Mondo Times Polls

Cast your vote in our current poll, running at our sister service Mondo Stars:

Results of Recent Polls

This poll ran from October 27 to November 1, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"President Obama deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize." True 493/28% False 1279/72%

Votes: 1772

In the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star on October 19, 2009, editor Elbert Bud Jones wrote "Peace Prize is deserved; now, fight for progress:"

"Once again, I felt a sense of pride when I read that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, which to me is reminiscent of his swearing-in ceremony.

How ironic that there are people here depicting him as Hitler or Stalin or other dubious characters.

President Obama deserves this award for looking the other way when certain people of color try to undermine him.

He deserves this award for the steadfast belief that the Republican Party will cross party lines and join him.

He deserves this award for looking the other way when race is brought to bear. Race matters only when the other side implies it.

The Noble Peace Prize committee saw what many Americans also saw--a person they felt will make a difference.

The president should have one more goal: to lose the olive branch, pick up the sword, smite those who obstruct progress, and knight those who go forth to make our country stronger.

We're not looking for El Dorado. Just give each person an equal playing field, one that's not slanted or rigged where only the top half can endure."

This poll ran from October 19 to 26, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Media news stories are frequently inaccurate." True 493/80% False 125/20%

Votes: 618

On September 13, 2009, the Associated Press reported that nearly two-thirds of Americans think the news stories they read, hear and watch are frequently inaccurate, according to a poll released Sunday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. That marks the highest level of skepticism recorded since 1985, when this study of public perceptions of the media was first done.

"The poll didn't distinguish between Internet bloggers and reporters employed by newspapers and broadcasters, leaving the definition of "news media" up to each individual who was questioned. The survey polled 1,506 adults on the phone in late July.

The survey found that 63 percent of the respondents thought the information they get from the media was often off base. In Pew Research's previous survey, in 2007, 53 percent of the people expressed that doubt about accuracy.

The findings indicate U.S. newspapers and broadcasters could be alienating the audiences they are struggling to keep as they try to survive financial turmoil. Pew Research didn't attempt to gauge how shrinking newspapers, reduced staffs and other cutbacks at news organizations are affecting people's perceptions, although the reductions probably haven't helped, said Michael Dimock, an associate director for the center.

This poll ran from October 12 to 18, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Capitalism is unfair and unjust." True 298/30% False 688/70%

Votes: 986

Michael Moore, from an interview in The Onion about his new movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story."

From the interview: "Well-timed to the current financial crisis, Moore's latest documentary Capitalism: A Love Story is his most sweeping agitprop to date, a multi-pronged argument against a system he contends is fundamentally corrupt and undemocratic. Moore recently spoke to The A.V. Club about his new film his desire to rebuild America's economic system from the ground up, and his dual mission to agitate and entertain."

This poll ran from October 5 to 11, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

Do you approve of the job President Obama is doing? Yes 827/39% No 1291/61%

Votes: 2118

This poll ran from September 28 to October 4, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

Are all car dealers morons? Yes 333/54% No 282/46%

Votes: 615

A question posed by Grant Johnson, founder and CEO of Brookfield, Wisconsin-based marketing agency Johnson Direct. He wrote about car dealers on September 15, 2009 at the Chief Marketer web site:

"Here’s a story on poor customer service you may enjoy.

Recently I began the painful process of looking for a new car. A SUV, actually, to replace our 2002 Chevy Suburban, as with 4 kids and a dog, my family does not fit into a traditional car. My wife narrowed her choices to another Suburban or a Toyota Sequoia. This is post “cash for clunkers” and I assumed they would want to dump these gas guzzlers fast.

I forgot to never assume.

I reach out to four (4) Chevy dealers and three (3) Toyota dealers and I can not even get a call back. I go online, try that method, totally ignored. After my 4th or 5th attempt, I finally reach one dealer for each product who will only negotiate if I come to the dealership and when I get more specific, they ignore me and don’t return my calls.

As I write this I still have not made any headway. Car dealers still don’t seem to understand that their model is broken and even worse, treat me, and I am sure many of you, like we are annoying them by wanting to buy their products. NOT a wise way to create raving fans.

Customer service can be a “game changer” in marketing in any economic climate, especially a down economy, yet these automobile dealers just don’t get it. Pay attention to customer service. It will heed you well. Your bottom-line will prove it."

This poll ran from September 21 to 27, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Newspapers offer less each day -- less news, fewer photos." True 350/80% False 87/20%

Votes: 437

Dave Eggers, founder of the American publishing company McSweeney’s and author of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," among other books, from a mass email message he sent to John Lingan at the website Splice Today in May 2009.

Eggers is known for his charity work at 826 National, the nonprofit writing and tutoring centers for children ages six through eighteen. The name originates from the first center Eggers founded seven years ago, in the Mission District of San Francisco at 826 Valencia Street.

"As long as newspapers offer less each day—less news, less great writing, less graphic innovation, fewer photos—then they’re giving readers few reasons to pay for the paper itself. With our prototype, we aim to make the physical object so beautiful and luxurious that it will seem a bargain at $1. The web obviously presents all kinds of advantages for breaking news, but the printed newspaper does and will always have a slew of advantages, too. It’s our admittedly unorthodox opinion that the two can coexist, and in fact should coexist. But they need to do different things. To survive, the newspaper, and the physical book, needs to set itself apart from the web. Physical forms of the written word need to offer a clear and different experience. And if they do, we believe, they will survive. Again, this is a time to roar back and assert and celebrate the beauty of the printed page. Give people something to fight for, and they will fight for it. Give something to pay for, and they’ll pay for it."

