Zogby International has published another poll in which Americans prove they watch way too much television. The worst example comes on the difference between knowing the members of the Supreme Court and knowing the members of Snow White's diminutive court:

Three quarters of Americans can correctly identify two of Snow White's seven dwarfs while only a quarter can name two Supreme Court Justices, according to a poll on pop culture released on Monday.

According to the poll by Zogby International, commissioned by the makers of a new online game on pop culture called "Gold Rush," 57 percent of Americans could identify J.K. Rowling's fictional boy wizard as Harry Potter, while only 50 percent could name the British prime minister, Tony Blair. ...

Respondents were far more familiar with the Three Stooges -- Larry, Curly and Moe -- than the three branches of the U.S. government -- judicial, executive and legislative. Seventy-four percent identified the former, 42 percent the latter.

Well, okay, but these are trick questions. After all, we're pretty sure that Grumpy (David Souter) and Sleepy (Ruth Bader Ginsburg) sit on the Supreme Court. The American government can certainly be described as stooges, too, but even we admit that three is just too few. We think that federal bureaucrats and politicians might number more like 15 million, and all of them unfortunately are Larry.

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Or is it the Supreme Dwarfs? According to Captain Ed, Americans are much better at naming the Seven Dwarfs and/or the Three Stooges than they are at naming the members of the Supreme Court or the three branches of government. BMB isn’t terribly s... [Read More]

Tracked on August 15, 2006 8:43 PM