And the award for the most meaningless poll of the year goes to the AP for their “Biggest Villain of the Year” poll.

The Associated Press-AOL News poll on who people think were the villains and heroes of the last year was conducted Dec. 19-21 and is based on telephone interviews with 1,004 adults from all states except Alaska and Hawaii. The poll was conducted by Ipsos, an international polling firm.(…)

1. If you were asked to name a famous person to be the biggest villain of the year, whom would you choose?

-George W. Bush, 25 percent

-Osama bin Laden, 8 percent

-Saddam Hussein, 6 percent

-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, 5 percent

-Kim Jong Il, North Korean leader, 2 percent

Various news agencies have reported on the results of this poll. The story caught my eye under the header: “Americans Agree - George W. Bush is the Biggest Villain of the Year”. Other news outlets place the story under the headline: “Poll: President Bush Top Villain Of 2006″, or AP Poll: President Bush and Britney Spears top thumbs-down list for ‘06.

The casual news consumer may read the headline and breeze the first couple paragraphs of the story and come away with the conclusion that Americans do indeed rank our President as the villain of the year.

But what if you read the whole thing? The second question of the poll:

2. If you were asked to name a famous person to be the biggest hero of the year, whom would you choose?

-George W. Bush, 13 percent

-Soldiers/troops in Iraq, 6 percent

-Oprah Winfrey, 3 percent

-Barack Obama, 3 percent

-Jesus Christ, 3 percent

So Bush is the biggest villain of the year. And Bush is also the biggest hero of the year. So it appears that this poll serves two purposes: 1)Allow the media to promote it’s anti-Bush agenda with misleading headlines and 2) waste bandwidth. Aside from that, all this poll proves is that America is politically polarized and 25% of the country is nutcases who think Saddam, Osama bin Laden, and Amedinejad are A-OK.

Seriously, Bush is a bigger villain than the entire leadership of the Axis of Evil combined? And Barack Obama is a bigger hero than Jesus? It’s somewhat fitting that Jesus and Obama got roughly the same return given that neither one of them has done much of anything this year! I guess if the media gives your name positive mention ten million times a day that makes you a hero to somebody.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS