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No sooner had Judge Susan Webber Wright delivered her stunning decision tossing Paula Jones' lawsuit out of court than polling results started pouring in. On MSNBC Interactive, where I was the 18,643rd person to vote hours after the announcement, the snapshot in time was 64 percent in favor of the dismissal, 36 percent against.
It is hard to overestimate the extent to which these latest Clinton scandals have been analyzed through the prism of polls and polling, with polling reports instantly changing the public opinion they are intended to capture, thus guaranteeing their own inaccuracy.
The absurdities of pollsterism run amok have been brought to the fore by attempts to produce a mathematical solution to the philosophical question of the moment: Why does Bill Clinton's popularity rise in inverse proportion to the disgracefulness of the allegations against him?
Among the more delectably amusing data are the recent results of a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll on Clinton and sexual addiction (remember, even Judge Wright passed no judgment on the accuracy of Jones' description of Clinton's behavior on May 8, 1991, at the Excelsior Hotel). When asked if they "believe it is possible that Clinton is addicted to sex," 49 percent of respondents said "yes," and 33 percent said "no," with men slightly more likely to hazard a positive diagnosis than women.
I, for one, happen to think that Clinton is indeed quite likely a sex addict. But having 49 percent of the 908 people Fox News/Opinion Dynamics questioned agree with me doesn't make me any more convinced of the rightness of my assessment.
These same 908 attentive citizens were asked whether they "believe Jones when she says she suffers from a 'sexual aversion.'" Only 12 percent said "yes," while a whopping 76 percent did not believe the devil has been banished from Miss Jones.
Whether these 908 people were really willing to ponder deeply the questions asked by the highly trained experts at Fox News/Opinion Dynamics or whether they were just trying to get off the phone as quickly as possible so they could go back to watching "Ally McBeal," we will never know. What is certain is that what G.K. Chesterton said about voting is infinitely truer about polling: "The question is not so much whether a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes ... the average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or with a hundredth part of one."
Personally, when I read poll results, I feel more uninformed by the moment. If "disenlightenment" were a word, it would describe my poll-induced state.
Warning: The next arrow in the Fox News/Opinion Dynamics quiver may actually kill brain cells if you contemplate it for too long. Read it at your own risk.
The pollsters asked: "If Clinton is addicted to sex, should the American people forgive him for the way he allegedly conducts himself with women?" Fifty-two percent said "no," and 27 percent said "yes," with men slightly more willing to forgive than women.
So, what have we learned? Well, I guess one could conclude that most people do not believe addictions really control behavior. Or maybe they just believe that having an addiction does not absolve a person from moral responsibility. Or maybe this result means that the American people should blame Clinton for not getting treatment for his addiction.
Or maybe it really means nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. It's a convoluted way of heaping uninformed speculation atop hypothetical supposition in order to generate a camera-ready result for the nightly newscast. "We don't have all the facts yet," we are being told again and again. True enough, but bogus poll results are being treated like hard facts, given the respect ancient Romans reserved for the reading of chicken entrails.
One last result, just in case you're not feeling sufficiently stupefied. Although 69 percent of Americans (according to a poll from CNN/USA Today/Gallup, mind you) believe their own moral standards are higher than our president's, 3 percent honestly believe that they have worse ethics than the commander in chief. I wonder: Have they ever considered entering politics? It's a business that could use a few honest men and women just now -- and a lot fewer pollsters.
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