Pundits and alleged experts of every stripe in today's United States of America are always citing polls when they want to pull you over to their side of an argument.
The in-creased reli-ance on public opinion polls, be they Gal-lup, Harris or The New York Times, to fuel public discourse coincides with the decline of civility and literacy in our ever-devolving little republic.
First of all, linking what is popular with what is right or wrong, or good, better, best, is just another way of saying might (or in this case, mighty numbers) makes right.
The proof of this obvious misapprehension is everywhere.
Take a look at The New York Times' bestseller list.
In a year when some of America's better writers have already published novels and biographies, the number-one book last week was an alleged biography from Jack Welch, the corporate pirate, and his "new" 50something wife, a journalist who met him during a fluff interview.
What could this arrogant greed-head have to say that would be worth $30?
It doesn't matter how many air-heads buy this book, it is not the best book published this month, this week or even this minute. It is ephemeral gossip slathered in platitude, self-encouraging hoodyhah for folks who want to get rich without really doing anything that benefits the rest of the folks in society.
In the past month I've seen three tremendous films.
"Oldboy," a Kafkaesque thriller from Korea. "Head-On," a scathing societal indictment and a twisty, powerful love story from Germany. And finally, "Nobody Knows," a brilliant story of kids on their own in a modern metropolis, in this case Tokyo.
None of these films pandered to any lowest common denominator. And none of them made all that much money. Bad, rehashed Sydney Pollack ("The Interpreter"), to pick just one lousy film in a celluloid sea of same, made more in a week than the three films I just named made in a month here.
So what?
Good is good and meretricious is meretricious.
The number of folks who like garbage at the expense of quality means nothing in the end.
More people eat under the Golden Arches in one day than eat in really good restaurants in a week.
So what?
So the fact that 47 percent of the cretins polled last week in East Jesus America think Bush is doing a good job only means P.T. Barnum was right about what is born every minute here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Uninsured.
Public opinion only reflects the shallow end of the pool.
I've seen this up close and personal as a Vietnam-era veteran.
In 1968, returning vets were spit on by the longhaired children of the affluent hiding in colleges and universities across the land; many of these same antiwar protestors, all grown up and profiting, now support our incursion into Iraq, as long as they and theirs don't have to go.
The general feeling in the late '60s, which only got stronger, was that Vietnam was a mistake and all the vets, draftees, volunteers, heroes and cowards (my category) were demented animals.
By 1973 every weekly dramatic television series featured an episode or two about deranged Vietnam vets during their 13-week taffy pulls. Seemed like one of us was always climbing a tower with a rifle and daring Starsky and Hutch to bring us down. If we weren't crazy, we were on drugs.
But somewhere in the early '80s it all changed. Vietnam vets became misunderstood heroes. Brave men all, abandoned by their government but not forgotten in the long run.
Had Vietnam veterans changed over the 15 years they went from outcasts to hirsute Sgt. Yorks?
No.
The only thing that changed was public opinion.
And public opinion is as near to meaningless as it can be.
More than 50 percent of early Americans supported, or at least did not oppose, slavery.
Didn't make it right.
And no matter how many people, many of whom have just gotten their equal rights, condemn homosexuals, the underlying issue of fairness will (we may hope) eventually win out over public opinion, however dementedly biased.
In 1940, a full 90 percent of Germans supported Hitler. And as many Japanese believed that their Emperor was divine. That, too, was public opinion.
Recent polls show many Russians who weren't alive at the time now "miss" Stalin, a tyrant and despot who saw to it that almost 20 million of his "subjects" were murdered in brutal camps every bit the horrific equal to those more famous way-stations Hitler oversaw in Dachau and Auschwitz.
Just because 20 million fools who don't know who Yasujiro Ozu was think "The Apprentice" is a good show means nothing.
The Donald will be long forgotten and people all over the world will be watching Ozu's "Tokyo Story," public opinion and polls be damned.
Siding with the majority is your right.
Acting as if it makes you right is dead wrong.
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