[lbo-talk] Sapir

Dennis Redmond dredmond at efn.org
Sun May 16 15:05:25 PDT 2004



> [Marc Sapir, director of RetroPoll, sent this reaction to my
> critiques of his latest. I'll let this float out into the universe
> before responding.]
> 90% of the public
> doesn't know anything about all that, so we inform them. That's part of
> our approach to reality. You don't like it, but we do.

Hm, this is a pretty obnoxious tirade. Lots of petty personal insults, an endless stream of red herrings, thin-skinned quotes about academics who may or may not be using his website, and no attempt to deal with the issues. Polls are about what people are really thinking, as opposed to what anyone else would like them to think. If you start the whole education/training thing, you're doing agitprop -- a fine thing in itself, but not a genuine poll.


> If you want to see the real world that Americans are not allowed to see
> try reading Fidel Castro's speech today

Castro's speeches are political statements, which have their own baggage (including the necessity to defend Cuba against US violence, which puts limits on what he or the Cuban CP can say). To paraphrase Zizek, the Real is not the real.


> We found such profound misinformation about the occupation and
> subjugation of the Palestinians that we can not even apply our
> methodology to that situation.

Then this requires a bit of rethinking of the methodology in question -- or at least a rethinking of the naive belief that a select group of pollsters has a monopoly on The Truth (TM, Pat. Pending) and that the business of polls are about bestowing this blessing on the ignorant masses.

-- DRR



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