Spanking their Monkeys

The way you do a poll that sees air in Europe is to flatter and indulge the reader, and in effect, rigging up the outcome. A “world” public opinion poll excluded Americans from answering questions about the US, but asked Europeans questions about Europe.

A majority of people polled for the BBC World Service across 27 countries believe Israel and Iran have a mainly negative influence in the world with almost as many saying the same about North Korea and the United States.

The outcome is obvious, and the BBC will flog it on the air for a good solid week without revealing the fact that it was ginned-up.

Canada, Japan, the European Union, and France were judged most positively. Britain, China, and India received more positive than negative evaluations while Russia was viewed slightly more negatively than positively.

Of course they’ll flog the results on the World Service for 3 days, and try to keep the story alive tomorrow a few days after that by doing a story about their own poll.

Opinions about Venezuela were evenly divided.

Of course they were, all things, ALWAYS being equivalent equal... but it isn’t very hard to explain:

They met, fell in love and had four children. But their story has horrified Germany. They are brother and sister, separated at birth and reunited years later.

The writer goes on to explain in the money quote:

And their story is astonishingly common.

- H/T to Georges