Monday, May 25, 1998

Up and down in polls

Our society is poll crazy, too poll crazy, so what happened to People magazine's Most Beautiful People poll is a matter of civic encouragement.

People threw open its Web site for the magazine's annual list of the top 50 BPs. The winner was Hank the Angry, Drunken Dwarf, whose rants are a regular feature on the Howard Stern show.

People, with a lofty disdain for the popular will, went ahead and declared Leonardo DiCaprio the winner anyway. That's good for People but maybe bad for poll-driven Washington, D.C., where the popular will is studied daily, even hourly.

When the politicians get a look at Hank the Angry, Drunken Dwarf's poll numbers - he outran heartthrob DiCaprio 20 to 1 - he may wind up as a Clinton Cabinet officer or a Republican candidate for Senate.