Is voter ignorance killing democracy?
BY CHRISTOPHER SHEA
(11/22/99)

Chris Shea correctly notes that voters want less government but want more from it. But he is wrong about the source, which is ambivalence, not ignorance.

The recent study by Albert H. and Susan Davis Cantril, "Reading Mixed Signals: Ambivalence in American Public Opinion about Government," presents the results of an extensive national survey designed specifically to get at this group of voters. The Cantrils find that, as a group, these voters are no worse informed than a) voters who seem more consistent in wanting to shrink government and have fewer programs or b) voters who think government size is fine and want more programs. The Cantrils do, however, find other distinguishing features about ambivalent voters, features that are extremely important because they are also important swing voters.

The study finds that people's opinions on issues in public debate today have more to do with ambivalence than with demographic characteristics, with the exception of age, or with whether they describe their political views as conservative, middle of the road or liberal. Among people generally critical of government, the Cantrils find, six considerations stand out as especially important in explaining levels of ambivalence:

1) Differences of opinion about how much attention government should pay to the concerns of low-income Americans. Those who think government is paying too little or the right amount of attention to the poor are more likely to be more ambivalent in their criticism of government than those who think too much attention is given to the poor.

2) Differences in how much people think their communities are affected by what goes on in other parts of the country. Those who sense interdependence tend to be more ambivalent as critics of government.

3) Differing levels of confidence in the executive agencies of the federal government. Critics who are more confident are usually more ambivalent in their criticism of government.

4) Differences of opinion about how to deal with the issue of race. Government's critics who think the country still has a long way to go in working for racial equality are more ambivalent.

5) Age. Younger critics of government tend to be more ambivalent in their thinking than older critics.

6) Differences of opinion about getting ahead. Those who think there are times when circumstances stand in the way are more likely to be ambivalent as critics than those who think anyone can get ahead with hard work.

-- Joseph Brinley
Director, Woodrow Wilson Center Press

Americans aren't ignorant and uninformed -- just the opposite, in fact -- but the elites who run for office obviously believe the myth. We're bombarded with idiotic, name-calling, preschool-level ads, debates that are composed of smirky remarks and no substance, and a choice of two people who support the same thing -- the status quo.

Quite frankly, under the electoral system we have today, my vote doesn't really count. Because a choice between two wealthy spoiled brats whose main goal is to protect their interests -- interests that are alien to mine -- is no choice at all. The system is so dependent on money that it is really just a bidding contest.

-- Juliane Schneider

Americans aren't too dumb to vote -- but we are too dumb to have "direct democracy," an idea we're going to hear more and more of as the average Joe American goes online: "To hell with all these representatives. We'll vote for everything over the morning coffee." I want a deliberative democracy which has a lot of smart and principled representatives working full-time for me. I wouldn't know the first thing about how to balance the budget or which missile would be the best buy, but I would hope I could elect someone who shares the same principles as I do to go to Washington and do that work for me.

-- Vincent Basehart

In many ways, our republican form of government is designed to allow the people not to sweat the details. My neighbor and I don't need to know how milk subsidies work; we elect representatives to take care of that kind of thing for us. Ignorance is no virtue, but there was no golden age of informed voting in America. In the 19th century, voters often knew their congressman by sight but couldn't name the president. Furthermore, voters in the past were far more likely to vote party tickets than voters today. If the republic could survive the Know-Nothing movement, it will probably survive the MTV generation.

-- R. Scott Rogers

What's really needed is an examination of just how much information the "average" American really has access to. In cities like Washington and New York (where many journalists and pollsters live), it's easy to assume that everyone has ready access to reams of daily political coverage. In fact, though, this is not the case in much of the country.

I look at my father, who lives in a small town in Pennsylvania. He reads two papers daily -- one from the town in which he lives and one from a neighboring, larger town. Neither devotes much space to national politics. Sure, he could subscribe to the Washington Post or the New York Times to round out his reading, but many people are too busy to read that many papers each day (and television news is certainly not that enlightening) or surf the Internet for news (and despite the incessant media coverage of the Internet, many Americans still do not have computers). Are American voters truly ignorant or do they just not have as much access to information as we'd like to think?

-- Julia Thomas

Not this year, dear
BY SANDY MORRIS
(11/23/99)

I was married to a man with virtually no sex drive for 10 years. Unfortunately, in order to cover up his inadequacies, he blamed it on me, telling me that I was "completely undesirable." It was unbearably frustrating, and the frustration caused other problems, until we were constantly fighting. I couldn't take it anymore and finally divorced him. I think men like him should tell their intended spouses how they feel about sex. In our case (this was 1958), he told me that he "respected" me, and wanted to wait until we were married. I was too naive to know any better. I often wondered whether he was gay; after reading this article, I probably have the answer.

-- Barbara Herman

Most religious and philosophical traditions have viewed sexual desire as a distraction from the real business of attaining understanding. Freedom from sexual desire is one of the great compensations of old age. Perhaps the pseudonymous husband's problem is not lack of desire, but living in the wrong culture.

-- Stephen Judd

Trapped in a health net
BY ANDREW LEONARD
(11/22/99)

The healthnet.com vs. healthnet.org problem would be easy to straighten out if people paid attention to what those domain name suffixes mean. A .com is a corporation; an .org is a nonprofit. Is HealthNet HMO a for-profit corporation? Then it gets the .com, and it can't have the .org -- enough said.

