Teeing Off: Good Will Polling

Courtesy of The Henry Rollins Show

It's hard to get through a news program without hearing the results of the latest poll on elections, popularity, or the war conducted by the likes of Zogby, Gallup or whoever else decides there's good money in asking people simple questions. The cynic in me knows that I should not take any poll too seriously as you can get wildly different results on the same question if you just ask people in a different bar than the one you started in. So why do we bother with polls? Because people need to know if others agree or disagree with them since they don't think their own opinion is enough. But does it give you any comfort to be in any poll's majority or minority? Do you know anyone who's ever been polled? If you knew who was really being polled, would you then care if you were in the majority? Knowing they can't be all that accurate, do you ever wonder why politicians study them so carefully instead of just saying what they mean and meaning what they say? I wonder if some polls are not conducted at all and results are just made up by some pollster with an angle. Polls don't always just ask about opinions, sometimes they create them. Remember when McCain ran against Bush and South Carolinians were polled if they would be more or less likely to vote for him if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child? McCain and his wife had in fact adopted an orphaned child from Bangladesh but the damage was done, and so was McCain, and it was all in a dirty pollster's day's work. The president's opinion poll numbers are low. Does it mean anything besides people are sick of reading about bad news from Iraq? I don't think so, but then again, who knows what to trust? What if president Bush's approval ratings all of a sudden skyrocketed to 98%, would you feel any different about the legitimacy of a poll that used to agree with you? I have come to the conclusion that all I can do is get all the information as best as I can and make my decisions accordingly. Polls, to me are at best, an abstract and obstruct one from being an opinionated motherfucker. Now go poll that and get back to me. No, don't.

-- Henry Rollins