Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Proven with scientific precision by Darren Garnick and Ilya Mirman in Slate: If the Walls Could Talk - The Vanity Index: The biggest egos in the Senate. Garnick and Mirman literally traveled from Senate office to Senate office and quantifying the shrines to the self they encountered:
...There's nothing wrong with being proud of a career achievement or showing off the time you met a celebrity at a charity golf tournament. But when do a few photos or plaques transmogrify into a self-aggrandizing shrine? Where is the line between modest pride and out-of-control egomania?
In a quest to find out, we developed the Senate Vanity Index, a formula that measures the level of egotism displayed in each senator's lobby, the part of his or her office open to the public. (Here's a look at the math--really!--behind our formula. And here's the raw data, in convenient spreadsheet form.) Visiting all 100 offices, we counted every award and picture on the walls--giving special weight to each senator's poses with celebrities, presidents, and foreign dignitaries. We make no claims that our vanity formula is flawless. But we do feel comfortable declaring that we have found a truly bipartisan issue: Of the top 10 egos in our rankings, five are Republicans, four are Democrats, and one is an independent who caucuses with the Democrats...
View the ego map at the link.
OK, so overall, it's a bipartisan list, but that doesn't prevent our very own taking pride of place, true to reputation.
