By This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it HSO Contributor
I took a poll last week following the interminable and thoroughly moronic blockbuster 2012 about the plausibility of the movie's premise -- that three years from now, as the Mayan calendar presumably predicted, we'll all be wiped out by some cataclysmic event -- and the results were decidedly mixed: two of the three other people in the theater (a dejected
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couple who looked as if they'd panhandled their way in) said it could definitely happen, while the guy who'd probably done the lunchtime matinee only because the golf course was cold and wet said he thought the chances of forthcoming Armageddon -- whether natural or man-made -- were essentially zero. I'm sort of on the fence, although I believe that, contrary to this film's inane plot, California will survive The Big One and the rest of the country will fall into the ocean.
As pointless as my poll results were, they're probably just as meaningless as some of the other survey data I've seen recently. For example, a poll last week by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion found that 40 percent of New Yorkers believe the trial of the alleged masterminds of the 9/11 attacks will make another attack on their city more likely, while 47 percent discount the possibility. My guess is that guys who write jingles about detergent or deliver coffee and Danishes to Manhattan's Garment District may have worthwhile opinions about the Yankees' chances of repeating (heaven help us), but they're entirely clueless about whether or not those sympathetic to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are huddled in caves drawing up more sinister plans. Polls like this may tell us whether the pap spouted by would-be politicians and cable news blowhards is seeping into some brains, but they give us no actual insight into what may or may not actually happen with our security.
Similarly, a CNN/Opinion Research Survey made public last week revealed that 64 percent of the public think federal law enforcement agencies or the US military should have been able to prevent the Fort Hood shootings. Are these opinions based on intimate understanding of the security protocols and procedures at our military bases? Or is the public just parroting the predictable ranting of talk radio blabbermouths whose insights about the military's inner workings are equally nonexistent?
The polls on related subjects are never-ending: people with little or no knowledge are asked about whether withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan poses a greater risk of domestic terrorism, whether the government can head off an H1N1 epidemic, or whether we're winning the war against terrorism. So why not just nix the polls that ask people to take wild, uninformed guesses that may end up shaping domestic policy, and instead ask them to weigh in on what they actually know something about -- things like whether they're more thankful this year than they were last Thanksgiving, or whether a TV series based on the movie 2012 would be a good idea (for the record, 45 percent say yes, since they love watching the planet get destroyed).
Alan Green was formerly editor of investigative projects at the Center for Public Integrity, in Washington, D.C. His books include Animal Underworld: Inside America's Black Market for Rare and Exotic Species, which chronicles such issues as the threats to human health posed by the trade in pet primates.
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