There is a campaign tactic team Obama used in 2008 and probably since then. It was developed by the experts in the college psychology departments, and it relies on the pattern they observed that if a person makes a public commitment to do something that person is likely to follow through with it. Here's the real life application. A rock star puts on a performance in front of adoring fans, and at some point in the performance he asks for a verbal commitment from audience members to vote for Barack Obama. Compliant audience members repeat the vow fed to them. On election day they vote for -- guess who?
I probably doesn't work 100% of the time, but it doesn't take 100% of the vote to win an election. And Obama won, not once, but twice.
Anyway, Cecily Strong tried to pull it off at the 2015 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. Watch it at C-span.org. Here's an excerpt from the transcript. Cecily Strong is speaking:
THIS NEXT PART IS A REPEAT AFTER ME. I WANT ALL THE MEDIA TO PUT THEIR HANDS UP AND SWEAR SOMETHING THIS ELECTION SEASON, OK? I SOLEMNLY SWEAR NOT TO TALK ABOUT HILLARY'S APPEARANCE BECAUSE THAT IS NOT JOURNALISM. [LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE]
Did they repeat after her? Some probably did. Did they know they were being played? That's a tougher question. Instapundit observed in 2012 that Jimmy Kimmel had the reporters scratching their heads at that year's Correspondents Dinner when he joked about Fast and Furious.
So while the reporters probably score quite high on intelligence tests, and while they may be capable of being quite knowledgeable about whatever they happen to be reporting on at any given moment, they are not the best informed about anything else.
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