The Will of the Uninformed [Misinformed]

Fox New is frequently accused of spreading falsehoods because a larger number of its audience – compared to other networks - believe that Saddam had something to do with al-Qaida or 9/11.

Jonah Goldberg poses an interesting question:

...if 31 percent of Americans don’t know who the vice president is, fewer than half are aware that Nancy Pelosi is the speaker of the House, a mere 29 percent can identify “Scooter” Libby as the convicted former chief of staff of the vice president, and only 15 percent can name Harry Reid when asked who is the Senate majority leader … why do two-thirds of Americans believe that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’ firing of eight U.S. attorneys was “politically motivated?”

Conceding the fact that there is literally nothing that goes on in Washington that is not “politically motivated,” in this case we must assume that people who answered the question in the affirmative believe a crime was committed. But even the Democrats in congress have not made that accusation.

So, we are supposed to believe that two-thirds of Americans have studied the details of the U.S. attorney firings and come to an informed conclusion that they were politically motivated — even when Senate Democrats agree that there is no actual evidence that Gonzales did anything improper. Are these the same people who couldn’t pick Pelosi out of a lineup? Or the 85 percent who couldn’t name the Senate majority leader? Are we to imagine that the 31 percent of the electorate who still — after seven years of headlines and demonization — can’t identify the vice president of the United States nonetheless have a studied opinion on the firing of New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias?

[asks Goldberg]

The answer, dear friends, is that the people who may not be able to associate the name of Dick Cheney with the office of Vice President undoubtedly are victims of the MSM who have spared no expense to make sure that the worst possible inferences of the Democrats in Congress regarding this administration become the conventional wisdom.

As they did in the Duke non-rape case, as they did in the misreporting in the aftermath of Katrina and as they did by giving mass-murderer Cho his posthumous fame.