I'm starting to get really bugged by these polls/studies designed to take smug satisfaction in how little the American population knows (comedic approaches by Rick Mercer excepted, of course) ... here's an excerpt from one such poll which is getting a lot of press coverage around the world (this is from the CBC's):

60 per cent of respondents knew that, on The Simpsons, Homer's son is named Bart. Only about 21 per cent could name one of the ancient Greek poet Homer's epics (The Iliad and The Odyssey)

Then again, how many Classicists could tell us the name of Homer's brother? [I won't be adding comments with the 'answer' to this one]