by JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, October 14, 2003 4:02 P.M. EDT

The Cognitive Elite--II
Why did the San Francisco Bay Area vote against recalling Gov. Gray Davis, while virtually the entire rest of the state went the other way? The San Francisco Chronicle poses the question, and Orville Schell, dean of the journalism school at the University of California, Berkeley, offered this answer: "It strikes me that the better educated people are, more often than not, they tend to be more liberal, and I think this is a very well-educated area."

It's easy to dismiss this as mere ideological prejudice, which it no doubt is. But Schell's statement that better-educated people tend to be more liberal is subject to empirical testing. Here are the findings of the Edison Media Research California exit poll on the recall, broken down by education level (the second column shows the percentage of the total sample that each subgroup makes up):

And here are the findings for the vote on Davis's replacement (CB is Democrat Cruz Bustamante; AS is Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger; TM is Republican Tom McClintock; PC is Green Peter Camejo):

Looking at these figures, we see small differences among high school and college grads, among whom more education seems to correlate slightly with less support for the recall; 62% of each of the three groups voted Republican and 34% or 35% either Democrat or Green. The real outliers are those who've done postgraduate study, who actually opposed the recall and a plurality of whom (49%) voted Democrat or Green (vs. 48% GOP).

There appears to be another outlying group, too: high school dropouts. Because they made up such a small part of the sample, the pollsters were not able to generate definitive numbers. They do, however, give combined percentages for those whose education level is "high school or less": 58% to 42% in favor of the recall, 58% Republican, 38% Democrat or Green.

Based on these numbers, we've derived the following figures for high school dropouts: Against the recall, 55% to 45% (the same proportions as postgrads), and on the replacement ballot 51% Democrat or Green, 41% Republican. Take these numbers with a grain of salt; they aren't statistically reliable. But they are suggestive.

The Democratic "base," it seems, can be found at the extreme edges of the bell curve, consisting of a small number of uneducated voters and a large number of overeducated ones. The educated elite, as we suggested last week, clearly dominates the party. One lesson of the California election, though, is that it's possible to be highly intelligent and educated without being all that smart. If you add together all the Orville Schell types in the California Democratic Party, we bet they have a collective IQ of over a million. But the best idea they could come up with is to tell people to vote for Gray Davis?

What Would We Do Without Filmmaker Moore?
"Filmmaker Moore Says Recall Was Democracy"--headline, Associated Press, Oct. 14

News of the Weird
Al Gore and some liberal investors are "about two weeks away" from striking a deal to acquire Newsworld International, a cable network they plan to remake into a liberal news channel. But AdAge reports they're hoping to avoid the "liberal" label (just like every other liberal news channel). "Instead, it will be aimed at the under-25 crowd," AdAge reports. An unnamed adviser characterizes it as a combination between liberal news channel CNN and liberal music channel MTV.

Meanwhile, Fox News Channel reports on a new poll of Americans' beliefs about the supernatural. The partisan breakdown is interesting:

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say they believe in God (by eight percentage points), in heaven (by 10 points), in hell (by 15 points), and considerably more likely to believe in the devil (by 17 points). Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they believe in reincarnation (by 14 percentage points), in astrology (by 14 points), in ghosts (by eight points) and UFOs (by five points).

Seems to us Gore & Co. are missing an opportunity to throw the Sci-Fi Channel into the mix.

Yankee Stay Here
A new Gallup poll of Baghdad residents suggests that denizens of the Iraqi capital are considerably more pro-American than Democratic primary voters. The poll "found that 71 percent of the capital city's residents felt U.S. troops should not leave in the next few months," the Associated Press reports.

"The biggest surprise," the AP adds, "may have been the public's reaction to the questioners: Almost everyone responded to the pollsters' questions, with some pleading for a chance to give their opinions."

Regime Change Coming?
"Hundreds of Saudis took to the streets Tuesday demanding reforms, witnesses said, the first large-scale protest in this conservative kingdom where demonstrations are illegal," reports the Associated Press. One of the dissident groups behind the protests was the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, which the AP says "champions a liberal, moderate system of government and has never been linked to violence." Ferment in Saudi Arabia is yet another benefit of the liberation of Iraq.

