Workers Not Barnyard Animals, Study Finds

ALBEQUERQUE, N.M. (AEP) – A group of distinguished Nobel Laureates today released a study making the remarkable claim that working people are “not simply stupid pack mules with no inherent need for dignity or self-respect.”

Dr. Ira M. Brandenburg, lead author of the study, said, “None of us had any idea about this. We all just assumed that the people who cleaned the urinals and emptied the trash cans in this building were brainless saps who thought the world was just like what they saw when they watched professional wrestling.”

Billy Villner, Ph.D., M.D., Esq., C.P.A., R.N., M.S.N.B.C, concurred: “I just thought you had to tip them well.”

For decades, scientists have debated the working-class brain: Is it more resembling Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon? New evidence, however, suggests working people have the same potential for growth — and the same need for creative work — as doctors, lawyers, managers, engineers.

“Frankly, that’s bullshit,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. “Working people can’t find their asses with both hands, a flashlight, a friend’s hands, and a map. That’s why I’m AFL-CIO president and they’re not..”

Change-to-Win leader Andy Stern agreed: “Look, if God wanted working people to have a say in anything, He’d have given them Participatory Economics. There’s a reason we live in a capitalist society.”

Stern’s secretary was mumbling something about people’s noses being perfectly designed to accommodate a pair of glasses, but Stern had placed duct tape over her mouth and tied her arms to her chair. This reporter was informed she would be released as soon as I got the hell out of Stern’s office.

Dr. Brandenburg said, “It is our belief that human beings might perhaps suffer mildly deleterious effects if forced to labor in workplaces where they’re nothing more than tools.

“Fortunately,” he added, “we live in the United States, where this sort of thing has gone the way of the dodo bird.” Brandenburg patted the American-flag pin on his lapel as he spoke.

Mel V. Lee, head of the liberal advocacy group All Human Beings Are People (AHBAP), said, “I simply can’t agree with the Laureates’ findings. Do these scientists not understand that working people like to watch sports? How can anyone who watches NASCAR or the WWF be considered human? Shame on Dr. Brandenburg.”

Villner said, “We recognize working people have crude, vile tastes. Believe me, none of us like them either. If it weren’t for Panera Bread, where could we take our children to eat on Saturday afternoons?

“Having said that, we categorically reject Lee’s contention that workers aren’t human. Apes? Yes. Non-human? No.

“Sub-human? Maybe.”

What will come of the study remains to be seen. All media outlets — from Fox News to CNN to PBS and NPR — have refused to give it any coverage. Instead, they continue to infer that working people are potential security risks and a threat to the Homeland.

Dr. Brandenburg is hopeful, however: “Look, I’m not proposing anything as radical as saying working people should have any kind of say over their labors or how us important people’s society is run. Perish the thought.

“I do think though that it would be useful if we were to pat them on the head once in a while and tell them we are fond of them.”

It is a sentiment with which people from Mel V. Lee to Former U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles should be able to concur.

E. B. Patton is a reporter for the Cincinnati-based AEP, and can be reached via e-mail at: ebpatton@yahoo.com. Read other articles by E.B., or visit E.B.'s website.

9 comments on this article so far ...

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  1. gerald spezio said on October 15th, 2007 at 6:17am #

    Some working class ladies can be terrific, but talking to them afterwards can be a bummer.

  2. gerald spezio said on October 15th, 2007 at 6:56am #

    Portnoy was a nice Jewish boy who really didn’t like for his working-class wop girl-friend, Bubbles Gilardi.

    Bubbles had a particular style that Portnoy liked.

    Everything is style and art.

    Phillip Roth is a famous writer who is always writing about his life in Merica.

  3. Lloyd Rowsey said on October 16th, 2007 at 6:52am #

    Some people think the Nobel Prize for Economics has existed since Time One, when following Alfred Nobel’s will, the prizes were given for the physical and medical sciences, literature, and peace. Whereas in fact, the Nobel Prizes for Economics started being awarded only in 1969. One fascinating website provides colored flags with its provocative data points about the entire history of the Nobel Prizes for Economics, from 1969-2007. It’s at:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_in_Economics

    Good old Wikipedia.

