Cognitive Dissonance

Thanks to Google I have a personal metric by which to track public awareness of Barak Obama. A post I composed in December 2006, updated several times since then, usually appears on the first screen of results for any search for Barack Obama's religion. I have been able to watch the numbers rise and fall daily for over a year. And because the rest of my two-thousand-plus posts are so obscure, that post receives upwards of seventy percent of all hits, sometimes spiking as much as ninety-plus percent of the last rolling 100. My two hit counters run pretty much the same.

Observation: Interest in Obama's religion spiked after, not before the last two high-profile voting events. The Iowa caucus and yesterday's "Super Tuesday" both showed large spikes. This indicates more people paying attention AFTER the results than before voting.

If that's human nature, it's a sad commentary. When the voting is over it's a bit late to be doing homework.