Sunday, November 19, 2006

Quiz Night
I went to a table quiz Friday. I was greeted when I got there with news so hideous would freeze the piss in your bladder. I had been taken to a Fianna Fail fundraiser....
For the non Irish Fianna Fail are a populist party with no particular political viewpoint. They had heald office in Ireland lke no other party has in a democracy, except perhaps in Mexico.
Anyway the table quize was normal enough except that half the points went to a family fortunes round. In this you have to guess what other people will name in response to a question. So a typical question is "We asked 100 people to name a green vegitable" and you have to name the most popular 5 responses.
I thought this was telling about Fianna Fail because the quiz unlike any other I had ever attended was not about truth and knowledge but about pandering to popularity. Truth was not important but going along with the crowd was.
Also 100 people were not surveyed, that was a lie. Not only was the questioning based on popularity but it was false popularity. Trying to be all things to all men is bad but claiming you are that when you are just making up your own answers is worse.

1 comment:

Luke McKinney said...

That's some good, pub-related insight. And it's true that most Irish politics can be described by bar analogies.

e.g. "The Taoiseach is like the barman - he runs the place."