We’ve all survived to see another Tuesday, meaning it’s time to answer my mail. I haven’t gotten as much this week as I’d like, but there were two that I simply have to answer.

The first is the most pointed:

So the polls in Michigan were wrong, just like they were in South Carolina. Your hero Zogby didn’t get anything right either, so what do you think is up?

Yes, after my long screed saying that Zogby had the best poll he turned out to be rather wrong on Michigan as well. All I can say in my defense is that when the polls ranged from McCain by 7 to Romney by 8, the final result of Romney by 9 was actually outside of the wide splortch of data we had. That means that something is up, if you ask me.

I think that Christian Conservatives are split between Romney and Huckabee, a division we haven’t seen in recent memory. They also don’t tend to register in polls because they don’t trust the media conducting them (proving that Christian Conservatives are right about something, if for the wrong reasons). I think that the key point here is that the logical candidate of the largest Republican block, Huckabee, simply doesn’t have any money and hasn’t shored up his based. That’s the only way things can be this fluid.

I don’t have the slightest idea how this will settle out at this stage. The possibility that this won’t be decided for a long time is a very real one. Ditto for the Democrats, even though Clinton has a large lead in key states like New York and California – they’ll have to fight this one out in the trenches well into the spring.

I was really glad to see you like the show Avatar. I think it’s not only the best anime ever, I think it’s one of the best examples of children’s literature. It really makes me wonder why cartoons weren’t used to tackle fantasy epics before because they make it look so great.

I think there were a few attempts at this, but it is true that cartoons were never seen as an art form in the USofA generally. They were something of a time-filler that gave people a little bit of something before they settled into the main act at movie houses, and later they filled the Saturday morning lineup without much expense. Perhaps its merely the commercial nature of our approach to entertainment that did them in; kids have typically not been great consumer markets.

I’m very glad that you see it as a kid of literature, too. I think that while this might have worked as a novel (or three) the process of developing a mythological frame requires an intimacy and immediacy that brings the same images alive readily in everyone’s conscience. That means some kind of video is more powerful than a book, where the imagination has to fill in the details. The shared experience of a film is the only way to produce the cultural connection that the subject matter requires – after all, people might quote movie lines, but they rarely quote lines from books.

I could go on for hours about the importance of the message in Avatar, but what matter most is that we’re getting the tools to allow us to relate to a shrinking world. That’s what I care about most. Yes, I realize that the kids get into the marial arts and airbending, but some of the rest of it must be sinking in.

Thanks for you mail, and I love hearing what people have to say about my humble works. You make blogging worth the effort! Let me know what you think as wabbitoid47 at yahoo.com