Earlier in the week, I made fun of a reporter who sent out an anonymous query asking for anecdotes about whether anyone was getting frisky on election night and whether or not it would lead to a baby boom.

The query didn’t say who it was for other than a “New York publication.” Looks like it was for Obamaweek, of course.

Anyway, the article, “Change You Can Conceive In,” is as bad as I feared. Instead of debunking the notion that baby booms are almost never tied to single events, the article clearly cherry picks quotes and answers a complex statistical question with statements such as “Anecdotal evidence abounds.” Only in the final paragraph do you read:

In order for an Obama baby boom to come to fruition, the sex craze will have to last a while. In August of 2007, the last year for which August birth records are available, Americans bore some 390,000 babies. In demographic terms, to achieve even a tiny boom, the number of babies conceived this month will need to exceed that figure. “So the question,” says Florida State University demographer Woody Carlson, “is whether or not this catches on. If it’s just a moment of excitement and then everybody goes back to being depressed, then we may see a tiny birth spike. But if it continues, then the birth rate next August”—nine months from now—”could be the start of something big.”

In other words, most likely it won’t amount to much of anything. And of course, the reporter for Newsweek doesn’t dare ask the question about whether or not the supporters of the most pro-choice president in U.S. history feel similarly about the value of their own children. That might put a dent in the supposed baby boom. But hey, aside from being more honest about the stats and demographics involved, that would certainly interfere with the happy-days-are-here-again narrative.