surly winger named John Ziegler commissioned a poll for his "documentary," which is aimed at proving that Obama voters were too uninformed to know that their candidate is a fake Muslim, un-Christian terrorist, just like Fox News said he was. Ziegler got poor John Zogby (perhaps he played the "Z" card) to conduct what amounted to a push poll, prompting Zogby to post the following disclaimer on his website:
"We stand by the results our survey work on behalf of John Ziegler, as we stand by all of our work. We reject the notion that this was a push poll because it very simply wasn't. It was a legitimate effort to test the knowledge of voters who cast ballots for Barack Obama in the Nov. 4 election. Push polls are a malicious effort to sway public opinion one way or the other, while message and knowledge testing is quite another effort of public opinion research that is legitimate inquiry and has value in the public square. In this case, the respondents were given a full range of responses and were not pressured or influenced to respond in one way or another. This poll was not designed to hurt anyone, which is obvious as it was conducted after the election. The client is free to draw his own conclusions about the research, as are bloggers and other members of society. But Zogby International is a neutral party in this matter. We were hired to test public opinion on a particular subject and with no ax to grind, that's exactly what we did. We don't have to agree or disagree with the questions, we simply ask them and provide the client with a fair and accurate set of data reflecting public opinion." - John Zogby
Ziegler then released a popular Youtube video, in which he sets up various Obama voters, most of them black, to look foolish because they could only remember bad things about Sarah Palin, but not ancient bad things about Joe Biden or untrue bad things about Obama:
Enter Nate Silver, the poll number cruncher extraordinaire. He called Zogby & Ziegler out on the push poll:
Most of the questions on the survey take the form of a multiple choice political knowledge test, stating a "fact" to the respondent and asking them which of the four major candidates (Obama, McCain, Biden, Palin) the statement applies to. Questions include the following:
"Which of the four [candidates] said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket?"
"Which of the four [candidates] started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground?"
"Which of the four [candidates] quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism?"
"Which of the four [candidates] won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot?"
As should be obvious, the veracity of several of these claims is -- at best -- debatable, yet they are apparently represented as factual to the respondent. It is not clear whether the respondent is informed of the "correct" response after having had the question posed to him.
There was also a question: "which of the four candidates said "I can see Russia from my House?" The correct answer? Tina Fey. Seriously.
Which brought the former talk radio host out in Ziegler, who got so mad, he called Silver up, for an on the record interview. It didn't go well:
NS: Do you stand by all the statements in the survey as being unambiguously true? JZ: I stand one hundred percent by the notion that there is absolutely zero ambiguity as to what the right answer is to any of the questions. With the one exception of the Palin-Russia-Alaska question which we asked the way we did for a very specific purpose which was to try and gauge the Tina Fey Effect which I think we did in a very effective manner which was what was actually said by Tina Fey, everyone attributed to Sarah Plain. But for purposes of scoring Obama supporters’ answers we counted Palin as a correct response.
NS: What was the right answer to that [Palin] question? JZ: The technically accurate question [sic] is that none of the four people said that, but we counted it as correct if they said Sarah Palin.
NS: Why would you commission a survey question with no correct response? JZ: The purpose of the question, you pinhead, was we wanted to determine the Tina Fey Effect.
NS: Were the interviews conducted by telephone or online? JZ: How can you ask a question like that and pretend that you have any clue what you're writing about! That's unbelievable that someone could write what you did! That is unbelievable that you wouldn't know that it's a telephone or an online poll and that you went on my summaries of the questions before the questions were even released!
NS: We’ve heard reports from our readers that very similar questions had been asked in an online format. There was no online component at all? JZ: That is correct, which you would have known if you had looked at the information. Before you called this a push poll -- you don't seem to know the definition of a push poll. How do you have this website?
NS: Is the complete interview available anywhere -- complete results for the interview? JZ: Yeah if you had done your research it is all online, every question, all the cross-tabs. Man, you're never going to post this [transcript], are you? ...
Um ... yes ... he was going to post that transcript. (Ahem).
So let's review: John Ziegler doesn't do well on the telephone, and he thinks that the mainstream media would do better to follow the lead of talk radio hosts when presenting news and information in advance of an election. By the way, if you keep reading the transcript, Ziegler also reveals that he's pretty confident Obama is a Muslim, and not at all confident that the president elect accepts Jesus Christ as his personal savior.
