God, Family, and the Green Bay Packers

[Brooks Fudenberg]

On Fri, 10 Jan 1997, Thomas Erdos wrote:

> Jim Maule writes "I think that most people tend to be less outspoken when
> they feel less competent on the subject matter. Is it possible that Americans
> are far less educated  theologically than athletically?"  Absolutely.  From
> time to time, Jay Leno interviews people on the street about basic knowledge
> about the Bible and it is astonishing to hear some of the answers.  I
> regularly play an online trivia game with people around the country.  The top
> scoring people often falter on Biblically oriented questions - although they
> do well on questions from other religions and religious works.

A classic example on a related issue comes from the 1984 Presidential
campaign.  The Mondale campaign was frustrated:  Gary Hart, it seemed to
them, kept *saying* "new ideas,* without presenting new ideas.  But they
could not figure out how to explain this to the people.

The story is that, during a staff meeting, one staffer rushed in, saying,
"I got it!  I got it!  'Where's the beef?'!  'Where's the beef?'!"

The other staffers looked at him like he was crazy.  They had been working
too hard to watch T.V.

Two points:

        (1)  If you want to lead the American people, you must be of the
American people, and that means watching TV.

        (2)  As one columnist pointed out, a hundred years ago,
if politicians wanted to refer to shared experience, they used Bible
stories; today, they use commercials.

Brooks R. Fudenberg
University of Miami School of Law