Dozens and dozens of times now, this blog, which nobody actually reads anyway, has been handing out awards for the Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL). We started calling it that when we realized it was senseless to hand out awards for “This Year’s Best Sentence” or “This Week’s Best Sentence.” That’s the nature of wonderful sentences; you can go eons without hearing anything worth repeating, and then wham bam, twice in a single day you’ll get some real gems. We wanted to be prepared. So we made the time increment entirely arbitrary. And, of course, sometimes you hear these things, sometimes you read ’em. Heard Or Read covers all that.
This has worked out great. Until now. Blogger friend Phil has come up with what is, undoubtedly, the Best Question I’ve Heard Or Read Lately. I mean, there’s lotsa questions that are good; this one’s a humdinger.
It’s got to do with the Bradley Effect. Go on, read up if you need to.
Here we go…
Question about the so-called “Bradley Effect”
Has anybody asked if the so-called “Bradley Effect” might not be so much to do with whites not wanting to appear biased toward the white candidate, but to blacks not wanting to admit that they’re voting for the white guy?
I mean, I can’t see too many whites giving two whits about the skin tone of someone I voted for. But it appears to me that if you’re black and you’re not voting for the black candidate … you’re some sort of sell-out, Uncle Tom, traitor to your race.
Just askin’. I always hear it portrayed as a phenomenon having to do with whites. Has the flip side of that question even been asked?
I suppose it doesn’t very much matter. If you have a Bradley Effect, you can measure it in terms of a number of percentage points, go forward the next election cycle, and extrapolate that many percentage points to recalibrate what’s going to happen against your polling data. That would work, except for — one candidate or the other is a bigger jackass than either of the candidates four years previous…or the region is different (one in the deep south, one not, for example). My point is, the reason would be irrelevant — which demographic is most heavily affected, would be irrelevant.
But Phil’s point is well-taken. Conventional wisdom, as summed-up in the Wikipedia article, is that “some white voters give inaccurate polling responses for fear that, by stating their true preference, they will open themselves to criticism of racial motivation.” Conventional wisdom, therefore, is going out of its way to make white voters look like dickholes. Phil’s theory relies on the premise that the social stigma involved in shunning a candidate of color is at least as odious within the black community, as it is in the white community. And, to us, this just seems obvious. We think Phil’s on to something. For whatever it’s worth.
How could it become relevant? Well, some regions of this great country have more or less of a ratio of African-American voters than others. As a whole, the last census indicates the population to be 36 million out of 301, or just under 12%.
Barack Obama is currently leading John McCain by 7.3 percentage points. Some polls have him ahead by six. Some less than that.
This is a problem for The Chosen One.
Dont’ look at me. I’m white; I’m voting against The Messiah, not because of the color of his skin, but because I want more terrorists killed. That’s the way I’m voting and that’s exactly what I’m telling the pollsters, so there’s no Bradley Effect going on here…but I live in California, which Obama’s going to win by a double-digit margin anyway.
She then slammed Barack Obama calling him disqualified to be President of the United States, “Some of his comments that he has made about the war that I think may — in my world — disqualifies someone from consideration as the next commander in chief.” Palin said, “Some of his comments about Afghanistan and what we are doing there supposedly — just air raiding villages and killing civilians. That’s reckless.
More than one “princess” has been raised to womanhood on Brothers Grimm fairy tales, convinced that once she cuts the cake and zips off to the honeymoon, life will be wonderful and perfect. And then been subsequently disappointed to learn all about the responsibilities of adulthood, from diapers that need changing to husbands living life for the moment, waxy yellow buildup, divorce lawyers, etc. Said princesses were brought up to deal with life by not believing in it — by looking forward to a complete eradication of all the exigencies and uncertainties that go with the living of life. That’s where the slobbering Obama fan is. That is precisely where the Obama fanbase is. They think the Chosen One will place his hand on the Bible, take the oath, and everything will smell like unicorn farts.
Questions are being raised about the objectivity of Thursday’s vice presidential debate moderator after news surfaced that she is releasing a new book that appears to promote Barack Obama and other black politicians who have benefited from the civil rights struggle.
It’s just a theory, at this point: We, as in the Big “We” that represents all of us, or a majority consensus therein — are tired of the bullshit, and we’re tired of the lies. If we can’t make ’em go away, we want them to at least improve in grade. Stop trying to fool us with tidbits of nonsense that can only fool complete imbeciles. We have grown to the point where we are ready to test what we are told, with meaningful tests, in the moment in which we are told it.
Barack Obama has a bracelet, too.
Man, 
But he has none. So there’s only one thing left he can do, which is to slime the other side.