The Iranian Enemy
"Saad bin Laden, one of Osama bin Laden's oldest sons, has emerged in recent months as part of the upper echelon of the al Qaeda network, a small group of leaders that is managing the terrorist organization from Iran," reports the Washington Post:

Like other al Qaeda leaders in Iran, the younger bin Laden, who is believed to be 24 years old, is protected by an elite, radical Iranian security force loyal to the nation's clerics and beyond the control of the central government, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials. The secretive unit, known as the Jerusalem Force, has restricted the al Qaeda group's movements to its bases, mostly along the border with Afghanistan.

A sidebar adds that the Jerusalem Force has "maintained ties with the al Qaeda terrorist network for more than a decade, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials."

The Carter Legacy
"Egyptian filmmakers urged organizers of the Cairo International Film Festival to withdraw the sole Egyptian film from the official competition because its director backs normalization of ties with Israel," Agence France-Presse reports from the Egyptian capital. Uh, aren't American taxpayers sending a billion dollars or so a year to Egypt as a reward for maintaining normal ties with Israel?

If Only Our President Had Said This Last Year
Mohammad Khatami, Iran's figurehead president, is disparaging the Nobel Prize bestowed last week on Iranian human-rights activist Shirin Ebadi, the BBC reports: "The president played down the significance of the award, saying it was 'not very important' and was awarded on the basis of 'totally political criteria.' "

Stop the Presses
"NY Times Writer Bashes Bush"--headline, Daily Cardinal (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Oct. 14

Metaphor Alert
"President Puts Head on Block: The South Korean president, Roh Moo-hyun, put an electoral gun to his head yesterday by calling for a national referendum in December to judge his record in office."--headline and lead paragraph, Guardian (London), Oct. 14

Zero-Tolerance Watch
Caney Creek High School of Conroe, Texas, has decided to expel 15-year-old Brandon Kivi because he let his girlfriend, Andra Ferguson, use his asthma inhaler when she had an attack after forgetting to bring her inhaler to school. Although the two teens both use the same prescription medicine, the school deemed Kivi's actions a violation of its zero-tolerance antidrug policy. (We noted the case Thursday.)

"On Friday, school officials decided to expel Kivi but not press criminal charges," reports Houston's KPRC-TV. Says Kivi: "I'm happy. Everything's final. I'm expelled till after Christmas and I can come back after Christmas, but I won't." He and Ferguson are both leaving Caney Creek High to be home-schooled.

Dispatch From the Porn Belt
A Common Council committee in Milwaukee (Gore by 39.43%) is backing a local establishment's request to be designated a "Center for the Visual and Performing Arts," reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. That would put the establishment "on a par with the Milwaukee Art Museum or Marcus Center for the Performing Arts."

The establishment? The Club Paradise Gentlemen's Club, a nudie bar. If the designation goes through, the club "may soon cater to underage customers, as long as they don't drink alcohol."

Wow, This Stuff Is Addictive
"Supreme Court to Revisit Online Porn"--headline, FoxNews.com, Oct. 14

Appealing to a Higher Authority
"Justices Take Case on Pledge of Allegiance's Reference to God"--headline, New York Times, Oct. 14

The Appellants Must Have Filed a Joint Brief
"High Court Rejects Appeal Over Medical Marijuana"--headline, Associted Press, Oct. 14

Who Knew?
"Study: Yes, Spam's a Problem"--headline, CNET News, Oct. 13

Inside Every Fat Study Is a Thin One Struggling to Get Out

"Report: Fat Americans Getting Even Fatter"--headline, CNN.com, Oct. 14

"Study Finds Americans Starting to Lose Weight"--headline, Reuters, Oct. 14

Mutt Kampf
"A German man is to appear in court charged with teaching his dog to give the Hitler salute," reports Ananova.com. The 54-year-old man, identified only as Roland T., named den Hund Adolf and taught it to lifts its paw up "straight in the salute on command." Roland T. could face up to three years behind bars for "using symbols of unconstitutional organisations." Adolf, meanwhile, is headed for an animal shelter.

Ananova adds that "Carola Ruff, of the local animal protection organisation, says the dog shouldn't be judged for what its owner taught it." After all, it was just following orders.

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