SMART STRIPPERS
I hate to quote others’ posts entirely, but this one from Jeff Jarvis defies excerpting:
Howard Stern et al went to Scores yesterday to audition contenders for the World Smartest Stripper contest. Only one of the many strippers tested knew how many states there are. One said 700. One said 52. When told she did pretty well, she was only two off, she said, “Oh, 54.”
When asked who the vice president is, one said that she’s not into politics. “I don’t even know whether the president is Republican or Dominican.”
And when Howard asked one what animal is used to make pickles, she said, “What’s a pickle?”
Too funny.
I always wonder how much of this is play-acting.
Leno has a bit where he goes around interviewing people on simple facts (sort of like this one) asking relatively easy current-event or history questions (“Who did we fight in WWII?”). The people who answer correctly won’t be put on the Tonight Show and they know that. If they act stupid and answer incorrectly (“Canada?”), they get their few seconds of fame on network television, and for a lot of people that is better than being viewed as stupid (everyone thinks I’m stupid, but I was on Leno!)
However, I would note that none of the stippers I have ever met were rocket scientists.
Sean Hannity does a similar questionnaire on his radio show. He send his producer out to ask random people on the streets of NYC to answer a few simple questions. Most of the people stopped have no clue who Sean Hannity is or that he has a radio show. His standard questions are:
1. Can you name the current Vice President?
2. Can you recite the Pledge of Allegiance?
3. Did you vote in the last Presidential election? If so, for whom did you vote?
It’s the rare occasion that he gets anyone that can answer all three. The scary thing about that third question is that all too often people who did vote have no idea who they voted for.
Yep. Having taught at the college level, none of this surprises me. Indeed, I suspect most school teachers couldn’t answer the 1st question.
(Ut Oh- soapbox alert)
Ya know- That is what gets me about “approval polls.”
When Gore was getting ready to run for Prez we kept hearing that 70% of the people approved of his job as Veep.
I cried “bull shit.”
At any given moment only about 30% of the people can even NAME the veep… How can 70% approve or disapprove?
Paul
That is not just aimed at Gore, it is true of 90% of the “approval” polls we see. Veep is just one example.
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