Obama Voters = Mentally Stupid

This one gets a bit convoluted, so apologies for that. A couple of days ago, there was an odd little piece of dross making the rounds regarding a poll that purported to show that Obama voters were pretty much morons.

Below are a few questions from the “poll”, which was conducted by Zogby on behalf of a rightwing radio host by the name of John Ziegler:

“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] won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot?”

You get the idea. I considered writing something on it at the time but I couldn’t see the point. Someone stands there insisting 2 plus 2 equals 5, what are you going to do, argue with them? The results were as meaningless as they were partisan. And the strangest part was that, given the fact that more highly educated voters tended to vote for Obama, it was an oddly self-defeating argument for a Republican to be making. If Obama supporters are dumb, the logic goes, then McCain voters must be even dumberer.

Nate Silver of 538, labeled the thing a “push poll” while eviscerating the methodology and results. And, sure enough, it turned out the whole thing was hyped to flog some anti-Obama website and documentary. For those of you who don’t know Nate Silver, he’s the guy who in the last election correctly called the results of 49 of 50 states and pinpointed Obama’s take of the popular vote to within 0.7%. So dude knows from polling.

Today Nate Silver published an interview with Ziegler about the poll. Read the whole thing because it’s hilarious, but suffice it to say that Ziegler revealed himself to be as rude and unprofessional as he is partisan.

Nate Silver: What was the right answer to that [Palin] question?
John Ziegler: 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.

But here’s where the going gets weird (and the weird turn pro). Turns out that this John Ziegler is the guy who was featured in David Foster Wallace’s 2005 article, Host, about right wing talk radio. And when DFW died a few months ago, Ziegler wrote a cringe-inducing hit-job on him, essentially arguing that Wallace killed himself as a career move. Why? Well, because Wallace knew deep down that he wasn’t the genius that the literati made him out to be. He could hide the truth from the egghead lit crit crowd, and he could even hide the truth from himself (for a while), but he couldn’t hide the truth from John Ziegler. That is, when John Ziegler finally figured out who the guy was:

I am embarrassed to say that I did not even know who David Foster Wallace was and I was too stupid or lazy to bother to simply “Google” him. It was only when the article was finally published that I realized what a “big deal” he was supposed to be.

By Ziegler’s own account, Wallace followed “his every move” for more than two months, and Ziegler never bothered to have a conversation with him? What do you do? What else have you written? Have you been awarded any MacArthur genius grants lately?

Ziegler then goes on to critique Wallace’s article with all of the nuance of an infant attacking a stack of blocks. First he highlights the fact that the article was out of date by the time it appeared (i.e., it didn’t help Ziegler’s career), second, that it contained unspecified factual errors, and third, well, why don’t I let him tell you himself:

Thirdly, anyone who attempts to read the 23-page cover story is immediately struck by the use of many boxes off to the side of each page where Wallace shares his parenthetical thoughts/statements to his undisciplined telling of the story. As a fan of the parenthetical statement myself, I understand what he was trying to do, but I am also totally convinced that had a normal writer (one not named David Foster Wallace) presented such a jigsaw puzzle of a submission to their magazine that they probably would have laughed at him and asked him to come back when he learned how to write.

And that, dear readers, is why John Ziegler is a “big deal” and David Foster Wallace is not.

____________________________________________________

Update: Silver has a follow up to his interview with Ziegler.