Rising Hegemon
As I've stated before, as others smarter than me have stated before, the pattern of the Bush Administration is to trumpet the thin veneer of its victories so loudly and early, that most of the public is back following American Idol and Fear Factor while the ugly truth emerges underneath.
Oh, cripes, that was only yesterday.
Editor and Publisher, with a thank you to Digby, shows us what the reality of the Iraqi vote is and how it is being completely drowned out by the chest thumping and finger displaying.
Carl Bialik, who writes the Numbers Guy column for Wall Street Journal Online, calls this "a great question ... how the journalists can know these numbers -- when so many of them aren't able to venture out all over that country." Speaking to E&P on Wednesday, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post -- one of the few mainstream journalists to raise questions about the turnout percentage -- referred to the "fuzzy math" at the heart of it.
Those with long memories may recall the downward-adjusted turnout numbers that followed violence-plagued elections in South Vietnam in 1967 and in El Salvador in 1984.
And one thing we now know for sure: the early media blather about a "strong" Sunni turnout has proven false. Adding a dose of reality, The Associated Press on Wednesday cited a Western diplomat who declared that turnout appeared to have been "quite low" in Iraq's vast Anbar province. Meanwhile, Carlos Valenzuela, the chief United Nations elections expert in Iraq, cautioned that forecasts for the Sunni areas were so low to begin with that even a higher-than-expected turnout would remain low.
In a rare reference to an actual vote tabulation, The New York Times on Thursday reports that in the "diverse" city of Mosul, with 60% of the count completed, the overall turnout seems slightly above 10%, or "somewhat more than 50,000 of Mosul's 500,000 estimated eligible voters."
This, of course, is no minor matter: Iraq's leading Sunni Muslim clerics said Wednesday that the country's election lacked legitimacy because large numbers of Sunnis did not participate in the balloting. Sure, many of them are simply sore losers (they lost an entire country) but that doesn't make their reaction any less troublesome for Iraq's future.
Let us now remember odious men...
It's a big difference. Since Sunday, countless TV talking heads, such as Chris Matthews, and print pundits have compared the Iraq turnout favorably to U.S. national elections, not seeming to understand that 80%-90% of our registered voters usually turn out. The problem in our country is that so few people bother to register, bringing our overall turnout numbers way down.
Howard Kurtz at least looked into the Iraqi numbers. In a Tuesday column, he observed that "the 14 million figure is the number of registered Iraqis, while turnout is usually calculated using the number of eligible voters. The number of adults in Iraq is probably closer to 18 million," which would lower the turnout figure to 45% (if, indeed, the 8 million number holds up).
To put it clearly: If say, for example, 50,000 residents of a city registered and 25,000 voted, that would seem like a very respectable 50% turnout, by one standard. But if the adult population of the city was 150,000, then the actual turnout of 16% would look quite different.
"Election officials concede they did not have a reliable baseline on which to calculate turnout," Kurtz concluded.
It is nice to actually see Howie the Putz working on the side of reality for a change. However, correcting the constant drumbeat of bullshit shoveled out by the administration and the complete inability or refusal of our corporate media overlords to be able to avoid making drastic immediate pronouncements doesn't serve the nation well at all. Naturally, this means it does not serve you well, nor does it obtain its essential function at all.
But, it is just FANTASTIC for the Bush Administration.
So if the press disserves you, it serves Bush well.
Anybody got a problem with that?
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