Average Congressperson as the Benchmark for the Average American?

Ha! Unlike congresspeople, most average Americans have not:

* invested vast amounts of money in ridiculous looking hairpieces that look like something Dolly Parton owned 30 years ago but sent packing when it got the mange

* Made over $100K in base salary for working about one-third of the year, then get incredibly lucrative perks and specials dwarfing their taxpayer-pay

* Had more than three girlfriends/boyfriends/wives simultaneously

* Worshipped Rev. Moon

* Worn their American flags and faith on their sleeves while they're breaking commandment after commandment

* Had the power to get their friends and family any job, out of any trouble

And this barely scratches the surface.

But what brings me to this rant is a post by Jesse at Pandagon regarding a study:

This takes the cake for the absolute worst media-bias "experiment" ever conducted.

Just to let you know how absurd the whole thing is - the relative liberal bias of the media is determined by comparing them to Congress. Also, the study doesn't determine the relative political standing of a think tank (liberal, conservative, libertarian, etc.) by actually reading what the think tank writes - instead, it looks at who cites them, adjusts the think tanks to the ADA scores, and then bases the newspapers' liberalism on how often they cite those specific think tanks (references given for the actual cites are, of course, lacking).

So, the average congressperson (who ranks somewhere around a 39 on the ADA scale) somehow represents the average American. Any source that ranks above the right-leaning average in turn becomes "liberal", even though by the very scale they're using, their "center" is actually outside the ADA range of what's considered "moderate". Also, they throw the Drudge Report into the mix, and use what has to be one of the most boneheaded standards of all time. Since he doesn't cite think tanks, they use his citations of newspapers and average out their score based on the ass-backwards calculations they used to get their liberal scores. By this standard, Drudge is actually a liberal-leaning site. (And by the same standard, Pandagon is actually a conservative site - go figure!)

But, what's amazing is that they use the ADA's scores, but totally dismiss the ADA's own scale for the scores. Instead, they create their own standard, which drags the weight of the "center" towards the conservative end (the figures they give show that the conservatives are more conservative than the liberals are liberal, and that the mainstream media is actually just as close, if not closer to the center than the average Congressperson, and particularly the average Republican). In fact, using the actual ADA centrist score of 50, even the "liberal" New York Times (still less liberal than the average Democrat) is more than ten points closer to the center than Fox News.

And, of course, Instapundit buys into it. The amazing thing is that the study is itself so flawed that it can't show anything of merit, and that even by an actual standard of centrism (instead of one so obviously weighted towards conservatives), the media actually turns out to be really centrist, if slightly liberal-leaning.

Can I just shoot myself in the head now? It has about the same effect as reading junk like this.