Month: May 2010
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Deval Patrick endorses “sedition” meme
Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick is the latest Democrat to suggest that opponents of President Obama may be committing sedition: Patrick said that even “on my worst day, when I’m most frustrated about folks who seem to rooting for failure,” he doesn’t face anything like the opposition faced by the president. “It seems like child’s play
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Robin Givhan constructs “Elena Kagan”
As I’ve written before, the Washington Post Style section helped create the snark-filled, mind-reading style of narrative writing that has infected political journalism. One of its stars is Robin Givhan, who, to take just one example, wrote an entire article about Hillary Clinton’s cleavage. Givhan’s latest contribution to American democracy is a 1000+ word analysis
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Twitter roundup
From my Twitter feed: -AP’s attention to fact-checking is generally laudable, but (a) the popularity of those articles is probably driven by opposing partisans and (b) AP’s work (like Factcheck.org and Politifact) often suffers from forcing ambiguous issues into the fact-checking frame –Video of Gallup event presentation by Temple’s Christopher Wlezien on forecasting midterm election
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Third party hype: 2010 edition
Third party hype is back! In a Washington Post op-ed, pollster Mark Penn predicts “new movements and even parties that shake up the political system” in the US: Thursday’s elections in Britain could be a harbinger of what is likely to come to America in the not-too-distant future: new movements and even parties that shake
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Goldberg on birther/truther coverage
In a post on National Review’s blog The Corner, Jonah Goldberg complains about a double standard in media coverage of partisan misperceptions (suggesting, without any evidence, that liberals think 9/11 conspiracy theorists are “quirky and no big deal”): “Birtherism” is dangerous and paranoid and “Trutherism” is quirky and no big deal, according to liberals. Here’s
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Twitter roundup
From my Twitter feed: -Jacob Weisberg is starting to collect “Palinisms” on Slate, but these are likely to have all the same flaws as “Bushisms” and “Kerryisms” -New Scientist special report on “Living in denial” — why people resist scientific and factual evidence they don’t like -Outgoing SEIU president Andy Stern compares union dissidents to
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ABC/WP birther poll: More of the same
For those who missed it, the ABC News/Washington Post poll (PDF) released last week included a question about the misperception that President Obama was not born in this country. They found that 20% of Americans think Obama was not born in this country, including 31% of Republicans: What’s striking is that the results are almost
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Twitter roundup
From my Twitter feed: -Liberal efforts to close “hack gap” continue to pay dividends -John Sides on the political science of “mavericks” -Would it be asking too much for newspapers to not print false “death panel” letters? –Ultimate Newsweek cover lines from Josh Green — I like “What Would Jesus Eat? The New Science of
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Twitter roundup
From my Twitter feed: -Matt Steinglass at The Economist blogs on my misperceptions research, writing that “Nyhan is right” on need to pressure elites to be more responsible, but he is “not optimistic” about strategies for doing so -Blogger quantifies number and accuracy of rumors about Bush and Obama on Snopes (validity depends on Snopes
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National Review debunks supply-side myths
The NYT’s Ross Douthat flags a very important article by Kevin Williamson in National Review debunking the myth that tax cuts increase revenue, an article of faith among George W. Bush and other prominent Republicans that even Bush’s own economists didn’t believe. Williamson describes this point of view as “magical thinking”: What does Representative Gohmert