YAHOOS & YAHWEH
or, Playing God With Polls As A Marketing Tool.
January 10 th, 2005 - 12:44 [Z-5:00]
The People's Choice Awards on CBS was fascinating. Both Mel and Michael won an award for their movies. Drudge, with his tongue poking through his cheek demanded a recount on his Sunday night radio show. Funny. Is it possible for both of those movies to win?
Well, apparently, in Hollywood, it is.
And you have to ask yourself, how these results got engineered. Because they don't really exist, whichever side you're on. My guess is that some smart guy, way up in the CBS Tower decided that there were just too many people in too many "red" states and that unless CBS did something soon, they were going to lose all credibility. Credit Dan Rather for the pickle.
Remember the Paddy Chayevsky movie, Network? All about Howard Beale and the UBS network news? Well, tonight's results - claimed to be produced by open internet voting - may, in fact, be the clarion bell that pushes CBS over the edge. Especially if they get good ratings, tonight. Give yourself a little test. Ask yourself if you really think that an overwhelming number of people voted for Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 for best movie and voted for The Passion as the best Drama.
It is simply not logical.
It's perfectly OK to have an outstanding number of people vote for Michael Moore's movie. It doesn't matter to people who would vote for this farce that it's filled with untruths and misrepresentations. These people vote their politics. And that's my point.
Those of us who have seen the Passion would certainly put it right up there among the best movies of the decade, let alone one of the best movies of the year. So it is perfectly logical to assume that an outstanding number of people would vote it best in whatever category it was given. But we also vote our politics. So how, in the name of sanity, would any one of us vote for Fahrenheit 9/11?
As Mister Spok would say; it is a logical impossibility.
If you take the number of people who voted in the People's Choice webpoll and added up all the numbers, and then counted the number of votes for both movies - given that some people would certainly vote for both movies the way some people vote for their ugly sister for Miss Personality and the most beautiful one for Miss America - you will find, I'm guessing, a major discrepancy. There just are NOT that many ugly sister voters in any one situation.
Where does that leave us?
My guess is that it leaves right where we thought we were - with two Americas. One America is like Gammorah. It can't help being the way it is as a result of years of too much balancing and equalizing. The Other America is a red state. Maybe a little too much Hallelujah with your Scripture, but better that than worshiping rocks and toads.
This latest poll - an obvious concoction of a panicked CBS - is certain proof of the irreconcilable division.
