Media Myth Exposed: 84 Percent of Americans Happy With Lives

If you listen to the nattering nabobs of negativity in the media and on the left, the overwhelming majority of Americans think they're falling behind financially, are despondent about their lives and their futures, and are desperately looking for a change.

Yet, a new poll out from the folks at Gallup confirms what NewsBusters, the Business & Media Institute, and parent the Media Research Center have been saying for years: people are far happier with themselves and their lives than press members care to report.

In fact, the difference between what people feel about their immediate environment and what they think is going on outside of their sphere of influence is a stunning indictment of just how skewed media's account of the world really is.

For instance, here's the first result from Gallup that's got to utterly depress folks in newsrooms across the fruited plain (emphasis added throughout):

According to the Dec. 6-9, 2007, poll, 84% of Americans say they are satisfied with the way things are going in their personal life at this time, while 14% are dissatisfied. These results have been fairly stable since Gallup first started tracking Americans' personal life satisfaction in 1979. The percentage of Americans who say they are satisfied with their personal life has averaged 82% over this period, with a low of 73% in July 1979 and a high of 88% in December 2004. (It is worth noting that in the same Dec. 6-9 survey only 27% of Americans said they were satisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time, providing a vivid contrast between Americans' view of things "out there" across the country and their view of their own personal lives.)

Let's break this down, shall we?

First, who provides folks' view of things "out there?"

That would be the press, right?

As such, more than three times as many Americans believe things are going well with what they can directly see with their own eyes versus what they have to rely on the media to report to them.

Pretty stunning, yes?

Furthermore, quite contrary to what those suffering from and spreading the dreaded Bush Derangement Syndrome affirm, people are actually happier with their lives under the current president than the average since 1979.

That certainly goes counter to what we see, hear, and read from press members on virtually a daily basis, isn't it, and quite suggests that the media couldn't be more wrong about the temperament of the society.

To give us a clue as to why reporters are so gloomy is the following Gallup finding:

Republicans are more likely than independents or Democrats to say they are very satisfied with their personal lives and that they are very happy.

Maybe more important, Democrats and Independents are almost twice as likely as Republicans to be somewhat or very dissatisfied with their lives.

I guess that's why folks like Keith Olbermann and Rosie O'Donnell always sound so bitter.