New Poll Reveals Pollsters Have Too Much Time On Their Hands

NEW YORK--A recent poll conducted by ABC and ESPN concerning the way people of different races feel about Barry Bonds or whatever, revealed that the pollsters have too much time on their hands and should probably get real jobs.

“This certainly is an eye opening poll,” said Dr. John Fergusen of the Center for Sports in Society. “It indicates that, among respondents, black people were more fond of Barry Bonds than white people and that white people think Barry Bonds is on steroids…or something. I don’t even know. All I know is that these pollsters have too much time on their hands. Yes, I know I dislike Barry Bonds because he’s black. We’ve established that. Now can we move on to something else, please? It's starting to get a little redundant.”

Fergusen claims race-related polls serve little purpose other than to reinforce time worn stereotypes about different races and bore the living hell out of people.

“I think it’s obvious that white people and black people view things differently,” he said. “There’s no need to constantly rub everybody’s nose in it. I think I’ve read about 500 race-related sports polls or ‘studies’ in the past year and they are all totally predictable and they change absolutely nothing. My question is this: what is the race of the people who conducted the poll? Were they biased toward their own race? Somebody should conduct a poll about this so I can have something else to not give a shit about.”

Researches who conducted the poll argue that shedding light on the American racial divide can help people learn more about themselves and overcome their prejudices.

“Look, everybody in America is racist in some way, and the first step to overcoming that is to understand it,” said Cheryl Pierson, of the Arbitron Research Group. “That’s why we do these polls: to foster understanding between the races. And to give people something to argue about on message boards, and to give newspaper columnists something to pontificate about, and to state the obvious, and pretend we’re revealing something, which we’re not, except that the tiny percentage of people that actually respond to telephone polls may or may not be racist.”

The Bonds poll comes on the heels of a New York Times study claiming that NBA referees may be racially biased when whistling players for fouls. Though that study has been largely discredited by both players and referees, Pierson said it still served its purpose: to give Americans more meaningless crap to think about.

“Are NBA referees biased against players of certain races? It’s tough to tell,” said Pierson. “But it’s worth discussing because there are a lot of black people in the NBA and a lot of white referees, so what the hell? Let’s see if they’re racists. If not, whatever. The important thing here is to spend a lot of time on something slightly less important that a Sportsnation opinion poll about which rookie will have the biggest fantasy impact this year.”

Currently, ABC and ESPN are working on a poll about whether blacks and whites feel differently about the Pacman Jones saga, which could “change the way we view race relations in America forever.”

“This one’s going to rock your world,” said Pierson. “Are you sitting down? Okay. There are preliminary indications that some blacks may have a slightly different perception of Pacman Jones than some whites. I know! Crazy isn’t it? What would America do without poll takers to tell them what they’re thinking? More importantly, what on God’s earth would we do with our spare time if we weren’t harassing people on the phone to say something racist?”

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