As every Fox News viewer knows, Barack Obama is a notorious Islamic Muslim who plans to make the American flag illegal, but sometimes it's a bit embarrassing to admit such things in public, because of The Scourge Of Political Correctness, so the latest poll conducted on behalf of the channel uses some clever phraseology to get around the problem:
Have you heard any of your friends and neighbors say there is something about Barack Obama that scares them?
The result: 49% said yes, 50% said no. Asking people what they think their friends think is an established polling technique for trying to get around the taboo on expressing prejudiced views to a pollster: mysteriously, people aren't bigoted themselves, but their friends quite often seem to be. But another question in the Fox poll is significantly dodgier, treating a biographical fact and a flight of fancy as if they were precisely similar:
Some people believe Barack Obama, despite his professed Christianity, is secretly a Muslim. Others say that is just a rumor and Obama really is a Christian as he says, and point out he's attended a Christian church for years. What do you believe -- is Obama a Muslim or a Christian?
In the event, the percentage of respondents who think Obama is a Muslim came out at the same level as it has done for some months -- 10%. But still -- did somebody say push polling? [Via TPM Election Central]
