{"id":4054,"date":"2010-04-10T12:22:46","date_gmt":"2010-04-10T20:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=4054"},"modified":"2010-04-10T14:31:05","modified_gmt":"2010-04-10T22:31:05","slug":"obama-as-antichrist-other-modern-myths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/obama-as-antichrist-other-modern-myths\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama As Antichrist & Other Modern Myths"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fond as I am of The Omen<\/em>, Rosemary\u2019s Baby<\/em> and other such devil movies, I can\u2019t claim any great expertise on the question of who may\u2014or may not\u2014be a likely antichrist. On the whole, I don\u2019t think that Obama is a terribly plausible suspect.<\/p>\n

But if those who believe that the current inhabitant of the Oval Office is the antichrist are lost in one myth, those who believe that large numbers of Americans think just that are spreading another. This barely less idiotic legend cropped up during the 2008 election, and I blogged about it<\/a> over at the Corner at the time. Sadly, it has now risen its horned head again, only to be nicely debunked by ABC\u2019s Gary Langer here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Whatever profoundly negative things people might think about Barack Obama, a new poll out today demonstrates splendidly how not to measure them.<\/p>\n

It nails the negativity, all right; this project purports to tote up responses to a list of harsh criticisms of the president \u2013 e.g., that he\u2019s \u201canti-American,\u201d \u201ca racist,\u201d \u201cwants\u2026 an excuse to take dictatorial powers,\u201d \u201cis doing many of the things that Hitler did\u201d and \u201cmay be the Antichrist.\u201d
\nHot words, those. The survey, done by Harris Interactive, apparently was designed to test the theories in a book claiming the \u201clunatic fringe is hijacking America.\u201d The purpose seems to have been to see how many people the pollsters could get to agree to pejorative statements about Obama. Quite a few, it turns out \u2013 but with what I see as a highly manipulative approach to questionnaire design.
\nI\u2019ll lay off the sampling, though this survey was done among people who sign up to click through questionnaires via the Internet in exchange for points redeemable for cash and gifts \u2013 not a probability sample. Been there before. This time let\u2019s just look at what it asked.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Go and look for yourselves. The results are fascinating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fond as I am of The Omen, Rosemary\u2019s Baby and other such devil movies, I can\u2019t claim any great expertise on the question of who may\u2014or may not\u2014be a likely antichrist. On the whole, I don\u2019t think that Obama is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[10,15],"tags":[524,93,140],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4054"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4054"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4056,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4054\/revisions\/4056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}