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SECTION THURSDAY 5 FEBRUARY 22, 2007 NS N NNW NW NRW W SSW C A PICTURE IS WORTH 200 WORDS … Who are we? There are plenty of marketers and pollsters out there who want to tell us Archeological Society SAP photo Bones: THE SURVEYED Love stories Last week, we asked readers to write SOCIETY a story (200 words or less) based on the news photo (above), which shows a By Cassandra West | Tribune staff reporter skeletal embrace recently unearthed by archeologists in Italy. We received scores ike it or not, you are a member of the you think, buy and desire. Add to that their inquiries of entries. Here are a few of the best: surveyed society. If you use a credit into your habits, beliefs, proclivities and prejudices. card, are a registered voter or shop on- Pile on more snooping into your political leanings, heir meeting was forbidden, this line, rest assured, a pollster, surveyor or sexual preferences and on down to the type of tooth- a hidden escape. marketer has your number — and will paste you prefer — and what emerges is an elastic, T The peak of the mountain be contacting you sooner or later, if not today. sometimes contradictory but constantly developing quietly exhaled a translucent plume, Did you see parallels between the lives and deaths portrait of the “average American.” which curled about the setting moon of Marilyn Monroe and Anna Nicole Smith? A poll In her recently published book, “The Averaged like an erotic dance. wants your opinion. What do you think of the U.S. American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a The man and woman walked the health-care system? A recent survey asked that ques- Mass Public” (Harvard University Press, $35), Sarah shores and gazed at the singing sky. tion. And on the Barack Obama presidential candi- Igo, a University of Pennsylvania historian, tells Though from the different metal of dacy, polls went into overdrive on the question of how survey and polling data have transformed and two warring tribes, their love was an whether Americans might be ready to put an Afri- shaped Americans’ sense of who they are. alloy — tempered, fused and singular. can-American in the White House. To illustrate her argument, she points to a recent They stopped to bathe in the vi- Marketers, researchers, the media and now count- sion’s beauty. less Web sites scramble every day to find out what PLEASE SEE SURVEY, PAGE 8 The first whisper from the lake went unnoticed. The following erup- tions were louder, and the mountain’s lethal breath arose from deep within A CENTURY OF POLLS, INTERVIEWS AND STUDIES THAT HAVE underground arteries connected to HELPED QUANTIFY AND CHARACTERIZE THE AMERICAN PUBLIC the water. Their eyes lowered to the now-living lake, which threw back glistening diamonds of moonlight. The elders often spoke of invisible death coming from the water when the mountain sang in such a way. Just stories, they thought, from a for- gotten time. Army Then a pungent smell, like old 1919 intelligence broken bird eggs, crept low over the U.S. Census reveals a major population tests indicate that the ground. A sudden fading of con- shift from rural to urban areas. average U.S. “mental age” sciousness surprised them. Unstop- is that of a 13-year-old child. pable. No air. No focus. No time. Fall- ing to the ground, they reached for Robert and Helen Lynd’s the familiar. New polls using scientific sampling correctly predict 1929 “Middletown” survey finds Eight generations passed, long af- that Franklin D. Roosevelt will be re-elected. that the U.S. has become a consumer ter the earth had pulled her soft quilt society. over their embrace, before others fi- nally dared venture into the forbid- den land. The Gallup Poll reports that — Jeff Pinkham, Gurnee Alfred Kinsey’s “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” finds that 1939 88% of Americans believe they 37% of American men had engaged in “homosexual contacts.” belong to the middle class. ♥ FOR MORE STORIES, SEE PAGE 2. The Kerner Commission Report on urban civil disorders Michael Harrington’s “The Other America” argues that the United States is “moving toward two 1962 describes one in four Americans as societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.” caught in a “culture of poverty.” The General Social Survey (of the National The Pew Research Center reports, in the wake of 1972 Opinion Research Center) reports that 70.1% of ‘Office’ Watergate, that 61% of Americans respond that Americans are willing to vote for a woman for president. they can “trust the government in Washington to do what is right” “some of the time.” boy Edward Laumann’s survey, The Social The Harris Poll indicates that 81% of Americans support a Organization of Sexuality, finds that 1981 bilateral “nuclear