A Scale of One to Two

In what is arguably the most famous quote of the 20th century, Andy Warhol is presumed to have said that everyone has their fifteen minutes of fame. Setting aside the fact that it's not what he said at all, I would add to it that everyone has less than one minute when their opinion counts. And even then it doesn't count for much, because it's probably part of a poll with a five percent allowance for error. We're innundated with polls. Every week a new poll comes out showing Hillary preferred over the rest of the Democrats in pre-primary preferences, Rudy Giuliani has climbed one point, and Fred Thompson has surged ahead of Newt Gingrich. Add it up week after week and that's millions upon millions of people being polled yearly about everything from what they think about the economy to their ice cream of choice and nobody's ever asked me squat. But even if they did, let's say I turned out to be in the 12% of the one thousand people "randomly sampled" who would choose pistachio over maple walnut crunch and cookie dough, I could theoretically be shoved into the 5% error category. Put in other terms, the guy I chose to be president won the popular vote, meaning I was in the plus 50% nationwide that wanted him, but the other guy got the job. Which as far as I'm concerned, added to the fact I will probably never be asked anything in a poll, completely negates my opinion.