But more and more, people are disregarding this elegant, straightforward scheme, and those who assign the domain names are guilty of dereliction of duty in letting them get away with it. Companies that can't have the .coms they want are shamelessly poaching the .nets (which are supposed to be reserved for network service providers). Meanwhile, nonprofits have been forgoing their rightful .orgs and snatching up .coms, at least in part because of the browser makers' incredibly vile and annoying decision to use .com as a default suffix (that is, if you type "blarg" on the address line, it automatically resolves to www.blarg.com, not www.blarg.org). How much longer can the .edus, .govs and .mils keep their respective suffixes sacrosanct?

As for the behavior of the HMO -- well, we don't really expect any better of an HMO, do we?

-- Keith Ammann
Albany, N.Y.

This latest domain name/trademark battle highlights the difficulty in legislating the appropriate distribution of domain URLs. The fact is that for almost any domain, there are multiple uses, multiple meanings and multiple people or organizations with an interest in the pride of ownership. Attempts to decide ownership based on legal threats or suits are arbitrary at best. They completely contradict the concept of reward for personal ingenuity. Let the free market reign.

-- Douglas Bates

Sharps & Flats: "Chant Down Babylon"
BY MICHELLE GOLDBERG
(11/23/99)

Bob Marley was the one man you would think people would respect enough not to sample and steal from. It's shameful and ridiculous. Even more ridiculous than the act itself is the reason given to justify it -- to fulfill his dream of reaching young black Americans.

That's a little too simplistic and selfish. Marley's goal was to spread the word of his god, Jah, and the ideals of his religion and Haile Selassie. This included reaching more than just young black Americans. Marley's son and the artists on the "tribute" are the ones who want to reach young black Americans, and for no other reason than for the money in their pockets.

-- Jason A. Cato

On being Ken
BY TIM CORNWELL
(11/23/99)

Tim Cornwell must be the smartest dad in the world. Not for his ability to improvise being Ken, but for his instinctual awareness of the benefits of spending an hour playing Barbies with his daughters rather than insisting on playing something he perceives as fun. Cornwell is right: He will eventually long to hear his daughters' pleas of getting on the floor and mixing things up with Barbie and Ken. I know I do -- especially when my 14-year-old is heading off to rock concerts and repeated midnight showings of "Rocky Horror Picture Show," and my 11-year-old is begging to wear makeup to the Friday night teen gathering.

-- Kathy Hogan

Tim Cornwell seems to have the Barbie spirit down. But why did he "nervously" put a stop to his daughter's inter-Barbie love plot line? I'm guessing Cornwell's daughter isn't a budding lesbian or even old enough to be fishing for a father/daughter sex talk. She does seem innocently curious. One day she may wonder why Daddy let Ken go without pants in public, but wouldn't let the queen of China kiss Ariel the mermaid.

-- Dale Tegtman

"The Devil's Cup" by Stewart Lee Allen and "Uncommon Grounds" by Mark Pendergrast
BY RICHARD REYNOLDS
(11/23/99)

I want to defend myself against reviewer Richard Reynolds' perception that my book, "Uncommon Grounds," is overly academic. I'm proud of my scholarship, and the book is indeed thoroughly documented, but I think readers will find that the writing itself is casual, informative and sometimes quite funny. I'm fond of the "Women's Petition Against Coffee" (1674), for instance, in which the women of London vented their frustrated belief that coffee had rendered their "more kind gallants" impotent. "Never did Men wear greater Breeches," they wrote, "or carry less in them of any Mettle whatsoever." There's coverage of the Maxwell House Showboat, a radio show so popular that people lined the Mississippi waiting for a glimpse of the mythical coffee boat. And then there's the hilarious 1939 radio show featuring Mae West that nearly got Chase & Sanborn kicked off the air.

-- Mark Pendergrast
Author, "Uncommon Grounds"
Essex Junction, Vt.

Cult of the cloth
BY LISA MORICOLI LATHAM
(11/22/99)

Lisa Moricoli Latham says she joined an online parenting group looking for information. Once there, she found an abundance of friendly advice and guidance in making a pricey purchase. (She writes, "The ladies were welcoming and gracious, spending what must have represented several collective man hours answering questions.") She used this advice to her advantage in caring for her own child, and then proceeded to turn the entire experience into fodder for an article making rather nasty and highly specific fun of the nice folks who assisted her.

-- Katie Allison Granju

I was very dismayed at the tone of the article "cult of the cloth." We have two wonderful children we adopted in '97(at 20 months and 9 months). After about four months I was amazed at the amount of money we were spending keeping two kids in disposable diapers and the amount of garbage we were generating. When I walked in my son's bedroom one afternoon and caught him eating pee-filled gel capsules from his diaper I decided to switch to cloth diapers and wraps. I didn't pin or deal with velcro, but used snap diapers and snap wraps. I didn't dunk my diapers in the toilet, though I did wash them at home. It was amazingly simple and easy. And I was amazed at how quickly my two kids wanted to start using the potty.

It is easy to become "addicted" to cloth diapering and want to buy all the latest kinds and styles. But it is a harmless addiction -- and it can be a lot of fun.

-- Patricia Davis