Quote of the day, II: If you could become a U.S. citizen by naming the Three Stooges, shouldn't you have to name at least, say, five of them?

"You don't sit and talk about the nine Supreme Court justices every day at lunch."
--Fritz Wenzel, a spokesman for the polling firm Zogby International, commenting on his firm's finding that "a mere 24 percent of Americans could name two United States Supreme Court justices, while 77 percent could name two of Snow White's seven dwarfs"

"In that respect, the results were somewhat predictable," Mr. Wenzel told NYT metro columnist Clyde Haberman in his column today, "Good Thing We Citizens Aren't Tested." Haberman reports that Wenzel "paused before adding, 'but alarming nonetheless.'" (Actually, Mr. Wenzel, not many of us chat about the Seven Dwarfs around the water cooler either.)

What's really got Haberman (whom I usually seem to describe as something like "one of my favorite curmudgeons") going, though, is:

Now, for the first time in 20 years, the government is tweaking the questions it will ask of immigrants who want to become citizens. A new test will be given a dry run starting next month, with volunteers quizzed in 10 cities across the country. . . .

In the new exam, the emphasis will shift somewhat from raw facts to broad concepts. People will be asked, for example, not only what the three branches of government are but also why we have three branches. The idea is to see whether budding Americans understand underlying principles of our democracy.

In other words, we expect them to be better than the rest of us.

And the rest of us, he notes--

are far more able to name the Three Stooges than to identify the three branches of government.

That's not a joke. A Zogby International poll several months ago showed that 74 percent of Americans (and 62 percent of New Yorkers) knew Larry, Curly and Moe, but only 42 percent (39 percent in New York) could list the executive, legislative and judicial branches.

Not surprisingly, the curmudgeonly Mr. Haberman has problems with some of the questions:

As we said, perhaps the new Americans will be better than the rest of us. Still, some of the revised test's 144 questions, ultimately pared to 100, could give them problems.

Question No. 125 on the citizenship agency's Web site (www.uscis.gov) seems off the mark. What is the longest river in the United States? The Web site's suggested answer is the Mississippi. But by some reckonings, the Missouri River is longer.

Question No. 61 could prove tricky. It asks which political party--as of next month, remember--holds the Senate majority. The approved answer is the Democrats. That is correct--that is, unless the Senate's new independent member, Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, pivots to his right and waves the Democrats goodbye.

On a more philosophical note, Question No. 71 asks, "What is self-government?" Two possible answers are provided: "Powers come from the people" and "government responds to the people." Hmm. Under those definitions, would you say that Iraq truly has self-governance?

Question No. 82 calls on would-be citizens to "name two ways that Americans can participate in their democracy." Ten possibilities are offered, among them voting, joining a political party and running for office. Ignored is one of the most fruitful ways used by some Americans: call the likes of Jack Abramoff.

Plenty of time remains, though, to work out the kinks.

By the way, you test takers in Albany [the only city in New York State included among the ten cities selected for the test], make all of us in New York proud. If asked next month for the three branches of government, remember that this is a national exam. Don't tell them an essential New York truth, that the three branches of government are Spitzer, Bruno and Silver.*

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*For the benefit of non-New Yorkers: (Eliot) Spitzer, (Joseph) Bruno and (Sheldon) Silver are, respectively, the (Democratic) governor-elect, the (Republican) majority leader of the State Senate and the (Democratic) speaker of the Assembly. In recent decades a tradition has developed whereby the state budget--and when necesssary other delicate issues--is hammered out in closed session by the governor, Senate majority leader and Assembly speaker, and then passed on to the legislature for what amounts to "ratification."

Note: As usual with hostage-held NYT columnists, the full text of the Haberman column is appended in a comment.


STOOGE-RELATED AFTERTHOUGHTS

The one thing in the above report that continues to trouble me is what we might call the "New York Stooge gap": the Zogby poll finding that "74 percent of Americans (and 62 percent of New Yorkers) knew Larry, Curly and Moe." How are we to account for New Yorkers' relatively deficient Stooge-awareness? (I realize there's also a branches-of-government awareness gap, but first, it's realtively small--at 42 percent aware nationally to 39 percent in New York--and second, how many branches of government does a person really need to know about?

Also on my mind is the possibly excessive Stooge standard I've proposed. Perhaps requiring would-be citizens to name at least five of the Three Stooges is going too far. I settled on five as a realistic number that would lighten the burden of knowledge of the Later, Lesser Stooges (known in some circles as the False Stooges). Perhaps four would constitute a sufficient standard.