What makes Americans generally welcoming of immigrants, and what makes immigrants generally assimilable, is that this is a creedal nation, one dedicated to certain propositions, not one whose origins and identity are bound up with ethnicity. But if you are to be welcomed to the enjoyment of American liberty, then America has a few expectations of you. One is that you can read the nation's founding documents and laws and can comprehend the political discourse that precedes the casting of ballots.So. The problem is not Spanish, per se (a Latin phrase meaning "as such" or "in itself," as Mr. Will might point out), but rather the ability of citzens to understand the form of government in which they're going to take part and, when they exercise their right to vote on the important issues of the day, to do so in an intelligent and informed manner.
Of course.
One can only assume, then, that Mr. Will would also support withholding the franchise from people who get their news from Fox News, since their ability to get a handle on "the nation's founding documents and laws" as well as their ability to "comprehend the political discourse that precedes the casting of ballots" seems shaky at best--even though they're getting their news in English:
The Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland conducted a thorough study of public knowledge and attitudes about current events and the war on terrorism. Researchers found that the public's mistaken impressions of three facets of U.S. foreign policy — discovery of alleged WMD in Iraq, alleged Iraqi involvement in 9/11, and international support for a U.S. invasion of Iraq — helped fuel support for the war.George Will: A man who believes that "stupid" in English" is still better than "smart" in Spanish.
While the PIPA study concluded that most Americans (over 60%) held at least one of these mistaken impressions, the researchers also concluded that Americans' opinions were shaped in large part by which news outlet they relied upon to receive their information.
As the researchers explained in their report, "The extent of Americans' misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news. Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions. Those who receive most of their news from NPR or PBS are less likely to have misperceptions. These variations cannot simply be explained as a result of differences in the demographic characteristics of each audience, because these variations can also be found when comparing the demographic subgroups of each audience."
Almost shocking was the extent to which Fox News viewers were mistaken. Those who relied on the conservative network for news, PIPA reported, were "three times more likely than the next nearest network to hold all three misperceptions. In the audience for NPR/PBS, however, there was an overwhelming majority who did not have any of the three misperceptions, and hardly any had all three."
Looking at the misperceptions one at a time, people were asked, for example, if the U.S. had discovered the alleged stockpiles of WMD in Iraq since the war began. Just 11% of those who relied on newspapers as their "primary news source" incorrectly believed that U.S. forces had made such a discovery. Only slightly more — 17% — of those who relied on NPR and PBS were wrong. Yet 33% of Fox News viewers were wrong, far ahead of those who relied on any other outlet.
Likewise, when people were asked if the U.S. had "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was "working closely with al Queda," similar results were found. Only 16% of NPR and PBS listeners/viewers believed that the U.S. has such evidence, while 67% of Fox News viewers were under that mistaken impression.
Overall, 80 percent of those who relied on Fox News as their primary news source believed at least one of the three misperceptions. Viewers/listeners/readers of other news outlets didn't even come close to this total.
3 comments:
Jay Leno's 'Spring Break' groupies probably didn't even know which continent Iraq was on and they're suppose to be in college and native born.
It hardly needs noting, but George Will has the arrogance to ignore the fact that there's a world of difference between "an ability to read, write, and speak words in ordinary usage in the English language" and an ability to parse the studiously deceptive politico-legal-public-relations massaged gibberish that systematically misrepresents the choices before voters on Ballots and, more importantly, on the Sample Ballots and Voter Information Pamphlets distributed before voters come to the polls.
How many natural-born American English speakers can read through an entire Sample Ballot without throwing up their hands in either incomprehension or disgust, or both?
Imagine trying to wade through the nonsense in a second language in which you have ONLY "an ability to read, write, and speak words in ordinary usage."
I live in California, the great Promised Land of the Voter Initiative and Proposition. I have a Yale Ph.D., in American Studies, no less. And even I no longer try to parse that fine print. Why bother when the only thing to be learned there is not the truth of a choice but the current state of the art of political lying.
Of course, we need Ballots, Sample Ballots, and Voter Information Pamphlets printed in as many languages as possible.
Otherwise, America's newest voters might be deceived into thinking there's something written there -- rare, white and precious -- that they are missing.
Hi, guys--
You know, I normally don't let GW get to me. In fact, if I read him at all, it's to play a little game: I see how many sentences I can get into his column before he says something so arrogant and condescending I can't continue reading. Average is about five or six sentences.
But something about this just . . .
bn
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