The answer probably won’t surprise you.
(via a Sully stunt stand-in)
Update. I realize this is a web poll and thus has no validity. Still amusing, at least to me.
Reader Interactions
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.
Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.
Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.
“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”
Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.
Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.
These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.
It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.
Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.
This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory. oh, and pink furry handcuffs.
Republicans in disarray!
They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.
The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.
There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.
Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.
He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.
Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard
You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.
In my day, never was longer.
Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.
I really should read my own blog.
Everybody saw this coming.
Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.
Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.
BDeevDad
Jon Stewart. Story’s been at the top of Digg for two days.
MysticalChick
So not surprised on this. The court jester is the only one willing to speak the truth.
Napoleon
I am old school and would have went with Chevy Chase.
DougJ
Story’s been at the top of Digg for two days.
Sorry I’m slow on the uptake.
Somebody
What’s up with Iowa loving Katie Couric?
Comrade Jake
Watch the clip of him TPM posted on the birthers/Lou Dobbs. Seriously I haven’t laughed so hard at a Stewart clip in awhile. The way he routinely takes these cable news asshats to task explains the poll completely.
anonevent
And the the rest of the media will miss the point and assume it’s because he’s a comedian. Soon Larry the Cable Guy will be the anchor man at ABC.
flounder
I think the Washington Post is getting tired of doing politics chats. Fashion? Sports? It’s all good.
Morbo
Necessary caveat: it’s an internet poll. Still, Stewart was saying the emperor had no clothes long before anyone else in the press began to notice. Now it is paying dividends.
Michael D.
What does “Sully Stunt Stand-in” mean?
mightygodking
What’s really impressive is that Stewart not only tops the majority of states, but there’s only one state (Vermont) where he didn’t at least come in second place.
Just Some Fuckhead
Clearly freeped by kids and hippies. There’s just no way Brian Williams should have had that many votes.
NonyNony
It’s a web poll. It has no validity other than “someone on the web wanted to push up Stewart’s numbers because that would be hilarious”.
Now he might actually BE the most trusted newsperson these days. I’d believe it – especially when he’s being measured against Katie Couric, Brian Williams, and Charlie Gibson. But this poll is meaningless except as an example of “Time Magazine knows that putting a stupid poll on your website draws eyeballs for your advertisers”. And the corollary that if you put a stupid poll up on your website, you have to actually show the results because that’s what your eyeballs expect.
BP in MN
@Michael D.:
Andrew Sullivan’s on vacation, so there are a bunch of guest bloggers at his site, one of whom posted this.
Matt
They also say that Americans prefer Bing over Google as their favorite search engine, so take the results with a grain of salt.
If you look through the other polls, for some reason Iowa skewers the results of everything. And here I thought it was only important every four years or so.
Bill H
Not only is it an internet poll, but the number of votes is so small as to be completely meaningless on a state-by-state basis, and almost as meaningless overall.
dr. luba
1. What’s the matter with Iowa?
2. Someone screwed up the Michael Jackson poll. Either that, or 95% of the respondents were from Iowa.
timepolls.com/hppolls/archive/poll_results_411.html
El Tiburon
Napolean, you ignorant slut. I know, close enough.
Regardless of the poll’s validity, the fact is who here among us trusts any “journalist” on the teevee?
The only network/cable news I ever see is when it’s being lampooned on TDS or here on the internet tubes.
Nathan
Well, Stewart does a better job of accurately covering the relevant news.
It’s sad, but true. It’s not his fault.
Michael D.
True enough, and I am reasonably sure Doug knows that as well… But hey! I bet the results aren’t that far off!
Joshua Norton
Katie Couric’s numbers look about right.
Brian Williams must have FReeped his own numbers because, no way. Dude – seriously. I wouldn’t trust him to correctly report on the suit he was wearing without a cheat sheet of right wing talking points.
NonyNony
@Bill H:
I don’t know if that’s necessarily true – a sample of 9K people polled would be a reasonable sized poll if it were done professionally and not as a web poll. And if 2K of those votes didn’t come from “the rest of the world”. But yeah breaking it down into state-by-state votes is questionable – especially given that some of the sample sizes are ridiculous (Wyoming has a low population but a sample size of 12?)