This poll ran from September 14 to 20, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"There are no health benefits from eating organic food." True 284/44% False 364/56%

Votes: 648

From the BBC News story "Organic 'has no health benefits'" published on July 29, 2009. The story began:

"There is little difference in nutritional value and no evidence of any extra health benefits from eating organic produce, UK researchers found.

The Food Standards Agency, which commissioned the report, said the findings would help people make an "informed choice".

But the Soil Association criticised the study and called for better research.

Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine looked at all the evidence on nutrition and health benefits from the past 50 years.

Without large-scale, longitudinal research it is difficult to come to far-reaching clear conclusions on this, which was acknowledged by the authors of the FSA review.

Among the 55 of 162 studies that were included in the final analysis, there were a small number of differences in nutrition between organic and conventionally produced food but not large enough to be of any public health relevance, said study leader Dr Alan Dangour.

Overall the report, which is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found no differences in most nutrients in organically or conventionally grown crops, including in vitamin C, calcium, and iron.

The same was true for studies looking at meat, dairy and eggs."

This poll ran from September 7 to 13, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Honduras is a banana republic." True 295/65% False 158/35%

Votes: 453

Congressman Bill Delahunt (D-MA), speaking with Margaret Warner and U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) on the PBS program "Newshour with Jim Lehrer" on September 3, 2009. The segment was about U.S. policy towards Honduras.

Delahunt said: "I think we have to understand the context of Honduran politics. It's been a country that has been ruled by an economic elite. And, with all due respect to the elections that have been held down there, that economic elite exercises disproportionate influence in that democracy. In the past -- and I dare say at times now -- it would be fair to describe Honduras as a banana republic."

This poll ran from August 31 to September 6, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"There is not that much talent in the world." True 124/32% False 268/68%

Votes: 392

Barry Diller, the president of InterActiveCorp and former CEO of Paramount Pictures and Fox, quoted by Scott Rosenberg in his blog at Salon.com, posted on October 6, 2005. Rosenberg wrote:

Barry Diller was the kickoff interview here at Web 2.0 yesterday afternoon, which was more than a little odd, because Barry Diller does not appear to have anything to do with Web 2.0 — if, by Web 2.0, we mean, as conference hosts John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly said, an approach that involves innovation on the Web platform, an “architecture of participation,” lightweight business models, Web services with no lock-in, and so on.

No one has been smarter than Diller about rummaging through the broken and disused parts of old-Web flameouts and using them to assemble money-generating machines in relatively dull markets. And yet he has had no success — maybe even no interest — in creating innovative services or bringing new ideas to the Web. His company is a sort of Night of the Living Dot Com Dead.

Diller does not suffer fools — or interviewers — gladly, and he reserves a special sardonic disdain for tech-industry hype. That can be refreshing. I first heard his digital-skeptic act over a decade ago, at a panel at the old Intermedia conference in 1993, where he shared the stage with Bill Gates, Apple’s John Sculley and cable mogul John Malone. While the other spouted visionary platitudes, Diller simply fumed at their disconnection from his reality. (I wrote about the event for my old paper, here.)

Today, Diller is still wearing his skeptic’s hat; at Web 2.0 he turned it on those among the new wave of Web visionaries who have dared to dream that our new publishing and searching technologies might help bring a wider conversation into being beyond control of the broadcast world’s gatekeepers. “There’s just not that much talent in the world,” Diller says, “and talent almost always outs.”

This poll ran from August 24 to 30, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Three days without television is too long." True 311/39% False 479/61%

Votes: 790

Dave Friedman, president of the Americas for Razorfish, commenting at Chief Marketer about the results of a study by the interactive ad agency about how and why viewers watch television now – and how they'll tune in over the years to come.

"In this experiment, we wanted to see what it was like for the average American family to live without television for an extended period of time, as a way to gauge how important TV is in our collective daily lives.

It was a simple concept: eight average American families, no TV for a week, and we’d pay them $350 to keep photo diaries of their experience.

Then, we got a call from our researchers. No one was going for it. We reduced the timeframe by a couple of days and tried again. Still, no takers. After a few more back-and-forths, we asked the question: How long would you be willing to give up TV for $350?

The answer? Just 2 days.

The study had determined its own headline: Three days without television was too long, a week was unimaginable."

This poll ran from August 17 to 23, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"There is no intrinsic right to health care." True 409/63% False 242/37%

Votes: 651

John Mackey, the co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc., from the op-ed article "The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare - Eight things we can do to improve health care without adding to the deficit" published in the Wall Street Journal on August 11, 2009.

Mackey wrote: "At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund. Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit preferences very clearly — they want supplemental health-care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an "intrinsic right to health care"? The answer is clear—no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K. — or in any other country. "Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health. "Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity — are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices."

This poll ran from August 10 to 16, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

Have you watched a TV show or movie on the web? Yes 162/33% No 322/67%

Votes: 484

In the article "Report: Consumers Substituting Online TV for Cable" published in Mediaweek magazine on July 29, 2009, Mike Shields writes that people are switching from cable TV to watching video online:

"Nearly a fifth of Internet users watch video online almost every day. Women are catching up to men in terms of online video usage. And a growing number of recession-conscious Americans claim they are using the Web as a cable TV substitute.

"Those are some of the more noteworthy research nuggets found in the latest report issued on Wednesday (July 29) by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, which focused specifically on online video. According to the report, 19 percent of Internet users surveyed claim they visit video sites in a typical day, up from 8 percent just three years ago.

