Still the Lowest

IN THE MOOS The following write-up won Professor Sandy Dolomite the No-Bull Pieces Prize for original research in Political (ahem) Science.

Title

Man’s Advancement in 113 Years Since Mark Twain’s Experiment

Abstract

An ideologically diverse group of individuals is locked into a reality television room and observed to retest Mark Twain’s assertion that man is the lowest animal. Given certain ambiguities, a roomful of kindergartners was used as one control group and a cage full of animals was used as another. The tested presumption is that highly evolved 21st century humans, in full possession of political correctness (PC) will behave civilly. The preliminary result seems that PC has no effect.

Introduction

With the evolution of political correctness, will a diverse group of political ideologues, locked together in a reality television show learn to get along in comparison to a control group of kindergarteners?

(Might Mr. Twain’s primitive 19th century multi-cultural group of religious men have been designed to fail in comparison to his control group of animals? After all, in Twain’s experiment the men all killed each other and the animals napped away the afternoon undisturbed.)

Hypothesis: Given PC, we expect that folks of differing political ideologies will behave civilly towards one another and accept a reasoned debate, which should make riveting television entertainment against which the KCOW News Network can sell lots of advertising for.

Materials and Methods

We borrowed, albeit in modified form, Twain’s protocol. We locked the people in a fully stocked and restful house in the Hollywood Hills. The children were given a comfortable suburban kindergarten room with plenty of toys and snacks. The animals were still placed in a cage, but it’s next to the pool behind the reality TV house with a really great view.

In the house we locked: a Democrat, a Republican, a self-identified member of the Tea Party movement, a Libertarian, a Social Conservative, an Independent, a member of Code Pink, and a correspondents from Fox News and MSNBC. The kindergarteners, in an attempt to maintain ideological diversity, were the adult subjects’ children. The animals were provided by a local petting zoo and consisted of: a pig, a sheep, a llama, a cow, a hedgehog, a donkey, an elephant, a giraffe, and a polar bear that had floated south on an ice floe and had been held on charges of illegal immigration to figure out if it knew of any weaknesses the Canadian hockey team (the authorities had been tipped off about the menacing killing machine by Stephen Colbert).

Results

Thirty seconds after the front door closed, the Independent turned on the television to a news program and the group immediately began to debate the objectivity of the newscast, whether or not television was the devil’s work, and if the television was a government plot to dumb down the populace or give it brain cancer. A wrestling match over the remote control ensued. The Code Pinker tried to keep the peace by suggesting that the group turn off the television while they were there but was ignored.

After five minutes, the correspondents suggested a meal was in order. When the Social Conservative suggested grilling the provided steaks, the Code Pink member explained that wasn’t possible because she had thrown the meat out the window in protest while the others scuffled over the remote because she was vegan and it was obvious some of the other members needed to focus on better dietary health. The remaining politicos, aside from the still TV-watching Independent, went out back, opened the cage, and prepared a sumptuous feast of grilled animals. Due to this development, the planned trip to take the kindergarteners to the cage to see the animals after the test was over was cancelled.

After the adults were well fed and lubricated from the wine cellar, they began their political discussion and sensibly avoided the paper-rock-scissors go-nowhere format and the correspondents even avoid interjecting their sponsors’ products into the conversation. In lieu of a paper-rock-scissors format, they substituted a rock-rock-rock go-somewhere format. The first murder of a group member occurred 30 minutes into the argument by stoning after a Mexian standoff with primitive implements between the Democrat, the Republican, and the Tea Partier was interrupted when the correspondents tried to make the fight about them and hurled their own rocks into the middle of the standoff.

The last death, at eight hours in, was the Libertarian. Apparently traumatized from the horror, he locked himself in the cage with the dead animals and began slamming his head against the bars while screaming that he should be given liberty or death, which he self-selected the latter.

(Oddly enough, the family values Social Conservative’s head was crushed after the he changed the channel to a Sarah Palin interview and laid on the carpet to try to see up Sarah Palin’s skirt. The Independent, apparently due to some Pavlovian trigger in reaction to a string of words with additional Y’s added to the end to make the words sound more folks-“y”, pushed the television onto the Social Conservatives’ head.)

The kindergarteners, aside from some tears and bruises from tussling for toys, enjoyed their cookies, nap time and were none the worse for it.

Discussion

Twain is still right. Man remains the lowest animal with a widening gap between adults in opposition to their children and the animals.

Literature Cited

Further Discussion

“What are we supposed to make of this?” asked M, looking at the results.

“I guess something happens between the ages of five and 30 that turns people into ungracious, inhospitable, violent creatures,” said E.

“Either that or we need to figure out a way to lower the minimum age requirement for elected officials to five,” said C².

“What about political correctness?” asked M.

“Are you retarded?” asked E.

“Only satirically so,” replied M.

We laughed ourselves comatose. We were revived when the EMT’s administered electric shocks from an Automated Electronic Defibrillator onto our bums.