On the home page of the Seattle Times website right now is a headline touting “Times poll: 84 percent support elephant-exhibit closure—which would represent impressive results, if they were produced by an actual, you know, poll. Instead, this number is the result of an entirely unscientific and easily freeped online poll, a totally noncredible bullshit methodology perfectly befitting this totally noncredible bullshit editorial page.
“Certainly the poll reflects a measure of self-selection,” cautions editorial columnist Erik Smith. No, Erik. The poll reflects nothing but self-selection. I too think the elephant enclosure should be closed, but these online polls are click-bait, pure and simple. Nothing more.
To wit:
Vote early, vote often!
Even the Seattle Times ed board can be right once in awhile. They have nailed this issue. Keeping elephants on one acre at the Woodland Park Zoo is like keeping people in a tiny closet for their whole lives. Attempting to artifically inseminate Chai over 100 times is elephant rape for private profit, because baby elephants = big $$$. The public should boycott WPZ for this, and the City of Seattle should immediately stop subsidizing this brutality.
yep, this is a classic case of all the emotionalism being piled up on a single side of a poll. (something Goldy’s former employer Slog site is famous for) Only those who care passionately about the issue will vote and that’s clearly only one side of the issue. (“yeah man, i’m utterly stoked! we need to do sorta nothing and keep things kinda the same! how can i best get the vote out to take the non-action?!”)
So who the fuck is the rogue HA reader who clicked on “noncredible”? Do we have a troll here?
I saw the headline, but didn’t take the bait and click on it, so I didn’t read the article or “poll.” I simple saw the blurb “Times poll” so naturally I assume they conducted (or more likely commissioned) an actual poll. I should have known better, this being the Seattle Times and all. Real surveys cost money. But any kid can build an online “poll” for nothing. The Seattle Times has no money (or, at least, its publisher has represented to the legislature that he can’t afford to pay a dime newspaper tax; but given his track record on misrepresenting facts about inheritance taxes, you’ve gotta wonder if he lied about that, too). As Goldy says, this “poll” is a joke. Anyway, if ST really wants to poll whether elephants should be caged at Woodland Park, they should ask the elephants. Those are the only opinions that should count.
I just voted 5 times. Yeah, I know some troll is gonna say “typical Democrat” yada yada. Listen, if I could do that in elections, Bush would never have been president. Trust me. I’m not sayin’ the dead don’t vote in Ohio or Florida, but we need to have a serious discussion about who they and the hanging chads actually voted for in 2000 and 2004.
Goldy, LOL and thanks for the excellent poll.
Another poll that could be of use to the Blethens:
I primarily use the Seattle Times to
1) potty train puppies
2) wipe my ass if I’m out of toilet paper
3) I would never, ever use the Seattle Times for any purpose whatsoever
Festering cesspool of course…..