As a bit of Internet absurdity though I agree with DougJ – it is funny. Just not something I’d use as evidence when arguing about how absurd our media culture is. (Unless your argument entails the absurdity of major “news” publications like Time conducting and promoting web polls that people mistake for scientific polling – but there are probably better examples of that too.)
MikeJ
9k would be more than reasonable, it would be complete statistical overkill. You only need about 1000 people for a decent margin of error.
DZ
Somewaht OT but very funny.
open.salon.com/blog/mortimer_hayden_smyth/2009/07/22/shocking_report_lou_dobbs_birth_certificate_a_f…
jeff
Whats up with Iowa in the Time polls? They are different from the rest of the US on almost every topic, be it the most trusted newscaster (they picked Katie Couric) to who should get custody of Michael Jackson’s kids (they picked the state).
Martin
Probably not. More likely explanation is that the 18-35 demographic that the web reaches so well is also Stewart’s demographic. I know my mom doesn’t consider Stewart to be a great newsman (though I did convert her away from her ‘liberal’ label of him recently) but she also wouldn’t have done an online poll.
Bill H’s point is that it’s a state-by-state poll, so even with perfect distribution, it’s a sample of 180 people per state, which is shitty, and some states were low double-digits, which is laughable. I can personally get 12 opinions in Wyoming on a single phone call. Unrepresentative doesn’t even begin to describe that.
Ed Drone
“Soon Larry the Cable Guy will be the anchor man at ABC.”
He isn’t already? Could have fooled me!
Ed
slag
An image of previous Time poll results via Good comments. Somebody loves messing with Iowa.
lurkergirl
Trusted, schmusted. The real question is, ‘which newscaster would you rather have a beer with?’
Oh wait, it would still be Jon Stewart.
MikeJ
Oh, no doubt that it’s to few people to break out subgroups, and as you point out in the first part the bigger problem is it’s not random. However, my point was that with a real random sample, the aggregate number is far, far bigger than it needs to be. I think we’re in complete agreement with each other, just each emphasizing different things.
tim
also not surprised. it was the first name that came to mind when i read the post title.
Zifnab
@Joshua Norton:
He’s practically a regular on The Daily Show. And he’s got charisma and appeal. I can’t say I trust him, but I can at least see how his audience would vote for him.
b-psycho
@Martin: What exactly is wrong with calling him a liberal? Personally I’d prefer if the “real” newsfolk were as honest about their own views, makes it easier to filter out bias.
Sure, I can look at blogs and find out that, for example, Brian Williams is relaying Republican talking points. Further more, I can find out that he does that because he subscribes to an institutional view of the media that assumes there are two rational sides to EVERYTHING when in reality, depending on the issue, there could be anything from one reasonable view vs utter nonsense to several reasonable views most of which get ignored. But most of the people that actually watch the evening news don’t do that.
vacuumslayer
No Faux News anchor? Surprising!
vacuumslayer
No Faux News anchor? Surprising!@anonevent:
Dr.BDH
Brian Williams would like to be as popular as Jon Stewart, that’s why he goes on the Daily Show. And then complains that Stewart’s been poking fun at him. And says he looked up to Walter Cronkite the way Stewart must have looked up to Carrottop, and Stewart chops him off at the knees with: “You aspired to be like Walter Cronkite — how does it feel to have fallen so short?”
You do not give Jon Stewart shit…
BruinKid
@dr. luba: That’s because the rest of the world OVERWHELMINGLY wants Congress to pass the resolution, even when nobody in America (other than Iowa) wants to.
And yes, Internet poll, self-selecting, etc.
CalD
I’d have said America’s only newscaster — at least on cable.
Pug
Stewart wins in an electoral landslide. He carried California, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and even Texas.
Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s
Interesting that Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson did well in states that went to McCain/Palin.
Are they not still angry at the treatment Palin suffered at the hands of those two? (snark intended)