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CBS' weekending Assignment America closer from Steve Hartman happened to recapitulate the search for optimism with which Barack Obama kicked off the newscast. Hartman's premise was that a cockeyed 8% of those surveyed in the latest CBS News opinion poll conducted with The New York Times had rated the economy as improving. Our intrepid reporter went in search of members of the Eight Percent Club and came up with Mark Jastrzembski, a 59-year-old bachelor and retired corrections officer from Muskegon Mich who happens to have between 10 and 15 close friends who have been laid off. "Confounding," is what Hartman called the Polyanna.
Hartman consulted economist Ben Stein--whom he did not identify as a contributor to his own network's Sunday Morning--about the theory of the feedback loop whereby pessimism breeds more pessimism and optimism breeds more optimism. "If collectively all the middle class and upper middle class people in America woke up in a good mood--the same thing as if they had good sex the night before--and went out shopping and investing and starting new businesses, the economy would turn around on a dime," Stein fanstasized.
No word on Stein's advice on the sex lives of working class and poor people.
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