A Truly Wonderful Fox News Moment
October 5, 2007 -- 1:46 PM EST // //
You won't be surprised to hear that Fox News cherry-picked from its own poll to portray Democrats as unpatriotic, but this latest one is so comically dishonest that I feel truly privileged -- overjoyed, even -- to be the one sharing it with you.
Fox News is now running with a story that says this:
FOX News Poll: Nearly 1 in 5 Democrats Say World Will Be Better Off if U.S. Loses WarPowerLine and a phalanx of other wingnut bloggers are linking to the poll as proof that Dems are unpatriotic. This is buffoonish enough to begin with. But let's put that aside for a sec.NEW YORK — Nearly one out of every five Democrats thinks the world will be better off if America loses the war in Iraq, according to the FOX News Opinion Dynamics Poll released Thursday.
The percentage of Democrats (19 percent) who believe that is nearly four times the number of Republicans (5 percent) who gave the same answer.
Turns out that if you dig into the guts of the actual poll, you find another interesting number. The survey also asked people whether they've ever prayed for the troops in Iraq. The poll's finding? Eighty-four percent of Dems said they had.
Needless to say, that number wasn't in Fox's story on the poll. But it gets better. Fox's story included a partisan breakdown of the answers to every question in the poll except that one.
You can literally picture the author of the Fox story working through the poll, coming to the number showing that virtually all Democrats reported praying for the troops, and saying: "Whoops, better not include that!" Really, the desperation here is just palpable.
Update: TPM Reader V emails in a nice catch from the poll: More Dems than Republicans have prayed for the Iraq War to end.
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