[Paleopsych] NYT: Winnowing the Field of America to One Representative

[Premise Checker]

Winnowing the Field of America to One Representative
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/18/books/review/18book.html
Books of The Times | 'The Average American'
[Mr. Mencken would be delighted with this book, even if what he said about the 
average Americano was far more profound.]

    Kevin O'Keefe
    THE AVERAGE AMERICAN
    The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen
    By Kevin O'Keefe

    By WILLIAM GRIMES

    All Americans can be average some of the time, but only one American,
    apparently, can be perfectly average all the time. Kevin O'Keefe, a
    marketing consultant, set out to find that person five years ago,
    armed with fresh data from the 2000 national census and a burning
    desire to pursue and comprehend the very thing he had spent most of
    his time avoiding: life as lived, defined and loved by the vast
    majority of his fellow citizens. "The Average American" is the logbook
    of that quest.

    Mr. O'Keefe tries, somewhat feebly, to put a philosophical gloss on
    his statistical journey. "If I could find the numbers, I could find
    the person, and if I could find the person, maybe I could find a piece
    of myself," he writes, but "The Average American," from start to
    finish, is nothing more (or less) than a clever game. The author
    starts with a pool of candidates that embraces all 281,421,906
    official residents of the 50 United States and the District of
    Columbia counted in the 2000 census, and chapter by chapter, using the
    census and other statistical sources, introduces new categories of
    averageness that gradually whittle that number down to one. His
    eventual winner, and the community he lives in, comes the closest of
    all Americans to matching 140 criteria, from average height and weight
    to average annual rainfall.

    As a piece of statistical analysis, "The Average American" is wobblier
    than a three-legged table. A multitude of numbers are thrown around,
    some from official government sources like the Census Bureau and
    others from opinion polls and marketing surveys. The author does not
    actually insist that his winning candidate match each and every
    criterion. In many cases, it's enough that he belongs to the
    statistical majority. For example, the average American has 12.7 years
    of education, but Mr. O'Keefe decides that a high school diploma,
    which the majority of Americans have, would be sufficient.

    No one is likely to look too closely at the methodology, just as no
    one, listening to a joke, wonders why a rabbi and a priest would walk
    into a bar. "The Average American" is really just an excuse to play
    with numbers and overturn commonly held notions of what the average
    American does and thinks. It's also a golden opportunity for the
    author to hit the road, always traveling in a midsize car, and spend
    time with people like Myklar the Ordinary, a magician who carefully
    explains to his audiences that there is no such thing as magic, and
    Rich Bean, the first politician to run under the banner of the Average
    American Party. Not to mention an 88-year-old Brooklynite named Harry
    Average.

    It is not surprising to learn that most American families do not
    consist of a working father, stay-at-home mother and children. It is
    surprising to learn that such families account for only 7 percent of
    the population. In 1948, 4 percent of American said they were in favor
    of marriages between blacks and whites. In 2002 the number was 65
    percent, and in 2003, 72 percent. The majority of Americans say they
    do not want to become famous.

    Mr. O'Keefe, ruthlessly swinging his statistical scythe, eliminates
    vast populations at a single go. Since most Americans live in a
    one-unit owner-occupied detached dwelling, or private home, more than
    50 percent of Los Angeles County and 99.5 percent of Manhattan
    disappear from contention. The majority of American towns get at least
    some snowfall. Residents of those that do not fall off the list of
    contenders. So long, Florida, except for a few thousand residents near
    the Georgia and Alabama borders, as well as large parts of Texas, and
    all beachside residents in California from Santa Monica to Mexico.
    City dwellers and country folk also fall by the wayside, since most
    Americans live in suburbs.

    Gradually, the average American takes form. He (or she) spends 95
    percent of the time indoors, thinks abortion is morally wrong but
    supports the right to have one, owns an electric coffeemaker, has nine
    friends and at least one pet, and would rather spend a week in jail
    than become president. He (or she) lives within a 20-minute drive of a
    Wal-Mart, attends church at least once a month, prefers smooth peanut
    butter to chunky, lives where the average annual temperature is
    between 45 and 65 degrees, and believes that Jews make up 18 percent
    of the population (the actual figure is between 2 and 3 percent).

    Mr. O'Keefe, a Manhattanite who married late in life, expresses more
    than average astonishment that most Americans, even though they do not
    live in Manhattan or mingle with powerful and famous people, describe
    themselves as happy and place a higher value on family than on work.
    He also comes across as a lot more average than he thinks he is. He's
    a lot less interesting than most of the people he meets, but his
    project is intriguing, combining as it does the elements of a
    detective story and the trivia interest of Ripley's Believe It or Not.

    With the clock ticking, Mr. O'Keefe narrows his search to 94 houses,
    and diligently makes contact with one adult resident in each, probing
    with his list of questions. "This is a joke, right?" one woman asks.
    Not on your life. One by one, his prospects flunk the test. One has
    too many cars. Another lacks a pet. And so it goes, down to the wire.

    Fittingly, the book's final chapter lies midway between a foregone
    conclusion and a twist ending. The author winds up in a strangely
    familiar place, talking to a strangely familiar figure. And average,
    even when distilled to its quintessence, turns out to be exactly what
    you'd expect. What's wrong with that?