Numbers Game

A lefty, ex-pat buddy of mine, who enjoys nothing so much as sending out e-mails linking to articles trashing the USA (unless he has some sexual preoccupation for which he has another mailing list entirely),sent one today with a subject line of “How ignorant r most americans.” The link was to a Politico article noting that 29% of us regard Fox News as the most trustworthy, while only 22% favor CNN, 10% favor CBS and NBC, 8% favor ABC, and 7% MNBC. But if look at this another way 29% favor Fox while 57% favor someone else, not including those who opt for PBS or, like me, don’t watch any of these clowns. [Moreover, among Democrats, only 3% favor Fox.)

Another thing: I have this rule of thumb that 20% of the people will believe anything. This derives from the study that found that 20% of the population believes extra-terrestrials are cruising around kidnapping human beings to experiment on. So Fox News-believers rank 9-points above that.

My conclusion is Three cheers for the red-white-and-blue!