"And while Web video continues to skew young and male, in the past year the gender gap has closed, found Pew. This year’s report found that 59 percent of women visit video sites versus 65 percent of men. However, just a year ago only 46 percent of women made the same claim compared to 57 percent of men. Overall, online video viewing is becoming a core Web activity for most: close to two-thirds (62 percent) of adults have watched videos on sites like YouTube, considerably more than the 46 percent of adults who say they active on social-networking sites and far more than the 11 percent adults who regularly use Twitter, found Pew.

"Not surprisingly, given the surging popularity of professional content on sites like Hulu, Pew’s report found that many Web video users are graduating past the short, funny viral clips which helped establish the medium just a few years ago. More than one-third of Internet users (35 percent) claim to have streamed a TV show or movie online, versus just 16 percent in 2007, according to the report. Pew’s research found that watching long-form professional still tends to be a behavior favored by younger users (61 percent of internet users ages 18-29 claim to have done so), though older demographics are catching up.

"And in these tough economic times, for some viewing shows for free online is becoming an attractive alternative to paying for cable. According to a recent Pew report, 22 percent of American adults say they have cut back or cancelled cable in the past year (while only 9 percent have cut back on paying for Internet services). And within that cable-cutting segment, almost a third—32 percent—say they’ve taken the step of connecting their computers to their TV to consume Web video, a step that until recently has proven to be intimidating to most Americans."

This poll ran from August 3 to 9, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"President Obama is governing from the far left." True 843/67% False 410/33%

Votes: 1253

Senator John McCain (R-AZ), from an interview by Stephen Moore in "The Weekend Interview" feature of The Wall Street Journal published on August 1, 2009. McCain said:

“Look, this is a very popular, attractive, and eloquent president,” he continues. “But I think he was elected to govern in a centrist fashion. And instead,” he says, the administration is “governing from the far left.” Mr. McCain thinks this approach will capsize. “They don’t get that this is a right-of-center nation. Sooner or later, it becomes increasingly clear to the American people that he’s out of sync with the majority.” The latest polls are already showing some of this slippage: Mr. Obama’s favorable rating is now just over 50%, down from 70% his first weeks in office."

This poll ran from July 26 to August 2, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"The worst of the financial crisis is over." True 233/23% False 801/77%

Votes: 1034

Graham Bowley, from the article "2 Giants Emerge From the Ruins of Wall Street," published in the New York Times on July 17, 2009.

Referring to the strong second-quarter earnings reported by JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, Bowley wrote: "Both banks benefited from billions of dollars in taxpayer support and cheap government financing to climb over other banks that continue to struggle. They are capitalizing on the turmoil in financial markets and the weakness of their rivals to pull in billions in trading profits.

"For the most part, the worst of the financial crisis is over. Yet other large banks, including Citigroup and Bank of America, are still struggling to return to health."

This poll ran from July 11 to 25, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"People are going to pay for online content." True 194/20% False 787/80%

Votes: 981

Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger, talking at the annual Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho in response to a question about whether people will pay to view videos on the Internet. Joe Flint wrote the story for the Los Angeles Times on July 8, 2009:

"Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger wasted little time setting the tone for this year's Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.

"Getting into his rental car after checking in at the Sun Valley Resort here, Iger held court with the media for a few minutes and declared: "People are going to pay [for] content.... We're not worried about monetizing content." Of course, Disney's ABC network started making some of its content available free on the video website Hulu at the same time it is joining News Corp. and NBC Universal as a co-owner.

"Not surprisingly, it didn't take long for another media executive to pop up and offer a contradiction. Blake Krikorian, the co-founder of Slingbox, the device that enables people to watch their home TV from anywhere, said the industry was "trying to put the genie back in the bottle." Another naysayer was former AOL executive Ted Leonsis, who thought anyone trying to get consumers to pay for content online would be disappointed.

This poll ran from July 6 to 10, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

Was it smart of Sarah Palin to resign? Yes 457/53% No 408/47%

Votes: 865

On July 3, 2009, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced that she is stepping down from office on July 26, after serving 2-1/2 years of her four-year term. She did not reveal her plans.

The Anchorage Daily News reported: "Palin made the announcement at a hastily called press conference held at her Wasilla home as the holiday weekend began. She complained about ethics complaints lodged against her, said the media isn't reporting her accomplishments, and struck conservative political themes like smaller government, resource development and national security."

Speaking on ABC television network program "This Week" on July 5, conservative columnist George Will said "the one that rings most hollow is she doesn't want to put Alaska through the terror of being a lame duck governor. If she is just weary of it, one can understand that. Still, she made a contract with them to serve out her term. And she said, in her own words, she now is a quitter."

Palin's announcement follows closely the release of a widely circulated article about her ("It Came from Wasilla") in the August 2009 issue of Vanity Fair magazine by Toddd Purdum. The article includes damaging statements about Palin from former staffers of the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain.

This poll ran from June 29 to July 5, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Everyone is a fan of Michael Jackson." True 491/23% False 1658/77%

Votes: 2149

Elise Erickson, 28, visiting New York City from Hansville, Washington, said of Michael Jackson, "Everyone's a fan, he's the king of pop." Erickson was quoted in the Reuters News story "World mourns Michael Jackson," published on June 26, 2009.

On June 25, 2009, the 50-year-old pop singer and composer died in Los Angeles after going into cardiac arrest. Legions of fans are mourning his death, including U.S. President Barack Obama, who called Jackson a "spectacular performer."

