It must be another slow news day. Foxnews.com is reporting on the shocking upset in which a January 2009 Harris poll found President Obama topping a list of people that Americans admire enough to call a hero, thereby knocking the previous winner, another smooth-talking political agitator, Jesus, into second place.
Of course, Harris asked only 2,634 people. Online. People who who have agreed to participate in Harris Interactive surveys. Using the Magic 8 ball sleight-of-hand called statistics to accommodate various situations, their responses are then extrapolated to purportedly reflect the views of the general population.
The multiple-choice reasons from which the 2,634 people selected to justify their choices for their hero included:
- “Doing what’s right regardless of personal consequences” (89%)
- “Not giving up until the goal is accomplished” (83%)
- “Doing more than what other people expect of them” (82 percent)
Also reportedly popular were such reasons as “Overcoming adversity” and “Staying level-headed in a crisis.”
I find it interesting that God, not included at all in the top 1% mentioned in the 2000 survey, came in #11. You could see this as a sign that the country is losing its faith, but I think the current state of the country is a reflection of its decided lack of faith in something greater, and merely evidenced when someone like the perennial campaigner, President Obama, is more admired than the likes of God or Jesus. On the flip-side, though, it could be said that God getting into the top 1% mentioned this time is a sign that some people are starting to look a little farther than their television screens or computer monitors for some modicum of an example of morals and ethics.
Surely that’s more hopeful for the future of this country than calling someone a hero when he’s never held a real job in his life yet has written 2 autobiographies by the age of 46. At least Jesus left the biographies up to his followers. And after his work was finished.