"Person on the street" interviews are among the more discouraging presentations one can find on news shows these days. All too often, we see low-information people who think they're so smart show us how disturbingly ignorant they actually are.
That they are disheartening doesn't mean they aren't sometimes entertaining. Fox News's Jesse Watters had one such segment on Monday. He interviewed eight women, several of them attractively endowed by their Creator, at the beach in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. Their intellectual prowess, however, was a bit lacking in certain instances, occasionally hilariously so, as Watters launched into questions about "powerful women":
From the related story at Fox (HT to a frequent tipster; bolds are mine):
Watters .. held up pictures of powerful women in America and asked a total of eight women what they thought of the female leaders.
The first picture was that of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.
Not one of the eight beachgoers were able to correctly identify the Democratic Congresswoman.
... Watters offered a hint to another respondent: "Nancy..."
"Reagan?" the woman answered.
... former First Lady and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Only a few respondents were able to correctly identify her from a photograph. (Back in studion, Watters indicated that only two recognized Hillary. -- Ed.)
... "Are you worried about Ben Ghazi (sic)?" Watters asked, inflecting the second syllable as to make the Libyan city sound like a man's name.
"Isn't he going to be running against her?" another woman said.
... Though one of the women was able to correctly identify Justice (Ruth Bader) Ginsburg as a judge, none were able to name her.
You can't make this stuff up.
The humor wears thin once one tries to absorb the idea that these folks, products of a media environment far too focused on celebrity at the expense of substance — it appears that all of them recognized Beyonce Knowles and Ellen DeGeneres — often vote.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