Sony, one of Jackson's record labels, said this about his life and accomplishments: "During his extraordinary career, he sold an estimated 750 million records worldwide, released 13 No.1 singles and became one of a handful of artists to be inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Guinness Book of World Records recognized Jackson as the Most Successful Entertainer of All Time and "Thriller" as the Biggest Selling Album of All Time. Jackson won 13 Grammy Awards and received the American Music Award's Artist of the Century Award."

This poll ran from June 22 to 28, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

Do you approve of the job President Obama is doing? Yes 774/42% No 1069/58%

Votes: 1843

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, conducted from June 12 to 15, 2009, shows that 56 percent of Americans approve of President Barack Obama's performance, down from 61 percent percent in April.

President Obama's job approval rating fell to 58% in Gallup Poll Daily tracking from June 16-18, a new low for Obama in Gallup tracking.

This poll ran from June 15 to 21, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Newspapers deliver vital information to communities." True 313/76% False 98/24%

Votes: 411

Donna Barrett, the president and CEO of Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc., writing at the Newspaper Association of America web site on April 29, 2009. Barrett wrote:

"Enough already. Partial facts and misinformation about newspapers are distorting the view for everyone, including readers and advertisers.

Let's set the record straight: Newspapers still enjoy considerable readership and deliver strong results for advertisers. More Americans read printed newspapers than own dogs. More Americans read printed newspapers than watch the Super Bowl. Newspapers and their Web sites reach a larger audience than ever before.

The crisis facing newspapers is not an audience problem. It is a revenue problem.

Newspapers deliver vital information to communities, as they have since this country was settled. But something has to pay for all of that news. Advertising has traditionally supported the valuable content provided by newspapers. Two developments have devastated that revenue.

The first is the recession. Newspapers are no different than television, radio, Internet, Major League Baseball, NASCAR and all businesses that rely on other businesses for money from advertising and promotion. The recession has led to a significant decrease in ad spending. Everyone is hurting. Newspapers just talk about it more.

Free Internet sites such as Craigslist are the other factor. These sites siphon off considerable classified advertising.

It is tough to compete against free, and free doesn't pay for journalists."

This poll ran from June 8 to 14, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Journalists deserve low pay." True 211/35% False 386/65%

Votes: 597

Robert G. Picard, a professor of media economics at Jonkoping University in Sweden, a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, and the author and editor of 23 books, including "The Economics and Financing of Media Companies." The comment is from the opinion article "Why journalists deserve low pay" published by the Christian Science Monitor on May 19, 2009.

Picard wrote: "Journalists like to think of their work in moral or even sacred terms. With each new layoff or paper closing, they tell themselves that no business model could adequately compensate the holy work of enriching democratic society, speaking truth to power, and comforting the afflicted.

"Actually, journalists deserve low pay.

"Wages are compensation for value creation. And journalists simply aren't creating much value these days.

"Until they come to grips with that issue, no amount of blogging, twittering, or micropayments is going to solve their failing business models."

Picard added: "To create economic value, journalists and news organizations historically relied on the exclusivity of their access to information and sources, and their ability to provide immediacy in conveying information. The value of those elements has been stripped away by contemporary communication developments. Today, ordinary adults can observe and report news, gather expert knowledge, determine significance, add audio, photography, and video components, and publish this content far and wide (or at least to their social network) with ease. And much of this is done for no pay.

"Until journalists can redefine the value of their labor above this level, they deserve low pay.

Well-paying employment requires that workers possess unique skills, abilities, and knowledge. It also requires that the labor must be non-commoditized. Unfortunately, journalistic labor has become commoditized. Most journalists share the same skills sets and the same approaches to stories, seek out the same sources, ask similar questions, and produce relatively similar stories. This interchangeability is one reason why salaries for average journalists are relatively low and why columnists, cartoonists, and journalists with special expertise (such as finance reporters) get higher wages."

This poll ran from June 1 to 7, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"GM is going to be Obama's Vietnam." True 525/56% False 414/44%

Votes: 939

Automotive historian Bob Elton, quoted in the article "Can "Government Motors" succeed where GM failed?" published by Reuters on May 31, 2009. The article cites "fundamental problems" with General Motors:

"GM, which has posted $88 billion of losses since the start of 2005, has too many plants, too many workers and too many dealerships to be comfortable with a dramatic decline in sales.

The automaker also has more than 3,000 parts suppliers, many of which have strained balance sheets and may require financial support because of extensive production cuts by GM and Chrysler since the start of the year.

"I don't think they're going to be successful in answering the fundamental problems of this company -- they are addressing the financial issues, but not the business issues," said Stuart Hirshfield, a bankruptcy lawyer with the Mintz Levin law firm.

Under the restructuring, GM wants to reduce the number of U.S. plants to 31 by 2012, from 47 facilities now. It has also promised a new small car investment to the United Auto Workers union.

"Although they have made significant progress on the cost side, the product side and the manufacturing footprint are still long-term challenges," Fitch Ratings managing director Mark Oline said.

To fund GM's restructuring, the U.S. government already plans to provide to another $40 billion, on top of $19.4 billion already provided in emergency funds. The total cost could quickly rise if GM falters, analysts caution.

"I think this is going to be Obama's Vietnam," said automotive historian Bob Elton. "Every time he turns around, there goes another $20 billion."

