memory…
I posted a piece from the Washington Post the other day on how hard a
job mythbusters have. The article provoked an interesting thread on
the AAPOR list. Among the points: people often remember that things
are associated, but not the precise details of the association.
I’m not supposed to forward messages from the list, but one poster
reported on a 1991 survey in the Detroit area. Several respondents
knew Sen Joe McCarthy was somehow associated with communism - but
thought he was a communist, not an anti-communist. Several white
respondents remembered Rosa Parks as a black woman who gave up her
seat on the bus.
And then there’s this precious definition of the Tet offensive: “The
line in football where you have three backs and you split a wide
receiver to the right. A handoff to the running back.”
Doug