Quote:
Originally Posted by texas*princess
doesn't say how it was so significant... just that a lot of people actually thought she said that bit about Russia which is why I kept asking.
You probably won't agree, but I would argue that 6 percent (of the 1000 voters in the survey) who said the skits were a factor in their decision-making to vote for Obama is not very significant at all.
But that's just my opinion  |
Actually, I said that.
Here's the thing: people are notoriously unreliable judges of their own decision making, so I've basically decided to ignore the 6% figure in light of other evidence. Nobody wants to say "yeah, I made the most important civic decision based upon a comedy routine I watched after a few glasses of wine with my unlovable hedgehog of a wife", right?
It's important because perception is shaped in a massive way by
how things are reported, and
which things are given the greater weight by the person/entity doing the reporting. SNL focusing on her being a vapid, ignorant soccer mom-cum-hillbilly means that, for many people, they accepted Palin as a vapid, ignorant soccer mom-cum-hillbilly, so much so that they believed the SNL skit's language was hers,
exactly, no matter how stupid.
Did Palin contribute to this herself? Of course. In fact, you might even argue that she was actually a vapid, ignorant soccer mom-cum-hillbilly, and I might not even disagree on a macro level. However, the national discussion did not focus on her ideas for America - it focused on her being a moron, her being hot, her being an attack dog, her having a pregnant daughter. The SNL skit and ensuing media blitz played a role in this. Perception is real.