Tell them we’ve already got an idiot

So Your Humble Blogger happened to have up on the old screen a note from Chris Bowers on MyDD, and my Perfect Non-Reader glances at it and asks if the fellow is talking to me. If you haven’t clicked through, the title of the piece is You are a biased, uninformed, partisan idiot with a hidden agenda. I don’t think my Perfect Non-Reader actually knows what a partisan is, or what bias is, or what a hidden agenda is, but she seems to be pretty clear on idiot. Pleasantly, she seemed to think that I am not one. On the other hand, she is quite strongly anti-war, as am I these days, so the point of the note, and of the Washington Post article it is based on, holds. That piece is Disagree About Iraq? You're Not Just Wrong -- You're Evil, by Shankar Vedantam, and not, I’m not evil, either. That article, in turn, is based on a study by Glenn C. Reeder, Michael Wohl, John Pryor and Michael L. Griswell, whose picture YHB couldn’t quickly locate, and who may therefore not be as skeevy-looking as the other three.

No, seriously. Don’t they look skeevy? I’m not saying their research is bad, I’m just saying they look skeevy. Of course, lots of profs look skeevy on their web pages. Male profs, at least. Perhaps that’s my cultural whatnot, showing, and when a woman looks skeevy on her professorial page I just figure it’s a bad picture. Still. Gentle Reader, if you are a prof, or hope to be, be careful when designing a web page, for you look skeevier than you know.

Anyway, I had to hunt around a bit to find the actual research of which these evil idiots spoke. I believe it’s On Attributing Negative Motives to Others Who Disagree With Our Opinions because they are evil idiots, from Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 31, No. 11, 1498-1510 (2005). I haven’t wormed my way into the full text yet, and I probably won’t, but I will point out that this paper is based on research done back in 2004 at the absolute latest, as they presented a paper in 2004. I was going to write about how Mr. Vedantam of the Post is an evil, biased, partisan idiot who is clearly deliberately misrepresenting the survey to further his hidden agenda, but since I can’t be bothered to read the survey, since my unbiased, intelligent, informed integrity won’t allow me to just assume that the research (1) confirms all my own perceptions of the universe, and (b) is a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham, clearly a dishonest and incompetent paste-up of the biased, partisan researchers, I am forced to end this sentence without any idea where I thought I was going where I started it. How’s that for unbiased reporting?

No, I think my point was going to be about how Mssrs Reeder, Pryor, et al, were taking a snapshot, at a moment in history, and that the moment in history is unique, as moments in history tend to be, and that we should extrapolate from it only with caution. What would be really interesting would be a longitudinal study that surveyed the same people over a period of several years, to determine on what topics their opinions had changed, and what they thought about the people who now held views they used to hold. Perhaps they did that, actually, but there’s no evidence of it in the abstract. Or perhaps they are still doing it, and will publish the results in a few years. Anyway, in 2004, half of Democrats still thought the invasion was the right thing to have done. Half of those have evidently changed their minds; half of the so-called independents who were pro-war in 2004 have changed their minds as well. Do those people 2004 think that they were biased, evil idiots in 2004? Do they think that the people who have stayed pro-war are biased, evil idiots? Do they think that the people who were already anti-war are biased, evil idiots? Just wondering.

And, yes, I could RTFA, or even contact Mssrs Reeder, Pryor, et al, and ask them, even leaving off the skeevy bit for diplomacy’s sake, and find out. But my time is occupied reading deeply into such matters as the naked drunken ball-gagged Israeli ambassador. The world is not safe for work.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.