Saturday, March 04, 2006

The Constitutional Right to Pets

It is always both fun and kind of depressing to test people's knowledge of Important Stuff versus pop culture. The latest is a study that compared how many people could name all five First Amendment freedoms with how many could name all five members of the cartoon Simpson family. The result (muffled drum roll, please):

First Amendment: .001%
Simpsons: 22%.

The most fun and mysterious part of this study was that a fifth of those surveyed thought that the first amendment protected their right to have pets.

This clearly betrays ignorance of the Constitution. It is not the First Amendment that protects our right to pets, but the Second. After all, what would be the use of having a right to bear arms, if you did not also have a right to the rest of the bear?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

You crack me up

Tom Strong said...

Frankly, I'm amazed more Americans can't name all of the Simpsons. Hell, most bloggers can probably name every resident of Springfield...

ancho and lefty said...

Waka Waka Gruntled, that was a pretty good one.

Maybe the folks that make the Simpsons should do a show about the Constitution.

Yesterday a profressor at an institution that shall remain nameless told me that one of his students did not know who was the first President of the United States. I bet she probably has 1,000 songs on her IPOD and could have accessed the information on her cell phone if he had just given her a chance. Jeesh!

Anonymous said...

geez... maybe i need a refresher course on the constitution. i always thought that the second amendment was the one gave me the right to wear sleeveless shirts, as it was the "right to bare arms."

Gruntled said...

Perhaps you are thinking of the 21st Amendment, which repealed Prohibition, thus giving you a right to barrooms?

Unknown said...

Actually, being a sportsman myself, and in accord with the principle of "fair pursuit", I support the right to arm bears.

Gruntled said...

As long as they don't have thumbs, that seems ok to me ...

Gruntled said...

(That's a good one.)