I'm the freelance questioner for the Trib's Just Asking, the stuffy paper's lame stab at populism. Actually, the experience, however superficial, can be enlightening: the next column, about which TV show people say they never miss, unearthed all sorts of surprising responses, from Good Morning Miami to My Wife and Kids to Charlie Rose. A more diverse assortment than the narrow scope of newspaper TV reviews suggest is important. Also refreshing earlier this summer to be asking people about whether the economic downturn--bathed as it was in ink about panic--was affecting their plans. Most said not really.

Speaking of populism, I'm still trying to deconstruct this quote from historian Jacques Julliard:
Elitism is democracy without the people. Populism is the people without democracy.
Does he mean that the representative elite operate the machinery of democracy detached from the people? And that populism, as with the Charlton Heston's and Ralph Nader's of the world, is the attempt to operate democracy without the machinery? Any ideas?

Other Trib polls: this great spoof of the BCS:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-0210250012oct25,0,2688065.story