Great Moments in Journalism
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I was reading Best of the Web's commentary about Wednesday's idiotic vote to end the war when I decided to check how my senators voted. Leave aside the unintuitive design that requires you to click each party's name to see the actual names of the members. Tolerate the egocentrism required to break down all generations into "Baby Boomer" and "Pre-Boomer". Ignore the presumption that establishes a list of regions, but fails to explain how they distribute the states amongst the regions. What I really want to know is:
Who at The Washington Post thinks that astrological sign is a meaningful stratification of Congressional votes?
Comments
Hi Chris,
I'm one of the creators of the votes database, and we included the astrological sign breakdown not because we think it is a particularly meaningful thing but because it was fun and interesting to do. Many folks don't know much about Congress or the way it works; most do know their signs, and if that encourages or interests people to stick around and explore the database, that's great.
Derek Willis
washingtonpost.com
Posted by: Derek Willis | May 30, 2007 04:25 PM
Thanks a lot for stopping by, Derek.
At the risk of insulting my new guest, let me get this straight. You realized there are too many people in America that don't understand how or why their government makes the decisions it does, so you decided a "fun and interesting" way to entice these people to pay attention to the war, the global economy, and the fate of the Republic was to encourage the most superstitious among us to browse your database, where they just might find out how legislators born the same month as them voted on a particular issue.
Didn't it ever occur to you that perhaps it might reinforce the delusion of those same people that the answers to substantive issues like these are written in the stars?
Posted by: Chris![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.theblackrepublican.net/nav-commenters.gif)
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May 30, 2007 08:37 PM