The most frightening concept in human existence is death, which is why the avoidance of death occupies so much of our human energy (from medical science to the beauty and youth preservation industry to insurance to Medicare). It is for that reason that Christianity, Islam and other religions that carry a message of life after death, posess such powerful inducements to believe. There is endless comfort in the idea of resurrection, and endless terror in its absence.
The story of Jesus is one of the most powerful religious tomes ever written, because inherent in it are the incredibly seductive notions of miraculous hope, the endless love of God, and most importantly, eternal life, paid for with the blood of a perfect man: Jesus, who also happens to be the son of God (therefore posessing the authority to grant God's love to us.) But what if everything you ever read about Jesus was true -- the virgin birth, the miracles he performed, the message of love that he preached, his death at the hands of the Romans ... except, that he didn't physically "rise from the dead..." what if after his death, his body remained on earth, just like ours? Would that change your faith? Would it destroy it?
The idea of "debunking" the resurrection story of Jesus carries with it the potential to create massive, worldwide anguish and instability. It also is a tempting prospect for anyone who craves the spotlight, regardless of the cost. I think, despite my almost complete cynicism about, well, nearly everything, that if I were to find difinitive proof that Jesus' story was false, that I would be very, very tempted never to tell anyone. Then again, I'm not James Cameron:
Brace yourself. James Cameron, the man who brought you 'The Titanic' is back with another blockbuster. This time, the ship he's sinking is Christianity.
In a new documentary, Producer Cameron and his director, Simcha Jacobovici, make the starting claim that Jesus wasn't resurrected --the cornerstone of Christian faith-- and that his burial cave was discovered near Jerusalem. And, get this, Jesus sired a son with Mary Magdelene.
No, it's not a re-make of "The Da Vinci Codes'. It's supposed to be true.
Let's go back 27 years, when Israeli construction workers were gouging out the foundations for a new building in the industrial park in the Talpiyot, a Jerusalem suburb. of Jerusalem. The earth gave way, revealing a 2,000 year old cave with 10 stone caskets. Archologists were summoned, and the stone caskets carted away for examination. It took 20 years for experts to decipher the names on the ten tombs. They were: Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Mathew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua. Israel's prominent archeologist Professor Amos Kloner didn't associate the crypt with the New Testament Jesus. His father, after all, was a humble carpenter who couldn't afford a luxury crypt for his family. And all were common Jewish names.
There was also this little inconvenience that a few miles away, in the old city of Jerusalem, Christians for centuries had been worshipping the empty tomb of Christ at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Christ's resurrection, after all, is the main foundation of the faith, proof that a boy born to a carpenter's wife in a manger is the Son of God.
But film-makers Cameron and Jacobovici claim to have amassed evidence through DNA tests, archeological evidence and Biblical studies, that the 10 coffins belong to Jesus and his family. ...
Cameron plans to hold a press conference on Monday to announce his new documentary film, which will air in Britain, Canada, Israel and on Discovery Channel here in the States. At that time, he plans to show three coffins, which are supposed to belong to Jesus, his mother Mary and Mary Magdelene. Time will tell if Cameron eventually is remembered as a character out of the Da Vinci Code or as Geraldo Rivera circa Al Capone's Vault.
Whatever the eventual outcome TIME Magazine's Tim McGirk, who wrote the above blog post, makes the understatement of the year when he notes that "Here in the Holy Land, Biblical Archeology is a dangerous profession. This 90-minute documentary is bound to outrage Christians and stir up a titanic debate between believers and skeptics." No kidding. I sure hope Cameron isn't a Catholic. Because if he is, he's about to be excommunicated.
And then there are the political implications. Inevitably, we're going to be treated to a right wing assault on Cameron on Monday, and reminded, not least by Fox News, that Hollywood hates God, and that therefore, we must reject everything Hollywood -- including their political pals, the Democrats (didn't Barack Hussein Obama just raise $1.3 million in the Sodom and Gamorrah that is Orange County? Brace yourself.
But beyond the hype, and the political sniping, Cameron's "find" raises serious questions about the role of science and showbiz in society, and the moral implications of the former for the latter's sake. I honestly don't know whether I believe in life after death. I'd like to. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't. But I think that the way Cameron is going about pulling off his documentary risks looking like a cheap stunt, carried out at the expense of the real sensitivities of hundreds of millions of Christians around the world. I'm not saying that if true, this information should necessarily be supressed. I'm just saying that it's disturbing to believe -- as I do -- that Cameron probably hasn't given the matter a second thought.
...and if his archeologists and he are wrong they're all going to look like complete horse's asses.
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
