The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

Answers to Questions Nobody Is Asking

  • “Sen. Hatch in 1995: ‘Running for Re-Election Is Not on the List’ for 2012”–headline, Investor’s Business Daily website, March 13
  • “Why I Am Still Not Sorry I Left France”–headline, National Review Online, March 13

Out on a Limb
“Picking Perfect Bracket Would Defy the Odds”–headline, Associated Press, March 13

News You Can Use
“Ignoring Sequestration Won’t Make It Vanish”–headline, Washington Post, March 13

Bottom Story of the Day
“Canadians Worry That Female Hockey Players Go to U.S.”–headline, InsideHigherEd.com, March 13

Try Not to Think of a Muslim Elephant
“Liberal blogs and sites are having a field day with new data from Public Policy Polling that shows that 52 percent of Mississippi Republican [sic] believe President Obama is a Muslim,” writes The Atlantic’s David Graham. He wishes polling companies would stop asking the question:

The Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan has researched misperceptions and conspiracy-theory belief in America politics. In particular, he and colleague Jason Reifler have found that false ideas, once introduced, are very hard to get rid of. One especially bad way to fight them is to reiterate them:

“The more times a false claim is repeated, the more likely people are to be exposed to it. The fewer people exposed to a false claim, the less likely it is to spread. It is also important not to repeat false claims because people are more likely to judge familiar claims as true. As false claims are repeated, they become more familiar and thus may come to seem more true to people.”

The pollsters, by asking the question, and news outlets, by gleefully publicizing the results, are playing into this vicious cycle [sic].

Of course, by publishing an article criticizing PPP [Public Policy Polling] for repeating the claim that Obama is Muslim in a poll asking if Obama is Muslim, Graham is himself repeating the claim that Obama is Muslim.

And guess what? We’re guilty too! By writing an item pointing out that Graham is repeating the claim that Obama is Muslim when he criticizes PPP for repeating the claim that Obama is Muslim by running a poll asking if Obama is Muslim, we are also repeating the claim that Obama is Muslim. Damn us.

That claim, by the way, is totally false. Obama is not a Muslim. Though the way things are going, he might as well just convert.

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”