| Vol. I,
No. 1 |
Oct.
20th, 2000 |
Puzzling Evidence
Puzzling
Evidence: A Few Facts
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A New Approach to Voter Registration or, Meet Mr.
Subliminal ...
Politics can get somewhat bizarre. That's not
particularly news. But this fact may break new ground, even in
political circles.
It seems that presidential hopeful George W. Bush, who is
notorious for personally & carefully screening all of his campaign ads,
may have missed something. In a post-Labor Day ad assailing V.P. Al
Gore's prescription drug policy, a Bush ad included a brief message -- RATS
-- in white letters on a black background.
In itself, that may not be so surprising. Negative
campaigns have been a fact of political life for a while. No, the
surprising thing was ... the message was subliminal.
The 'RATS' message, it seems, flashed on the screen for just
1/30th of a second, the threshold at which viewers would not be conscious of
seeing it, but at which it would definitely register.
-
Give Me Victory, Then Give Me Death ...
For anyone who loves all kinds of sports, the Summer
Olympics are a welcome series of events. Track & Field,
Gymnastics, Swimming & Diving ... even Beach Volleyball ... If you
can suffer through the network's seemingly interminable obsession with
stories about the athletes personal lives, there's still lots of good
viewing to be had.
Now, as anyone who follows sports knows, it's not whether
you win or lose, it's how you win the games. So, as the Olympics were
drawing near, the inevitable questions about drug use began to emerge.
As a result of preliminary investigations, many countries
disqualified some of their athletes, including China, which disqualified
dozens. ... Of course, U.S. athletes were not exempt.
Some time earlier, in fact, they had been asked an
interesting question:
If you could take a
drug which would guarantee that you'd win the gold,
but which would
result in death within 5 years, would you take it?
More than half of the American athletes, it seems, wanted the drug.
-
Voter Resignation? ... or How to Elect a Liberal
Republican.
In a recent VPR Switchboard, Poli-Sci prof Garrison Nelson
had an interesting observation to offer.
For more than 100 years, it seems, from the 1856 election of
Buchanan to the 1960 contest between Nixon & Kennedy, Vermont was the
only state in the Union to vote Republican for the presidential candidate
each and every time. Curiously, however, Vermont also has come to have
the most liberal crop of Republicans ever to serve. ...
Why? ...
Well, it seems that, once the Democrats of yesteryear in the
State were able to decipher the writing on the wall, viz. -- that they
couldn't win an election even if they promised mild winters and long growing
seasons -- many Democrats resigned themselves to an inevitable loss and
would vote Republican in the State's Primary Elections, giving the nod to
the most liberal Republican on the ballot.
While some would cry, "Foul!" ... it'd be
difficult to argue with the results, especially if electing a Democrat was a
losing battle. Two of the Senate's most avid supporters of education,
former Senator Bob Stafford and current Senator Jim Jeffords, were probably
both recipients of the benefit of this Democratic crossover, as, too, was
former Governor George Aiken.
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