This poll ran from May 24 to 31, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Twitter is a form of torture." True 265/54% False 223/46%

Votes: 488

Adam Sternbergh, from the article "Spam Haiku: Why 60 percent of Twitterers quit," published in the May 17, 2009 edition of New York magazine.

Sternbergh wrote: "It’s likely you’d no sooner heard of Twitter than you learned that Ashton Kutcher was already using it. So was Anderson Cooper. Suddenly, every gnarled politician in D.C. was sending out “tweets” (instant group messages) to their “followers.” (I’m by no means an early adopter, but when John McCain beats me to a new gizmo, I worry.) Even Oprah is tweeting, prompting the Times to announce, “Twittermania has only begun.”

"But one nagging question lingers: Just what is it good for? The implications of hive-mind citizen reporting are interesting, certainly. And it can work as a real-time search engine. But otherwise, being pestered by a constant stream of people’s thoughts sounds to me less like a communications breakthrough than a form of torture devised by Philip K. Dick.

"Recently, Nielsen reported that 60 percent of people who use Twitter once fail to return the following month. (At a similar stage of its growth, Facebook only lost about 20 percent.) In response to this report, one online commenter argued that new users simply don’t get that Twitter is perfect for “involving your brand in relevant conversations.” Eureka! Maybe this explains why so many writers, pundits, politicians, and celebs tweet, even as the rest of America shrugs. After all, those are exactly the types to think that (a) their every stray thought is publishable poetry and (b) it’s crucial to constantly insert their name—their brand—into the conversation.

"Which brings us back to Dan Baum. As it turned out, he had not only a story to tell but a product to sell: his book Nine Lives. A gossip site called Baum’s confessional “a watershed moment for Twitter, and storytelling in general,” and it’s true that a few of his updates achieved a koanlike beauty (e.g., David Remnick’s final dismissal: “?‘That’s not possible,’ he said, and that was that”). But reading this entire tale on Twitter was like reading a novel, line by line, inside a thousand fortune cookies. Not ideal for storytelling, no, but man, what a fantastic gimmick.

"That’s Twitter: A tool to mass-blast the public with whatever message you choose, whether you’re promoting your book or yourself. This practice used to have a different name: spam. But “tweeting” sounds much more cuddly than, say, “shilling,” and Twitter’s a much cuter name than Wiki-spam."

This poll ran from May 11 to 17, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Newspapers are the most trusted news medium." True 210/33% False 435/67%

Votes: 645

Deborah Armstrong, senior VP of sales and marketing at Mediaspace Solutions, a company that places newspaper advertising. Quoted in the article "Higher ad-to-edit ratio not a good thing," published in the July 2008 issue of Editor & Publisher magazine. Armstrong said: "Newspapers are the most trusted news medium. That sense of trust helps your ad when readers see it."

This poll ran from May 4 to 10, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"The only way to win in a casino is to own one." True 505/77% False 147/23%

Votes: 652

Casino developer and operator Steve Wynn, talking with Charlie Rose on the CBS Television Network program 60 Minutes from April 12, 2009.

Wynn has recently opened a new Las Vegas casino called the Encore. At age 67 he is a living legend in the gambling business, having built the Mirage and Bellagio casinos. He sold the Bellagio and Mirage Resorts in 2000, pocketing more than $600 million.

Born Steve Weinberg, Wynn grew up in the gambling business. His father, Michael Wynnn, was a compulsive gambler who owned a string of bingo parlors. When Steve was 10, his father took him to Las Vegas for the first time. Wynn told Rose: "My father had a terrible problem with gambling. He was a guy that enjoyed that activity so much that he lost control of it."

When Wynn was an infant, his father changed the family name from Weinberg to Wynn. Michael Wynn died during heart surgery at age 47, leaving the family with a gambling debt of $350,000. Steve Wynn took over the family business, made a success of it, and paid back the money his father owed.

Wynn told Rose the only way to win in a casino is to own one, "unless you're very lucky." Rose asked Wynn if he had ever known a gambler who went to Las Vegas, won big and walked away. "Never," Wynn replied.

This poll ran from April 27 to May 3, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

Would you miss reading the local newspaper if it shut down? Yes 651/73% No 237/27%

Votes: 888

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press published the results of a study about how concerned Americans are for the future of newspapers on March 12, 2009, titled "Stop the Presses? Many Americans Wouldn't Care a Lot if Local Papers Folded." They reported:

"As many newspapers struggle to stay economically viable, fewer than half of Americans (43%) say that losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in their community "a lot." Even fewer (33%) say they would personally miss reading the local newspaper a lot if it were no longer available.

"Not unexpectedly, those who get local news regularly from newspapers are much more likely than those who read them less often to see the potential shutdown of a local paper as a significant loss. More than half of regular newspaper readers (56%) say that if the local newspaper they read most often no longer published -- either in print or online -- it would hurt the civic life of the community a lot; an almost identical percentage (55%) says they would personally miss reading the paper a lot if it were no longer available."

This poll ran from April 20 to 26, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

Have you heard of Susan Boyle? Yes 973/81% No 233/19%

Votes: 1206

Susan Boyle is a 47 year-old woman from Blackburn, Scotland who auditioned for the TV show Britain's Got Talent on April 11, 2009.

Britain's Got Talent is a British amateur talent competition owned by Simon Cowell. The show is similar to American Idol, where Cowell also appears as a talent judge.

Before her performance, Ms. Boyle said that she has never been married, never been kissed and lives with her cat Pebbles. The unassuming, plain-speaking and plainly dressed woman was greeted on stage by a mix of skepticism and discomfort from the audience and judges alike. She then sang I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables to wild applause and a standing ovation, with the judges tripping over themselves and each other to praise her performance.

Judge Simon Cowell called her singing "extraordinary." Fellow judge Piers Morgan said her "stunning" performance was "the biggest surprise I've had in three years of this show."

Before her performance, Ms. Boyle was unemployed. She sings in the choir of a local church and has lived alone in her childhood home since the death of her 91-year-old mother two years ago.

On April 17, Ms. Boyle appeared on CNN's Larry King Live, where she sang My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion. Ms. Boyle has also been invited to appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Major news media around the world have described her extraordinary and very sudden rise to fame.

At the end of the day on Sunday, April 19, 2009, the two YouTube videos showing her performance had been viewed more than 40 million times. Ms. Boyle will do a record for Simon Cowell's record label.

Susan Boyle Stuns Crowd with Epic Singing - Watch more Funny Videos

This poll ran from April 13 to 19, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Reading everything on the net for free is going to have to change." True 130/24% False 404/76%

Votes: 534

News Corporation Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch, speaking on April 2, 2009 at the Cable Show, the cable industry's largest annual gathering, in Washington, D.C. Dow Jones Newswires reported:

"As for the woes of the newspapers and other media businesses, Murdoch said the proliferation of content available online for free is breaking the industry's business models.

"Nobody is making money with free content on the web except search," said Murdoch, noting the trend is particularly worrisome in the newspaper publishing, where News Corp. owns a variety of assets. "People are used to reading everything on the net for free, and that's going to have to change."

News Corp. owns Dow Jones, publisher of this newswire.

Murdoch predicted that his chief U.S. rival in newspapers, the New York Times Co. (NYT), will have to charge online for access to its flagship newspaper.

"The inventory of display advertising on the web is doubling every year," said Murdoch. "They're never going to make money on an advertising model to replace what they're losing."

The Wall Street Journal, also owned by News Corp., has maintained a successful online subscription business for years, but the New York Times has been unsuccessful with its efforts to charge readers for Web access."

This poll ran from April 6 to 12, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

Is General Motors too big to fail? Yes 203/25% No 596/75%

Votes: 799

In the article "Obama Walks a Fine Line," published in the Wall Street Journal on March 31, 2009, writer Gerald F. Seib argues that General Motors is not too big to fail.

Seib wrote: "There will be some explaining to do on the left about why at least one auto maker -- Chrysler -- is being forced into bankruptcy, and another threatened with the same, while financial firms such as American International Group get whatever help is needed to stay solvent.

"I'm somewhat troubled again by the constant different treatment of auto companies and their employees and the treatment of some of those good-hearted people such as AIG and all those financial companies that have money showered upon them," said Democratic Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, who is generally upbeat about the plan.

"There are, of course, good reasons for disparate treatment of the financial and auto sectors. As important as GM and Chrysler are to the American economy, their demise wouldn't pose the same kind of systemic risk that would come with the demise of a giant financial institution entangled with customers and long-term contracts rippling across the globe. Big as GM is, it probably isn't too big to fail.

"More subtly, the public fuming over the rescue of financial firms is precisely why the administration probably couldn't do a flat-out bailout of GM and Chrysler even if it wanted to. Writing a big check to tide over the two auto makers for a while would have been the far easier path. But there is too much anger, and too little money, lying down that path now. "These companies -- and this industry -- must ultimately stand on their own, not as wards of the state," Mr. Obama declared in announcing his plan.

This poll ran from March 26 to April 5, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"There are too many mediocre magazines." True 368/91% False 35/9%

Votes: 403

Gabriel Sherman, from the article "The Magazine Isn't Dying," posted on March 17, 2009 at The Big Money web site, a service of Slate.

Sherman wrote about the shutdown of Best Life, describing the magazine as "a relic from a bygone era."

He added: "The news of Best Life's demise came on the same day that American Express Publishing announced it was folding Travel+Leisure Golf, an 11-year-old spinoff of its venerable travel title. Taken together, the latest magazine failures signaled to many publishing observers that magazines — long thought to be partly insulated from the digital forces battering the newspaper industry — are locked in their own death spiral. For evidence, they point out that since last March, more than two dozen major magazines have folded.

"But a closer look at the types of magazines that have closed reveals a more nuanced and, in many respects, hopeful portrait of the magazine business. According to a list compiled by Advertising Age, titles that have shut down in the past year come from the shelter, technology, travel, luxury, and teen categories. The reason for each category's challenges are obvious, from a meltdown in the housing sector to teenagers' wholesale abandonment of print for Facebook and Twitter.

"Yet the general conclusion that many extrapolate from these recent shutdowns is wrong. It's not that magazines are dying; it's that magazines that were created solely for advertising or market-share purposes are. New magazine titles often fail from a combination of bad timing, bad thinking, and a bad choice of brands to extend. Put simply, there are too many mediocre magazines (as anyone who gazes at the newsstand at Barnes and Nobles would conclude)."

This poll ran from March 17 to 25, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

Do you approve of the job President Obama is doing? Yes 1280/50% No 1260/50%

Votes: 2540

On March 3, 2009, NBC News (MSNBC) reported that President Obama's popularity rating "is at an all-time high." Mark Murray wrote: "Despite the country's struggling economy and vocal opposition to some of his policies, President Obama's favorability rating is at an all-time high. Two-thirds feel hopeful about his leadership and six in 10 approve of the job he's doing in the White House."

This poll ran from March 2 to 16, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Newspapers help to control corrupt tendencies in government and business." True 525/51% False 512/49%

Votes: 1037

Paul Starr, Stuart professor of communications and public affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and the author most recently of "Freedom's Power" (Basic Books). In the article "Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers (Hello to a New Era of Corruption)," published in The New Republic on March 4, 2009, Starr wrote:

"News coverage is not all that newspapers have given us. They have lent the public a powerful means of leverage over the state, and this leverage is now at risk. If we take seriously the notion of newspapers as a fourth estate or a fourth branch of government, the end of the age of newspapers implies a change in our political system itself. Newspapers have helped to control corrupt tendencies in both government and business. If we are to avoid a new era of corruption, we are going to have to summon that power in other ways. Our new technologies do not retire our old responsibilities."

This poll ran from February 23 to March 1, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"The vast majority of stuff we find on the web is useless." True 272/58% False 194/42%

Votes: 466

Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president of product management at Google, from his post "From the height of this place" on the Official Google Blog on February 16, 2009. Rosenberg wrote:

"Publishing used to be constrained by physical limitations. You had to have a printing press and a distribution network, or a transmitter, to publish to any sort of critical mass, so broadcasting was the norm. No more. Today, most publishing is done by users for users, one-to-one or one-to-many (think of Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, and YouTube). Free speech is no longer just a right granted by law, but one imbued by technology.

"The era of information being more powerful when hoarded has also passed. As our economist Hal Varian has noted, in the early days of the Web every document had at the bottom, "Copyright 1997. Do not redistribute." Now those same documents have at the bottom, "Copyright 2009. Click here to send to your friends." Sharing, not guarding information, has become the golden standard on the web, so not only can anyone publish, but virtually everyone does. This is both good and bad news. No one argues the value of free speech, but the vast majority of stuff we find on the web is useless. The clamor of junk threatens to drown out voices of quality."

This poll ran from February 16 to 22, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"McDonald's serves high quality food." True 296/22% False 1060/78%

Votes: 1356

Jim Skinner, the CEO of McDonald's, quoted in the article "At McDonald's, the Happiest Meal Is Hot Profits" by Andrew Martin, published in the January 10, 2009 edition of the New York Times.

Martin wrote: " It wasn't too long ago that McDonald's, vilified as making people fat, was written off as irrelevant. Now, six years into a rebound spawned by more appealing food and a less aggressive expansion, McDonald's seems to have won over some of its most hardened skeptics.

The chain has managed to sustain its momentum even as the economy and the restaurant industry as a whole are struggling. Month after month, McDonald's has surprised analysts by posting stronger-than-expected sales in the United States and abroad."

This poll ran from February 9 to 15, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

Was Kellogg's right to drop Michael Phelps for smoking marijuana? Yes 1122/65% No 606/35%

Votes: 1728

On February 5, 2009, the Associated Press reported that Kellogg's will no longer use the services of Michael Phelps, the Olympic swimmer who won a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics. Marketing experts have estimated that Phelps could draw $100 million in endorsement deals.

The AP wrote: "Kellogg Co. said Thursday that it will drop its endorsement deal with Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps following his acknowledgment he inhaled from a marijuana pipe. The 23-year-old swimming star has apologized for his "regrettable" behavior and "bad judgment" after a photo appeared Sunday in the British tabloid News of the World that showed Phelps inhaling from a marijuana pipe.

Most of his major sponsors, such as Visa Inc., Speedo, luxury Swiss watchmaker Omega and sports beverage PureSport's maker Human Performance Labs, stood by the athlete following the news, even if they didn't condone his behavior.

But Battle Creek, Mich.-based cereal and snack maker Kellogg said Phelps's behavior is "not consistent with the image of Kellogg."

This poll ran from February 2 to 8, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Personal computers are too hard to use." True 117/22% False 421/78%

Votes: 538

Journalist Walter Mossberg, who writes the weekly Personal Technology column in The Wall Street Journal. He began working for the Journal in 1970 and covered American and international affairs until he changed his focus to reviewing personal technology in 1991. Mossberg's reasoning behind writing the column was that "...All the columns at the time were geeks writing for geeks. The tone was invariably very condescending toward normal people. Either you were a dummy or you became a techie." Mossberg's debut column began: "Personal computers are too hard to use, and it's not your fault."

Walter Mossberg has been called "a champion of the technology to befuddled Everyman" and "the most powerful arbiter of consumer tastes in the computer world today" by Newsweek Magazine, "the most influential computer journalist", by Time Magazine and Brill's Content Magazine considers him to be one of the 25 most influential people in the US news media. In 1999 Mossberg received the Loeb Award For Commentary for his Personal Technology column.

This poll ran from January 26 to February 1, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Newspapers contain too much information." True 111/25% False 327/75%

Votes: 438

Simon Dumenco, from the article "How the Big Gulp Approach to News Makes Readers Scram" published in Advertising Age magazine on January 19, 2009. His mention of "the Trib" refers to the recent change at the Chicago Tribune from a broadsheet to a tabloid format for newsstand buyers:

"The Trib move just underscores what newspaper executives still don't get: They're in the business of producing a product that makes millions of consumers feel bad about themselves. The brutal reality here is really about content, not form. As much as newspapers think they've evolved over the years -- adding colorful infographics and flufftastic lifestyle coverage -- the problem is that they still produce information in a way that makes people feel unhappy. I'm not talking about ain't-the-news-depressing unhappy. I'm talking unhappy as in readers thinking, basically, I just can't handle that much information; I'm already overwhelmed! I don't have time for this in my life! I can't keep up!

Chances are, if you subscribe to a newspaper and don't have a pre-modern life of leisure, your newspaper actually makes you feel bad too, if you think about it. Issues pile up, often largely unread. You think frequently about the dead-tree obscenity of it all, particularly on Sundays, when the first thing you do is peel off section after section you know you'll never read. But even the sections you do want to read you often can't get through. As for individual pieces -- well, a handful of star reporters and a columnist or two might more or less consistently deliver enlightenment, but time and time again you probably find yourself quitting pieces after the first few paragraphs, or somehow getting all the way through them and then thinking, "That wasn't worth my time." That surely happens frequently, too, if you have a habit of reading newspaper content online -- more so, actually, because content written in classic J-school-taught "pyramid style" can seem all the more lumbering and flabby amidst the milieu of crisply written blog posts and zippy data points."

This poll ran from January 19 to 25, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Everybody can be great, because anybody can serve." True 228/62% False 142/38%

Votes: 370

Martin Luther King Jr., quoted by former U.S. Secretary of Defense Colin Powell in the article "Let's Renew America Together," published in the Wall Street Journal on January 17, 2009. Referring to the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20, 2009, Powell wrote:

Next week marks a fresh start for our nation. Whatever one's political leanings, each presidential inauguration is an opportunity for Americans to renew the energy required to deal with the challenges we face -- never more so than when the challenges we face are without precedent.

Over the course of their transition, President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden have spoken with confidence and acted with competence. They've unveiled their plans for governing -- plans that recognize it will require federal money to solve our economic problems at home, and diplomatic and military skill to meet our obligations abroad.

But they also realize an equally important truth. While government has a role to play in restoring the American dream at home and rekindling the dream that is America abroad, there are limits to its ability to restore our sense of purpose as a nation. That task falls to us. Particularly in hard times like these, we are charged with living up to our shared responsibility to one another.

My experience is that in times of need, the American people recognize that when one of our fellow citizens is suffering, those of us with the power to ease or eliminate that suffering should come forward. This is not a time to retreat to our homes and wait until it's safe to emerge. It is the time to give more, to step forward and serve our fellow citizens, and to reach into the reservoir of this nation's unrivaled capacity for good.

That's why, at this moment of great purpose, Mr. Obama has chosen the eve of his inauguration to launch "Renew America Together," his call for all Americans to make an ongoing commitment to better the lives of others in their communities and their country. It's fitting that he will do this on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a day when we honor the legacy of a man who lived his life in service to others and believed that "everybody can be great, because anybody can serve."

This poll ran from January 12 to 18, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Israel is committing war crimes." True 539/36% False 956/64%

Votes: 1495

The title of an opinion article written by George E. Bisharat, a professor at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. The article, subtitled "Hamas's violations are no justification for Israel's actions," was published in the Wall Street Journal on January 10, 2009.

Bisharat wrote: "Israel's current assault on the Gaza Strip cannot be justified by self-defense. Rather, it involves serious violations of international law, including war crimes. Senior Israeli political and military leaders may bear personal liability for their offenses, and they could be prosecuted by an international tribunal, or by nations practicing universal jurisdiction over grave international crimes. Hamas fighters have also violated the laws of warfare, but their misdeeds do not justify Israel's acts.

"The United Nations charter preserved the customary right of a state to retaliate against an "armed attack" from another state. The right has evolved to cover nonstate actors operating beyond the borders of the state claiming self-defense, and arguably would apply to Hamas. However, an armed attack involves serious violations of the peace. Minor border skirmishes are common, and if all were considered armed attacks, states could easily exploit them -- as surrounding facts are often murky and unverifiable -- to launch wars of aggression. That is exactly what Israel seems to be currently attempting."

This poll ran from January 3 to 11, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"The U.S. is a nation of couch potatoes." True 817/79% False 217/21%

Votes: 1034

Meg James, from the article "U.S. households watch more than 8 hours of TV a day," published on November 25, 2008 in the Los Angeles Times. James wrote:

Television viewing is on the rise despite competition from video games, iPods and the Internet.

The U.S. is a nation of even bigger couch potatoes than previously realized.

Nielsen Co. left little doubt Monday when it reported that television use is at an all-time high in the U.S., with home TVs turned on for an average of 8 hours, 18 minutes a day.

A decade ago, American households watched an average of 7 hours, 15 minutes a day.

Television continued to be the screen of choice despite increasing competition from computers. During the third quarter -- when the Olympic Games and presidential debates were broadcast -- American individuals watched more than 142 hours of TV a month, which was five hours more than in the same period in 2007, or an increase of 4%, according to Nielsen. That comes out to more than 4 1/2 hours a day.

(By comparison, the typical American gets only 6 hours, 40 minutes of sleep per night, according to a 2008 poll by the National Sleep Foundation.)

The firm's findings might seem counterintuitive because many experts predicted that the Internet would take a big bite out of people's TV time.

"While new media technologies have offered new entertainment options -- from the Internet, mobile phones and iPods -- television viewing has actually gone up," said David Poltrack, chief research officer for CBS Corp. "Viewing levels continue to climb."

This poll ran from December 20, 2008 to January 2, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

Is there a Santa Claus? Yes 1200/69% No 543/31%

Votes: 1743

In 1897, Virginia Hanlon sent a letter to the editor of The New York Sun:

"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

On September 21, 1897, Francis Pharcellus Church of The Sun replied: "VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Poll Archive

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