freeze,” prompting commentators to argue 2.8% of men identify themselves as gay or that a “great change” had “transformed the outlook of the American bisexual and 1.4% of women identify them- electorate toward nuclear arms.” selves as lesbian or bisexual. On the first U.S. Census form that permits citizens to check off multiple A Newsweek survey reports 2000 boxes, nearly 7 million Americans identified themselves as members of that 51% of Americans in two or more races. ‘I’ve seen other [spoofs] the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks sup- port issuing national ID cards for all citizens and legal immigrants. According to a CBS poll, 55% of Americans believe that “God created 2004 humans in present form” and only 13% claim to believe in evolution. Pew Reseach Center’s first weekly “News Interest Index” reports that 61% of 2007 Americans believe the press went overboard in covering Anna Nicole Smith’s death. and this one stood out. ... — Sarah E. Igo, author of “The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of Josh is very ambitious.’ a Mass Public” (Harvard University Press) Tribune illustration by Dimitry Tetin — Lee Eisenberg, writer for NBC’s “The Office.” SEE STORY, PAGE 9 WEIGHT GAME ISLAMIC ART THE WATCHER You’re concerned about your 15-year-old Smart Museum exhibit gives Fox saying, ‘See ya later’ daughter’s weight gain. priority to aesthetics. to teen soap ‘The O.C.’ ASK AMY, PAGE 2 PAGE 3 TV PAGE 123456 8 CHICAGO TRIBUNE SECTION 5 TEMPO THURSDAY FEBRUARY 22, 2007 BOOK REVIEW Imperialist ideas in early U.S. history By Carl Hartman Historian Sarah Igo’s recent Associated Press book suggests surveys have transformed Americans’ sense A new book argues that even of who they are. in its earliest days, the new na- tion of the United States took strong stands in dealing with SURVEY: other countries. AP photos The book, “Dangerous Na- In 1941, Dr. George Gallup (left photo, seated), was director of the American Institute for Public Opinion. He is seen with statistician tion” (Knopf, 544 pages, $30), What is Edward G. Benson. Biologist Alfred Kinsey (right photo) authored the earthshaking 1948 and 1953 sexual behavior reports. is written by Robert Kagan, vet- eran of four years in the State wide public audience. leaves no one out. But modern- buy and song you download, us- the University of Connecticut. Department under President an average Before polls and surveys be- period surveys, introduced in ing that information to antici- Polling data can sometimes lead Ronald Reagan. came commonplace in the the late 19th Century, took anar- pate your future purchases and to a distortion of the public’s He says that Alexander Ha- mid-20th Century, people relied rower approach, Igo says. They to suggest titles you don’t even voice, the center notes, with milton, born on a Caribbean is- on literature, movies, photo- often were led by reformers know you want. loaded wording or faulty sam- land, wanted a maritime em- American? graphs and non-fiction books as such as Jane Addams, bureau- Americans didn’t always like pling limiting the capacity to pire like Britain’s. “But most of CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 the primary sources for peering cratic agencies and “amateurs” being polled, Igo writes in the capture a true public opinion. Hamilton’s colleagues, such as into the consciousness of oth- who focused on “problem pop- epilogue of her book, but “they Igo believes that Americans the Virginians Washington and survey showing that more ers. By 1940, Gallup was reach- ulations, marginal people.” But did believe their own responses do have an interest in knowing Jefferson and the Pennsylva- Americans say they would vote ing 8 million people through his a shift happened in the 20th Cen- were critical to the project of a — and perhaps sharing — de- nian [Benjamin] Franklin were for an African-American for triweekly America Speaks! syn- tury: “Surveyors of all kinds representative public.” tails about their lives, though determined territorial imperi- president than they would a dicated newspaper column. started looking at average or Is all this surveying and poll- she’s not sure whether the de- alists who looked westward woman and either one of those “Surveys tap into something typical or normal Americans … ing good? Not always, says Igo, mand would have existed had across the continent for Amer- before a Mormon. Those kinds that’s very, very old, the desire and turned their survey tech- who sees “some dangers in our not “very entrepreneurial and ica’s destiny.” of results, she says, “certainly [of people] to know more about niques on to white, middle-class reliance on survey informa- media savvy surveyors” been Anyone looking westward in shape how Americans think themselves and other people” Americans,” Igo says.