Britain is a nation of quiz nights. During the long dark hours of the winter, folks here entertain themselves by going down to the pub and answering obscure questions about Henry VIII's sixth wife.
That being said, one of the more popular BBC programs, QI, devotes itself to debunking received wisdom, urban legends, and media spin by way of a rather twee quiz show. It's hosted by Stephen Fry, known to most Statesider folks as Jeeves in the P.G. Wodehouse series Jeeves and Wooster.
The point to all this being that, during the course of the program, Mr. Fry stated that, according to the Kinsey report, one in six Iowa males reported having sex with a chicken. This is something, as a non-Iowa resident, that I found particularly astounding.
This calls into question the judgment of 1/6 of Iowa males, and the wisdom of all of our political superstructure for spending oodles of time campaigning there. Is McCain aware that he was preaching to chickenpluckers? Obama? Giuliani? What of George W., who made such a big deal about human-animal hybrids and yet spent a great deal of time there in 2000 or so. Surely our media should keep an eye on such scurrilous behavior.
My spouse, being a very tolerant person, thinks that excluding chickenpluckers from political discourse is fundamentally wrong. However, he thinks that the chickens involved should have an equal voice.