Catching up: Picking up on Chris Matthews' New Hampshire primary night suggestion (reported that evening on NewsBusters) -- that if pollsters called with an “Archie Bunker voice” they'd “get a more honest answer” -- last week's Weekly Standard magazine's “Parody” page conjured up an imaginary memo to pollsters advising them to mimic the voice of actor Carroll O'Connor's character. Amongst the suggested articulations presented to Zogby International staffers polling South Carolina voters:

Hey! How ya doin'? I'm callin' from th Zogby people, ya know, dem poll guys?...

So, this Clinton dame -- whew! Whaddaya think o' the piano legs on that broad, huh? She's a piece o' work, that senator o' mine, lemme tell ya. I can see why that husband o' hers thinks he's gotta dip his pen in the company inkwell, as we used to say. You gonna vote for her?...

Well, OK, my missus tells me it's time we had a woman President. But I tell her, those Ay-rabs better not start sendin' missiles over this way when it's Hillary's time o' the month, right?...

They got this Maback Bommarama, or Bamak Omarosa, or whatever his name is -- ya know, the colored guy with the big ears -- I mean, c'mon -- you're not gonna actually vote for de guy, are you?... [Reprint below]

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My NewsBusters item, “MSNBC Blames Voters for Bad NH Polls, If Only Archie Bunker Called,” recounted:

During MSNBC's live New Hampshire primary night coverage, former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw warned that poll results getting ahead of the voters could turn the public against the media, but then blamed the inaccurate polling on how “people probably are not as honest with pollsters.” Chris Matthews, who urged an “inquest” on the polls which all had Barack Obama well ahead of Hillary Clinton in the Granite state when Clinton actually won, saw “an ethnic factor here.” Matthews extrapolated on his theory involving “Archie Bunker,” the bigoted 1970s TV character:

I've always thought that pollers, people, pollsters who call people up and ask them how they're going to vote, speak in perfect English, and standard English, they speak with a kind of a politically correct manner and it encourages a politically correct answer. I've often thought that if an Archie Bunker voice were to come over the phone, and ask people how they're going to vote, you'd get a more honest answer.

Weekly Standard subscribers with a user name and password can view the parody page here. Otherwise, a nearly full-size reprint is below of the “memo” from Zogby International published in the January 21 Weekly Standard:

—Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center