    In the six years beginning in 1969, American economists won or shared the prize four times, while economists from all other nations won twice. But the beginning really ended the next year in 1975 when an economist from the Soviet Union shared the Prize with an American.

    In 1976, the very next year, Uncle Miltie Friedman won.

    From 1976 through 2007, American economists have been the sole or joint recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 25 of 32 years. Moreover, the “Topics” – what the guys got the prizes for according to Wikipedia – sea-changed after 1975. They went from heavy, leftist lifting — things like work on a “general economic equilibrium theory and welfare theory” (1972), to butterfly-effect things like:

    – for having a “new method to determine the value of derivatives (1997),” and

    – for their “analyses of markets with asymmetric information (2001).”

    What’s far less obvious but almost as significant as this course from liberalism to angels dancing on the heads of pins, is that none of these Nobel economists has ever possessed mathematics credentials good enough to make a ripple at MacTutors History of Mathematics:

    http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/

    It is a shame there’s no Nobel Prize for mathematics. And the Nobel Economics Committee’s perpetually misplaced, over-valued, and pseudo-scientific judgments about their laureates has contributed mightily to the sort of thinking that E.B. Patton satirizes, perfectly, in “Workers Not Barnyard Animals, Study Finds.”

  4. gerald spezio said on October 16th, 2007 at 11:08am #

    Lloyd, you have contributed to my edification with your great post.

  5. Lloyd Rowsey said on October 16th, 2007 at 12:10pm #

    Much obliged, gs.

  6. Benedict@Large said on October 16th, 2007 at 12:40pm #

    Of course there is no Nobel Proze in mathematics. After Alfred caught his wife cheating with a mathematician, he specifically specified that there be none for mathematics. In fact, some say Alfred created the Prize just so he could deny it to mathematicians, but no one but Albert ever knew that for sure.

  7. brian said on October 16th, 2007 at 5:42pm #

    Is this post some sort of a joke?

  8. brian said on October 16th, 2007 at 5:44pm #

    If this is not satire, the question we need to ask is are these big-brain types even human? Note the tendencey to god like self-regard. Note to thes god-like types are the ones causing such havoc from techno pollution to wars on terror….

  9. Lloyd Rowsey said on October 17th, 2007 at 3:54am #

    brian. the post of Benedict@large IS some sort of joke. it is satire.

    but in my opinion, what you say is the question we need to ask…”are these big-brain types (mathematicians) even human?” — is not the question.

    in my opinion, great mathematicians — “these big-brain types” — are not “the ones causing such havoc from techno pollution to wars on terror….” great mathematicians, such as Andrew Wyles, are literally spending almost all their waking time doing math. and if they can’t do that, they are miserable. nor do they have a god-like tendency to self-regard. great mathematicians are constantly torn with doubt, because doing great mathematics is probably the most humbling thing a member of the human race can do.

    to repeat, this is “in my opinion.” I stopped trying to do mathematics in the middle of second-year college calculus. but in high-school i was very good at problem-solving. and I still love mathematics.

    i also admit I’ve shifted my emphasis from “mathematicians” to “great mathematicians.” but this is because I am addressing your question about “these big-brain types,” and not E.B. Patton’s humerous piece. and I’ve met someone I’d call an “ordinary” mathematician; he was vain and humorless and obviously very concerned with his own importance.

    my all-time favorite mathematician is the man who initially “solved” infinity — Georg Cantor. you’ll find an introduction to his works at an entry concerning “Set Theory” at MacTutor’s History of Math:

    http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Beginnings_of_set_theory.html

    the article goes incomprehensible pretty quickly.

    Georg Cantor was miserable virtually his entire life. a much lesser but still great mathematician, Wolfgang Pauli, covered his insecurities with blindingly quick sarcasm; and another great mathematician of quantum physics, Paul Dirac, was so withdrawn socially that he required long periods of time to speak out even about mathematics — among his far inferior and admiring colleagues.

    That politicians and other lesser humans including lesser mathematicians have found absolutely awesome applications for the works of even the greatest mathematicians should not be the basis for condemning mathematics itself or the vast majority of working mathematicians.