31% of Americans Have No Idea Who's Running the Country
Nearly a third of Americans don't know Dick Cheney is vice president, according to a sad new survey by the Pew Research Center. While people can certainly be forgiven for "forgetting" Cheney is actually running the USA, other poll questions revealed that Americans are just getting dumber overall.
For example, 74% could name the governor of their own state in 1989; only 64% hold such precious knowledge today.
After the jump, feel good about yourself for reading Wonkette!
Next comes the fairly obvious findings that people who enjoy political satire tend to be more knowledgeable about politics, because otherwise they might have a hard time getting any of the jokes or references and then they would become morose and take Oxycontin and jump out of a first-floor window, which could cause a painful sprained ankle.
People who regularly watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report could correctly answer more political trivia questions than those who watch CNN or Fox News or especially the teevee network news -- those people were only barely cognizant of their own arms.
On the Interwebs, people who read high-falutin' newspapers sites such as the New York Times are far better informed than the mouth-breathing clods who read political blogs:
"However, there is no clear connection between news formats and what audiences know,'' Pew adds. "Well-informed audiences come from cable (The Daily Show/The Colbert Report, The O'Reilly Factor), the Internet (especially major newspaper Web-sites), broadcast TV (PBS' NewsHour with Jim Lehrer) and radio (National Public Radio, Rush Limbaugh's program). The less informed audiences also frequent a mix of formats: broadcast television (network morning news shows, local news), cable (Fox News Channel), and the Internet (online blogs where people discuss news events).
So, you can be a smarty jones elitist who listens to Rush Limbaugh, reads the NYT and laughs knowingly with Jon Stewart ... or you can be a dingbat retard who watches network news and leaves banal typo-ridden comments on political blogs. Either way, America's screwed!
24/7 news doesn't make us any smarter [The Swamp]