Congratulations to my very dear friends Michelle and Barack Obama on being named the most admired people in America in this year’s Gallup poll.
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The polling service asked a random sampling of people who the living man and woman they admired most were and apparently most people responded “You know exactly what I think.”
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Barack tops the list of men with 19 percent of the responses and Michelle tops the list of women with 15 percent of the responses. This is Michelle Obama’s first year topping the list, which has been dominated by Hillary Clinton for almost two decades. Barack, meanwhile tops his list for the 11th consecutive year. Eleven years! This means Barack Obama was the most America’s most admired man throughout his entire presidency (even the rough spots we don’t talk about), two years into some other dude’s presidency, and even one year before he was inaugurated. I’m not saying we should consider monarchy; I’m just saying democracy is broken and we might as well give the people what they want.
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Gallup interviewed 1,025 randomly chosen people for this poll. First of all, give it up for Gallup for finding 1,000 people who would answer their phone. Wouldn’t be me! If you want to know who my most admired American is, you need to slide into my DMs or something. Actually, can I preemptively vote for Michelle and Barack for the rest of the the decade? That’s my vote. Count it! Representation! Print this out and take it to a notary.
I’m no statistician but this seems like a small number to me. Who are these people? Fellow Americans? Don’t trust ’em. Very wary. You tell me you talked to 1,000 Americans, I’m going to cross my arms suspiciously and wait for you to say something out of pocket like “Did you know in New York, it’s illegal to say Merry Christmas?!” I’m just saying: Americans—not always the best choosers. That’s our national motto, actually. We’re leaning into it in 2019.
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Ask 1,000 Americans if Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez invented climate change and you’re going to go on a journey, honey. Anyone who has ever struck up a casual conversation at a hotel bar knows that you don’t want to ask Americans what they think until you are ready to have your weave blown back by strong opinions loosely held at a loud volume.
How do we know they’re not a bunch of people standing in the 12 items or less line with 15 items? What are these people’s opinions about Love, Actually? How do we know they’re not the kind of people who tweet about how we should give Trump credit for sitting still and not screaming at a funeral? After all, they voted the current president second place on the men’s list. Other men whom Americans said they most admired: Elon Musk (1 percent) and Vladmir Putin (half a percent). Somebody really picked up their rotary phone, turned down Tucker Carlson and told a stranger on the other end of the line that the man they most admired was Vladimir Putin. With their own vocal chords they said this! Please someone release the Quiet Place monsters; we’ve spoken enough.
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However, the option that received the highest percentage of responses, even higher than Barack Obama, was None/No Opinion. “Nobody” being the answer for who is your most admired man is really 2018 in a nutshell.
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On the women’s side of a list that is needlessly gendered according to a binary, other responses besides Michelle Obama included Oprah (duh), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (duh), and Carly Fiorina (excuse me, what?). Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez received 1 percent of responses, as did Jennifer Lopez, Sarah Palin, and Kamala Harris and that is a round-table discussion I’m dying to see.
Less than one percent of respondents listed Beyoncé as their most admired woman so, unfortunately, this poll is trash, statistics are trash, numbers are trash, and questions are trash.
Anyway, congratulations again to Michelle and Barack Obama who are deeply beloved by me and, apparently, many other Americans who have opinions and are willing to speak on the phone in the year 2018.
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