The “Fact-Check” I’ll Wait Patiently For MPR’s “Poligraph” Feature To Get Around To Doing, Part II
By Mitch Berg
The Claim: Every weekend for the past forty years, Garrison Keillor has closed his “News from Lake Wobegone” segment by claiming all the men are strong, all the women are good-looking, and all the children are above-average”.
But we wanted to know – is it true?
The Evidence: In Keillor’s favor, we note that not only is his claim – like Jeff Johnson’s statement that Governor Dayton is “in trouble” – subjective, but it is in fact dramatic license, a tag line to a series of fictional essays.
However, the winner of the 2014 World’s Strongest Man competition is Žydrūnas Savickas, of Lithuania.
The world’s foremost empirical test of female beauty is the Miss Universe pageant – and the most recent winner, in 2013, was María Gabriela de Jesús Isler Morales of Venezuela.
And since Minnesota stopped requiring graduation testing in 2013, it’s impossible to empirically say what “average” is, or whether Lake Wobegone’s children – fictional though they may be – are above it.
The Verdict – So since neither the world’s strongest man nor most beautiful woman resides in Lake Wobegone, and there is no means to measure the children, we give this claim a rating of “Misleading”.
September 2nd, 2014 at 6:37 am
Thanks for that factcheck, subjective though it may be. LOL Seriously, I wrote this post to highlight the fact that PoliGraph’s opinion about the DCCC’s latest smear against Stewart Mills is mostly BS:
http://www.letfreedomringblog.com/?p=17151
The DCCC said that Mills wanted “to deny care to people with-pre-existing conditions…”
When contacted by MPR, Mills spokeswoman Chloe Rockow said that “Mills isn’t opposed to making sure young adults and those with pre-existing conditions have access to health insurance; he just thinks there are better ways of doing it.”
Based on MPR’s article, they’re arguing that delivering health insurance to people with PECs isn’t the same as delivering health insurance to people with PECs if it isn’t done the same way President Obama is delivering insurance to people with PECs.
September 2nd, 2014 at 8:11 am
Not to mention the fact that Lake Wobegone – like Utopia – doesn’t exist.
September 2nd, 2014 at 9:59 am
Forty years? Really? Lord, it seems more like 100 … Still waiting for the second episode. They all sound like reruns of the first …
September 2nd, 2014 at 11:44 am
With Garrison Keillor being a resident of Lake Woebegon, chances of it having strong men, beautiful women and hence above-average children, especially from an intelligence perspective, are pretty much nil.
September 2nd, 2014 at 11:20 pm
The actual quote is:
“Well, that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”
So, Mitch, your fact-check had four errors in one sentence.
The third letter in “Wobegon” is not “e.”
The last letter in “Wobegon” is not “e.”
The women are strong, not “good-looking.”
The men are “good-looking,” not “strong.”
To be homely, sarcastic, and pedantic is a burden, but it is my burden.
January 29th, 2015 at 6:00 am
[…] no. As we discussed last year, graduation rates throughout Minnesota jumped last year. They did it immediately after the DFL-dominated legislature removed graduation testing […]