Sometimes I see things and assume that either someone has the same sick sense of humor that I do, or else people have completely lost their sense of the absurd. From the sidebar on this CNN news story today comes the following poll:
Whoa, seriously? Somebody went to j-school for that? I am certain that your mother must be proud you're the guy who put that on CNN.com. ($10 via PayPal to the first person who can get me a definitive answer about who's responsible for this lunacy.)
And two thirds of people who voted are in favor of known criminals running our ports? (Technically, it's only 64% of the 55880 votes cast so far, but that's still amazing.) Jon Stewart is clearly being overpaid, because some anonymous web wizard at CNN is a lot funnier than anything Comedy Central has conjured up.
Check out the results for yourself, or just cast your own vote to see what everyone else thinks.
Oh my god! Is this even possible?!
This article struck me as well, obviously. I actually think there must be a handful of radical folks on the CNN web team. And if they don't exist, we'll have to invent them.
I am assuming that good-minded people wouldn't even waste their time voting in such a ridiculous poll. That or the idiots have indeed won.
After getting good laugh out of that, I actually was almost driven to vote and hesitated between both. This is pure insanity and makes me realise that this Islamophobia is getting out of hand. This would be totally unnaceptable if instead of Arabs there was any other group. Ha! the potential little Hitler inside of us!
It's a simple stat to explain... anyone who answered that question would have first been one of the people that gets their news from CNN, and so.... ;-)
(Seriously, when that "ports deal" story first hit I was put off by the *pattern* of coverage... it sprang out of nowhere, with a bunch of highly emotional voices at the fore... felt like an astroturfing, so I ignored the story and was proven correct for doing so.)
John Stewart actually said it best to Larry King (on CNN, no less): "its like the administration forgot that they were fostering a culture of fear."
I thought the ports flap was silly, but you have to admit, it (and that kind of acerbic coverage) pretty much had to be expected, given the current racial climate in the US.
I'm really surprised by both the poll and the public's response. I think that an Arab company would likely run the ports much better than our current mafia-centric system. It seems that they would be under much more scrutiny than the good ol' boys that run things now.
I thought mafia was only visible in Mumbai, but apparently polished and silent mafias run ports worldwide. Jeez!
I cannot believe that the mafia won that poll. I guess I was wrong in assuming that intelligent people would be reading your blog. What are they doing with the information their reading? I guess that's what happens when people learn tons of information, and don't have the ability to process it rationally.
let me play the devil's advocate and say that the mafia is the lesser of the two evils.. coz in the worst case, the mafia could cause a lotta addicts and a few deaths.. while radical fanatics could cause a holocaust, be they from arab world or elsewhere!
The poll is a plant intended to change the focus of the public debate, and it's working. Instead of asking questions about port security, we're now talking about whether the Mafia would be a better choice to run our ports; or worse, we laugh at the people dumb enough to choose option B (an action with more irony than volumes of Shakespeare). Humor is not the only reason a poll like this would appear on a major news site.
That reminds me of nothing so much as when I moved to New Orleans in 1992 and saw cars with "Vote for the Crook, It's Important" bumperstickers - Edwin Edwards' winning slogan when he beat David Duke in 1991. Only difference is, voting for the crook must have felt like a vote against racism, but in CNN's poll it feels like the opposite.
I can believe it... With gangs being so race-centric, perhaps people assume that mafia-run ports will be anti-foreign instinctually before they act on the desire for profit. My favorite part is how this article is supposed to be shocking. Mafia involvement where there are bids to be sent in and union jobs to be had, not to mention all that access to controlling import/export? Gasp!
It is worth looking at this from an entirely different perspective. What if a bunch of people voted for the Mafia to further the joke? As the disclaimer *clearly* states, this is hardly a scientific poll. Certain people, after seeing the poll, might've wanted to elicit this -- and, presumably, other --blog's response. I'm not saying any of this actually occurred, but the very real plausibility should not be ruled out.
Surely the outrageous findings of this poll show that it was a question that needed to be asked. A brilliant piece of on-line journalism, I think.