Nate Silver Cussed Out By Angry Wingnut

Wow! One might have guessed, given his charmingly nerdsome appearance and general blinky "how do I translate from numbers into English?" mannerisms that Nate Silver would be somewhat conflict averse. But no man he BRINGS IT. He interviewed some guy who commissioned a Zogby poll that proved, factually, that Obama voters are all a bunch of ignorant black Muslims. There's even a YouTube to prove it! Anyhow Silver called up this very shirty gentleman John Ziegler to discuss his survey methods. Ziegler called him a pinhead and said many hilariously nasty things.

NS: What was the right answer to that [Palin] question?

JZ: The technically accurate question [sic] is that none of the four people said that, but we counted it as correct if they said Sarah Palin.

NS: Why would you commission a survey question with no correct response?

JZ: The purpose of the question, you pinhead, was we wanted to determine the Tina Fey Effect.

[...]

NS: Would you consider yourself well-informed?

JZ: I’d consider myself extremely well-informed.

NS: Who are the two senators from South Dakota?

JZ: Thune and, uh, Johnson.

NS: Very good. South Carolina?

JZ: Go fuck yourself. I'm done with this interview if you're going to ask me stupid questions like that. Obviously I know who Lindsay Graham is.

NS: Well, since you’re running a website calling people misinformed, I’d like to see if -- there are certain things you’ve said that I would consider misinformed.

JZ: Misinformed? You're a piece of work! You are never going to have the guts to post a representative transcript on your website! I thought you actually ran a legitimate website!

NS: Thank you, have a good day.

JZ: Go fuck yourself.

The whole transcript is available here. 

 An Interview with John Ziegler on the Zogby "Push Poll" [FiveThirtyEight.com]