Montana Jones

Found in my inbox

As preamble you should know that this is from a conversation about this article:
http://www.salon.com/ent/col/fix/2006/01/23/mon/index_np.html

A relevant quote from the Salon piece:

For months now, a chorus of televised talking heads has been predicting that the vast majority of Americans wouldn't stand -- let alone stand in line -- for "Brokeback Mountain." Bill O'Reilly, who memorably promised that red-staters would stay home, predicted, "They're not going to go see the gay cowboys in Montana. I'm sorry. They're not going to do it."

The article goes on to elaborate about film attendance counts in various Montana towns and attempts to draw some conclusions about the right leaning vs. left leaning nature of the state. Now on to the commentary found in my inbox.

So looking at this data set we can state that 65,039 dollars were spent at (let's estimate) $7.00 per ticket for a result of 9,291 people. The collective population of the towns listed is 167,415. This tells us that 5.5% of that population has seen this movie. (Interestingly, 5.5% is consistent with some estimates of the ratio of homosexuals in a community [Kinsey 1948; Gebhard & Johnson 1963]).

While O'Reilly was not entirely accurate when he couched his statement in absolute terms, 94.5% really is not far off within the spirit of his remarks. At the same time, the author's attempt to paint Montana as a not-so-conservative state ignores this fact and does not explain the inconsistency between local and national election results. Understanding this would do more to further the knowledge of Montana's social character than attempting to equate entertainment hype with institutional dynamics - the first being fickle and turbulent and the other having longer range characteristics and sustaining effects.

All this leads me to conclude that this is much ado about nothing as the media continues to consume itself on inane agendas that are more editorial than substance.

Have a nice day.

Posted by: Montana Jones / 10:01 PM