Satire by Andy Borowitz: Naughty Outnumber Nice in New Survey

In a University of Minnesota survey designed to determine who is naughty and who is nice, the naughty outnumbered the nice by a whopping 3-to-1 margin, the university revealed today.

The survey, conducted by the university’s Opinion Research Institute, showed that 70 percent of Americans identify themselves as naughty while only 22 percent identify themselves as nice, with 8 percent defining themselves as “other.”

According to the survey, Democrats were twice as likely as Republicans to admit that they were naughty, while Republicans were more likely to claim that they had been nice, only later to be found out to have been naughty.

Davis Logsdon, who supervised the survey, said that the rise of the naughty, along with the steady decline of the nice, can be attributed to two major factors. “The Internet has spread naughtiness at a rate that few of us could have anticipated,” Mr. Logdson said. “Also, some of the credit has to go to the Fox network.”

In another part of the survey, the number of Americans who know that they are sleeping was slightly edged by the number of Americans who know that they are awake.

According to Mr. Logsdon, those numbers are the reverse of a poll taken in 2004, when more Americans defined themselves as sleeping than awake: “Some of that may have been due to the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.).”

Elsewhere, obesity may be caused not by eating habits but by bacteria in one’s guts, according to a study underwritten by the American Society of Gluttons.

Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate Inc.