Friday, September 14, 2012

Logic 101

Let's say it's because the truth hurts, but I really hate to be taken for stupid by people who don't know me from Adam. I would at least prefer to be given the opportunity to say or do something to prove it.

So they tried to take me for a fool last night. When my Caller ID screen flashed "Opinion Poll"  I was suspicious.  It didn't say something like Zogby or any name I would recognize, so I paused the TV and picked it up hoping to have an opportunity to express my displeasure at the illegally late hour.  I soon detected that "David" from the "polling company" was actually a computer. Didn't take any Holmesian deduction really.  If the Voice on the phone does not stumble or pause at my assertions as to his oedipal relationships it's likely that old Dave is a new Dell.

But I went along, hoping to have my shot, answering that yes, I was going to vote, yes I was certain I was going to vote, am a registered Democrat and no I wasn't going to risk divine retribution by voting for some tin horn torturer  like Allen "deport the commies" West,  but noticing that the questions all compared the Republican Party with the "Democrat" Party, I began to lose patience.

You probably aren't old enough to remember how easy it was to determine political polarity by noting how the speaker pronounced Vietnam. It rhymed with Pete Ham if you were for the glorious crusade to protect American freedom.  Curiously the same dialect discrimination obtained with our invasion of Iraq.  If it was Eye-wrack, you were for it.  But these chuckleheads can't bring themselves to acknowledge the Democratic Party by saying it right and they're too smugly stupid to notice that I might notice. They always and steadfastly and in the face of cannon fire, call it the 'Democrat' Party. 

But I digress. One might expect a careless listener of some intelligence to miss this point, but when Digital Dave asked whether my preference might lie with the Republican plan to create jobs, build prosperity and bring on a new dawn of American world domination in Jesus' name amen by getting rid of crippling business regulation and those unnecessarily Marxist corporate taxes --- or whether I might somehow, perhaps accidentally make the thoughtless mistake of  destroying the fabric of the space-time continuum by letting the top bracket rise to the point where Ronald Reagan shocked us by lowering it -- and voting for the Democrat agenda?

So would you vote for peace and prosperity or for disaster?

Somewhere in a primary school class where they teach basic reasoning skills; ( they do do that, don't they?) somewhere in the beginning pages of Logic for Dummies, there must be mention of forced choice questions. No, I don't have advanced degrees and my Greek doesn't exist. My first grade teacher thought I was not first grade material and I only had three years of calculus in College, but really.  If this reeks of stupid to me, is this the best these bozos can do?

 Somewhere in Hell, just south of the place reserved for cannibals and mass murderers there's a parking spot with a nice tin sign that reads:  THIS SPOT RESERVED FOR THE TREASONOUS BASTARDS AT ELKHURST COMMUNICATIONS.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I encountered a very similar phone call myself a few years back. This state is so red, it hurts, so I wasn't too surprised when I got such a blatantly skewed opinion call. I can't recall the exact words, but it more or less asked if I was in favor of the murder of unborn babies in the form of abortion. I tried very hard not to laugh in the face of the caller.

Nick said...

I encountered a very similar phone call myself a few years back. This state is so red, it hurts, so I wasn't too surprised when I got such a blatantly skewed opinion call. I can't recall the exact words, but it more or less asked if I was in favor of the murder of unborn babies in the form of abortion. I tried very hard not to laugh in the face of the caller.

Frankly Curious said...

Very funny article. I think we've all had these kinds of "surveys." I'm very taken with the idiosyncratic pronunciation, which I think has more to do with the conservative echo chamber than anything. I doubt that most current conservatives use "Democrat Party" for any reason other than everyone they listen to does.

I wrote an article about this over at my site, although I'm not sure I said any more than I just did above. I did, however, use a lot more words...

Anonymous said...

They might call the democratic party the democrat party, but I call the republican and libertarian parties the party of crazy racist religious separatists.

Capt. Fogg said...

Florida is as red as a purple priapism as it hangs down into the ocean -- and nearly as smart.

I hung up on "Dave" and I wrote a very very nasty letter to the telemarketing company, yet they keep calling me back, over and over and over. . .

Talking to a robot is like talking to a Republican only you can't strangle it.

Unknown said...

These robotic fucks can reformat themselves.