Now That's a Spike!

As predicted, there was a lot of blogging yesterday related to Mr. Bush's statement about Intelligent Design.  Via Blogpulse:

The blue line shows the percentage of blog posts that contained the string "Intelligent Design".  Because it is hard to put the percentage into perspective, I included the yellow line, which represents the percentage of blog posts that include the string "George Bush".  0.25% of blog posts is not a large percentage, but when a phrase is mentioned twice as often as "George Bush," you know it is a subject that people really care about.  What this graph does not show is the amount of commentary the various posts have generated; that's too bad, because it would be even more impressive if it did.

I skimmed the summaries of the first 50 posts, and found a couple of far-right bloggers supporting Bush on this (see link above, and this), and many far-to-middle right bloggers expressing exasperation (1 2 3).

On Blogs for Bush, there was a noteworthy comment:

Comments

Matt:
I appreciate your willingness to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt on the ID issue (well, what would I expect from Blogs for Bush, after all).

However, I can already predict that this cannot be painted as a Republican vs. Democrat issue. I have read numerous right-wing posters on sites such as Right Wing News who belittle ID and anyone who believes that God created the universe. You'll get Republican posters who believe that this is just the issue that the DNC will use to demonstrate how the far-right, Dobson-influenced, theocratic Bush lovers want to force their stupidity on the rest of the country.

For the record, I believe in GOd, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. (and the rest of the historic Christian faith as presented in the Apostles' Creed).

Posted by: adriandrews at August 2, 2005 07:33 PM

I think this is a good point.  For what it's worth, I did not see any liberal bloggers using this issue to criticize Republicans; they were pretty much focused on Bush himself.  

From a political standpoint, since Bush can't run for re-election, this may not turn out to be a very important issue, despite the vast blogbuzz is has generated.  However, now that Mr. Bush himself has put the ID card down of the political poker table, we might expect to see it become part of the political debate in future elections.  Perhaps it will become common for candidates to be asked their position on the issue.  That could get interesting.

Categories: Science, politics
Tags: intelligent design, evolution