Otterblog

As we head into the primary season ahead of the mid-term elections, it’s time for politicians and those who watch politicians to start paying attention to the numbers.

This is the perfect storm of mid-term elections, because we have a president who is barred from re-election. Come Nov. 8, the attention shifts quickly to 2008. Everybody is jockeying for position and for momentum to get them into position.

One way to get a sense of the electorate is to do a poll. In North Carolina, Elon University has captured a nice little niche in this market with its Elon University Poll. The university has done this for a while, and it’s earned a reputation for nonpartisan consistency.

So what can we make of poll numbers that show the president’s disapproval rating at 52 percent in the southern states that embraced him so strongly in November 2004? A lot and not a lot. Disapproval ratings are notoriously squishy. Americans are a hard bunch to please. A disapproval rating is not the same thing as a referendum and doesn’t mean that a working majority of voters in the region would now vote against him if given the chance.

But what it does show is that with the right candidates, Democrats have some openings. For Republicans, it means more counter-punching and trying to frame the debate on terms they can win, regardless of the president’s approval rating.

The other day we wrote about some students hanging out in front of a cement sculpture. Our reporter on the piece, who is very conscientious, realized her mistake. It was more than likely a concrete sculpture, cement being a part of concrete.

The larger question is this, outside of the Portland Cement Association (yes, such a trade group exists), does anybody care about this distinction? Cement and concrete are essentially interchangeable in most people’s vocabulary, and many, many folks use cement when they really mean concrete.

Journalism is like that. We can be very persnickety about rules.  Our copy desk in particular is an army of smart folks who value precision. For example, most people just say Sheetrock. We don’t. We say wallboard, Sheetrock being a brand of wallboard. Or this morning, we had a brief about man killed after his car hit a utility pole. Many people might say telephone pole and not care whether it’s really a power pole, a telephone pole or both.

Rules about language and grammar are important. They seem less important today, with the lingua franca of the Internet and the idea that if we’re all sending messages from our BlackBerrys, our thumbs don’t have time to mess with punctuation.

I disagree. In the end, language is about communication and communication is about being understood. Precision leads to understanding. Language evolves, of course. But concrete is forever.

Does it matter if our elected representatives live in the districts they represent? On the surface, that seems like a no-brainer. Of course it does. If you live in a community, you’re more likely to know its problems and potential and the people who make it so.

We have two residency issues involving politicians going these days. The first, involves former state Rep. Frank Mitchell, who is challenging Rep. Julia Howard in the Republican primary in the 79th House District, which is made up of Davie County and parts of northern and central Iredell County. Howard claims Mitchell’s true address is in another section of Iredell. She hired a private eye to find out. The whole thing seems sad and funny at the same time.

Then, there’s Vernon Robinson, who is running for the 13th Congressional District, another of our ink-splattered districts. It stretches from Eastern Wake County into Guilford County and across the northern tier counties. Robinson doesn’t live in the district.

Federal candidates don’t need to live in the districts they represent as long as they live in the state. Robinson’s residency problem is strictly a political one. Mitchell’s residency is right now a legal problem, but it is ultimately a political problem as well. Even if he prevails and meets the legal threshold for residency, Howard is likely to pound him in the primary about where he hangs his hat.

Repeat after me:

Homer. Marge. Bart. Lisa. Maggie.
Religion. Speech. Press. Assembly. Petition.

We carried a funny little story today that said Americans are more likely to be able to name members of the Simpson cartoon family than the freedoms spelled out in the First Amendment.

Is that really surprising? Quick. Name the four Beatles. Now name the four presidents on Mount Rushmore (answers at the end.)

It’s easy to view this as yet another sign of American boorishness, but I think the lesson is a bit more subtle. Knowledge is power, but it’s also currency, and we know what we think is worth knowing and has value to others. For better or for worse, apparently most people think a working knowledge of an animated sitcom is more valuable than a working knowledge of the Bill of Rights.

But the truth is that it doesn’t have to be either/or. We have big brains, and ideally we should know about the Constitution and the Simpsons, the Beatles and Mount Rushmore, Hip Hop and Hiroshima. The counter argument is that one group represents enduring American values and history and the other is just music and culture, fads and fashion. Yes and no. At some point, culture that matters changes history.

Answers: From left to right, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln