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 February 1 to 7, 2010.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"The iPad is a truly magical and revolutionary product." True 131/34% False 257/66%

Votes: 388

Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Inc., quoted in the article "Apple Takes Big Gamble on New iPad," published by the Wall Street Journal on January 25, 2010. Referring to the new Apple iPad, Jobs said "We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical and revolutionary product today."

The article began: "Steve Jobs took the stage Wednesday to sell the world on one of his biggest gambles since returning to Apple Inc. nearly 15 years ago: a multimedia tablet-style computer called the iPad.

The 9.7-inch touch-screen device, which will let users play games, check email and read books, presents a major challenge to the media, publishing and wireless industries. For Mr. Jobs, it is an attempt to convince consumers they need yet another gadget—one between their mobile phones and laptop computers.

Before a crowded auditorium in San Francisco, Mr. Jobs acknowledged the company faced a high bar. Many past efforts to sell tablets have flopped. But he argued there was room for a new category of devices, especially one that was "so much more intimate than a laptop and so much more capable than a smart phone."

This poll ran from January 25 to 31, 2010.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

Does corporate money lead to political corruption? Yes 901/88% No 122/12%

Votes: 1023

The title of an article by David D. Kirkpatrick, published by The New York Times on January 23, 2010. Kirkpatrick wrote:

"There are two things that are important in politics,” Mark Hanna, the great Republican kingmaker of the late 19th century, once said. “The first thing is money, and I can’t remember what the second one is.”

What was true in Hanna’s century remained true in the next, and since the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, Congress has imposed stricter regulations on money in politics. Advocates of those rules argue that they rein in corruption and increase public trust in government.

But after more than three decades, has the system made a difference?

The question took on new urgency last week as the Supreme Court threw out regulations that prohibited corporations from buying campaign commercials that explicitly advocate the election or defeat of candidates. Democrats called the ruling a threat to democracy; Republicans cheered it as a victory for free speech."

This poll ran from January 18 to 24, 2010.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Newspapers are the biggest solid waste problem we have." True 314/38% False 520/62%

Votes: 834

Ted Turner, from the article "Ted Turner wants to run CNN again" by Paul Bond, published by the Hollywood Reporter on October 15, 2009.

Turner said about newspapers: "You're chopping all these trees down and making paper out of them and trying to deal with all the waste paper. It's the biggest solid waste problem that we have."

At CNN, he wants "less fluffy news and more international news," especially about China, Turner says in an interview set to run on Bloomberg TV on October 23, 2009. "Less talk, more news," he says.

As for Cartoon Network, Turner tells anchor Betty Liu, "If I had control of it, I'd put 'Captain Planet' on at a top time period so that kids would see the environmental superhero instead of just Superman."

This poll ran from January 11 to 17, 2010.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"It's not cool to be Christian." True 245/15% False 1367/85%

Votes: 1612

Fox News Channel anchor Gretchen Carlson, talking with Bill O'Reilly of Fox News on April 29, 2009. Carlson was quoted by Simon Maloy at Media Matters in the article "Fox News: Keeping the faith," published on January 5, 2010. Maloy was writing about Brit Hume, a former Fox News anchor, who failed to ignite much of a controversy with his suggestion that Tiger Woods should renounce Buddhism and embrace Christianity. Hume said: "I don't think that faith (Buddhism) offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith."

Maloy wrote: In a way, Hume's appeal for Woods' salvation was a fitting coda to Fox News' annual winter exercise in manufactured outrage on behalf of the supposedly beleaguered Christian community -- the increasingly ridiculous "War on Christmas." Despite the fact that Christianity is by a long way the world's predominant and, arguably, most influential faith, Fox News continues to insist every year that the entire religion is threatened by an evil coalition of atheists and other militant "secularists" who want to "abolish" Christmas by forcing department store clerks to say "Happy Holidays." And if that weren't stupid enough, Fox stepped on its own ridiculous message by running commercials this year wishing viewers "Happy Holidays."

The "War on Christmas" is part and parcel of Fox News' attitude toward matters of faith -- "religion" equals "Christian." On April 29, 2009, Bill O'Reilly asked Fox & Friends anchor Gretchen Carlson if she thought "the media is anti-religion." Carlson responded: "I do, because it's not cool to be Christian."

This poll ran from January 4 to 10, 2010.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Print magazines as we know them will cease to exist." True 287/54% False 248/46%

Votes: 535

Ruth Reichl, the editor of Gourmet magazine until it was shut down in October 2009, from an interview with John Koblin in the New York Observer titled "Ruthie in Wonderland! Ruth Reichl Reflects on Conde Nast," , published on October 16, 2009.

Koblin wrote: "Ms. Reichl, who has given only two interviews since her magazine folded last week, took a few minutes to talk about Condé Nast with the Observer. She said she would write a book about Condé Nast, and we asked for a small preview.

“It’s a very rarefied world,” she said. “It was a world that most people—I had no idea that this particular world existed. I sort of think of it as ‘Ruthie in Wonderland.’ People are fascinated by the world. It’s a life that is probably coming to an end.”

What would change, we wondered?

“That kind of luxury that we all had is probably a thing of the past. The new business realities have changed the life at Condé Nast. I think print magazines as we know them will cease to exist.”"

This poll ran from December 28, 2009 to January 3, 2010.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Unless we start afresh about things, we will certainly do nothing effective." True 175/69% False 78/31%

Votes: 253

G. K. Chesterton (May 29, 1874 – June 14, 1936), the English journalist, novelist, and essayist. George Bernard Shaw described him as "a man of colossal genius."

Chesterton wrote: "The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards. Unless a man be born again, he shall by no means enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."

This poll ran from December 21 to 27, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

Is there a Santa Claus? Yes 751/74% No 269/26%

Votes: 1020

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.

This poll ran from December 14 to 20, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Tiger Woods is alot like the rest of us." True 773/47% False 864/53%

Votes: 1637

Jack Shafer, from the article "Par for the Course - Why we can't get enough of the stories about Tiger Woods and the Salahis," posted at Slate on December 2, 2009. Shafer wrote:

"Given how desperately we want to believe in a human god, it didn't take much peddling from Team Tiger for us to accept Woods as a modern deity. With every new tournament victory, every new product endorsement, his divinity grew. His marketers made him a symbol of tolerance and brotherhood, and his father, Earl Woods, spoke gibberish about his son being a creature of destiny. Getting married and having children only added to Woods' marketability. I'm divine and monogamous and the center of a happy nuclear family. And we ate it up.

So now that the "real" Woods has been revealed as a wild bone-daddy who behaves more like your out-of-work, alcoholic brother-in-law than an object of worship, we feel cheated. Aside from the hundreds of millions he's earned from golf tournaments and endorsements, turns out he's a lot like the rest of us. Our hunger for salacious news about him isn't necessarily about voyeurism. We're embarrassed by the gap between who we believed Woods to be and who he really is; and, having put Woods on that pedestal, we want to bring him down where he belongs—with the rest of us sinners. We're like the kid who, upon learning that there is no Santa Claus, conducts a wide-ranging investigation to determine how such a fraud was perpetrated on him. And we'll keep consuming Woods news until our picture of him more closely conforms with reality. We love to crown kings and cultivate messiahs. And then kill them.

"I'm human and I'm not perfect," Woods said in his post-crash communiqué to his public. "I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect," he reiterates in his second communiqué, published today, in which he confesses his "transgressions." Gee, Mr. Woods, where did we ever get the idea that you were perfect? Oh, from you!

This poll ran from December 7 to 13, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"People don't read anymore." True 255/36% False 451/64%

Votes: 706

Steve Jobs, from an interview with John Markoff of the New York Times for the article "The Passion of Steve Jobs," published on January 15, 2008.

Markoff wrote: "Today he had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading.

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

This poll ran from November 30 to December 6, 2009.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"Cash is the best holiday present." Yes 437/67% No 213/33%

Votes: 650

George F. Will of the Washington Post, from the op-ed article "Economic Boost? Bah, humbug," published on November 29, 2009. Will argues that Christmas gift-giving is "destroying billions of dollars of value." From the article:

"Were it not for sentimentality about sentiments, which are highly overrated, we would behave rationally, giving cash, thereby avoiding value subtraction. We almost do that with wedding registries. And cash for Christmas, or semi-cash in the form of gift cards, no longer seems so tacky. Between 1998 and 2005, gift card sales grew 27 percent a year. They now are about one-third of Christmas spending and rank near the top of lists of preferred gifts."

However, Will acknowledges that buying gift cards puts billions of unused dollars in the pockets of retailers, as many of the cards are never used: "A tenth of gift cards' values, worth billions of dollars, are never redeemed. The cards are lost Christmas morning in the blizzard of wrapping paper, or just forgotten."

Poll Archive

See the results of previous polls:

• True or False - comments and opinions in the news
• Health
• Law & Order
• Media, News & Journalism
• Politics & Politicians
• Sports
• Terrorism
• War in Iraq