‘Duck Dynasty’ vs. ‘Modern Family’: 50 Maps of the U.S. Cultural Divide
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
edit: douche points out that these maps are not purely based on county lines.
I think NYT chose the right methodology, they just got lazy with the labeling.
>When we looked at how many active Facebook users in a given ZIP code “liked” certain TV shows..
> When we looked at how many active Facebook users in a given ZIP code “liked” certain TV shows, we found that the 50 most-liked shows clustered into three groups
Unsurprisingly a TV show based on affinity for Louisiana or affinity for LA will have by far the strongest signal be predictable affinity for either LA area. Likewise the identity politics, its very hard to express surprise that a TV show carefully engineered to appeal to black people, successfully sells to black people, therefore the map of viewers extremely strongly resembles a population map of black people.
If they had corrected for those effects THEN they would have had interesting data.
I did find it interesting that "deadliest catch" correlates more strongly with latitude than distance from the coasts. I've never watched, but I'd assume its mostly set on a boat?
Duck Dynasty and Modern Family is just one more symptom of the cultural divide. It's interesting because it's a small part of a much larger conflict with major political and economic implications that have already been felt (most obviously, the recent US election).
Also for me it's personally very interesting. I'm going to start watching shows that it would not have occured to me to watch, because it's one way to escape my own cultural bubble. Normally Duck Dynasty and Empire wouldn't be on my list, now they are - because it's a way to understand a culture that would normally be somewhat alien to me.
Given the Connecticut Compromise at the start of the union, urban vs rural have been a part of the USA since the beginning.
It's one of the biggest reasons why acreage needs to matter for the Presidency. City, County and State laws can handle everything for the densely populated areas just fine without imposing the desire for those policies on areas with entirely different economic conditions. One of the biggest dangers to the country is counting a high concentration of people in an area who have completely different life experiences and conditions, more than areas that are heavily spread out. Policy does not have equal effects in all places.
It's not much different than saying if India became a US State for some reason that suddenly the 1.3 billion people there should be dictating policy that effected every other US state. It's also why federal policy for just about everything outside of common defense tends to be misguided.
but just not in the Country? We should just be upfront about it then and stop calling the USA a democracy.
Which they are not; and because E.C. votes (at least in the 50 states) are allocated according to Congressional representation, the E.C. reflects the undemocratic nature of the Senate.
Democracy in most countries works this way. Majority of the people affecting the decisions, even if it hurts a minority. Democracy is not always getting what you want, it is sometimes not getting what you want because most of the people want something else.
(WY: 585,000 pop., 3 EV; CA: 38.8M pop., 55 EV).
It's not devastating to the majority if it happens in one or two cities or counties because it's just affecting those cities and counties. If EVERY major city decided to implement it then it would actually be affecting the majority...but as a bonus since every major city would have chosen it they could also just as easily get rid of it if they found it wasn't working in their area.
At the Federal level where it's blanket implemented across the board all the places that don't want it are essentially just screwed since they're too small to have a say in the matter.
If we fully embrace the 10th amendment and give states the comfortable and regular power to reject federal policy, then this becomes a self correcting problem. Legalization laws in Colorado and Washington for example could be totally trumped by the federal government at any point right now. The fed's lack of prosecution is the only thing stopping it.
Currently the only thing stopping big states from mob-ruling smaller states IS the electoral college. In order to change that, you've got to give states the power to essentially reject the federal government at their discretion...which would be great and would largely reduce the demand for change to the EC by virtue of turning the Fed toothless for any policy that people rejected...which again would be ideal long term so that federal elections weren't some constant struggle to see which half of the country got to impose itself on the other half.
States can and will revoke reproductive rights, same sex marriage and other rights. IMHO, Anything that impacts one state directly while not affecting the larger population should be controlled by state, everything else should be federal. This includes marijuana legalization, reproductive rights, same sex marriage, gun control etc. because they are not state specific and majority/minority status of a state has nothing to do with it.
Although the President has a lot of power to carry out immediate action using the agencies under his control, his powers over the long term are extremely limited relative to the legislature and courts. The founding fathers intended that the Senate and Supreme Court be the firewall against the mob rule, not the president or electoral college.
Hamilton's argument for the electoral college in Federalist No 68 was that the electors would be people qualified to be the last firewall against choosing an authoritarian, demagogue, or someone otherwise "not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications" to hold the single most powerful position in the nation. AFAICT he and the other founding fathers considered maintaining a balance of power between large and small states to be a very secondary consideration because that was the purpose of the courts and upper chamber.
> If we fully embrace the 10th amendment and give states the comfortable and regular power to reject federal policy, then this becomes a self correcting problem.
The states have always had the power to do that. From refusing to help federal agencies enforce prohibition to sanctuary cities outright interfering with immigration enforcement to lower courts that routinely ignore higher courts. Even if states could do more to reject federal policy, the Federal government is the only sugar daddy in town that can support their healthcare, social security, defense, and infrastructure habits. The National Minimum Drinking Age Act, for example, didn't set the minimum age to 18 but penalized any state with a drinking age below 21 by stripping them of 10% of their annual federal highway contribution. Now the minimum drinking age is 21 nationwide, despite the fact that any state could have easily ignored the directive at the cost of billions a year in infrastructure spending. As long as the federal government has the money, it has the power to make the states do almost anything it wants.
The point on the Democrats celebrity endorsement is true, but I'd argue that the GOP celebrities, including the Duck Dynasty people, are of the same vein and aren't the rural everyman they portray on the show.
It isn't a matter of wealth, but of culture.
At said, a case can be made that just as there is more than one "IQ", we don't know for certain if the kind of intelligence Trump exceeds at is the kind that will help or hurt in the role of the presidency.
Well, it makes it look like a big hit in Harney County, OR, and a flop in Portland. Which appears to be accurate-- of the people in Harney County, lots of them watch Duck Dynasty. There isn't much fine print there.
Yet Fallon's ratings are still weak in the Duck Dynasty areas. (Being gentle doesn't buy him much?)
I've had a year without late night TV or "mainstream news" and frankly, I feel a lot better. I've been able to focus a lot on furthering my knowledge and experience in technical and scientific things.
Former military? Drive a pick-up truck? Grew up in a trailer? Yeah, nobody wants THAT kind of diversity.
I think Noah will wear on people sooner; to me his tone is more bleak/grim (ignoring content, which is sometimes insightful). His interviews have a more upbeat tone, IIRC.
How are they getting Like data from Facebook Pages that granular from Facebook?
seem not especially urban, but with a pretty sharp drop off right at the Mason Dixon line
seems like maybe it perceived as too much making fun of southern culture? I haven't watched a ton of Ridiculousness (#13)
but my impression of it is that it's a less snarky show with highly similar clip content
and it seems to appeal to a much broader area of the country