Nine blind men and an extremely near-sighted old woman were asked to describe an elephant by touch alone.
“Well, blah, blah, blah,” said the first, a bushy sort of fellow who could see only himself and his relatives.
“My family owns this damn elephant, señors y señorita,” he said, “so kindly return him to my Pappy and my awesome brother who kept us safe.”
Then he sat down and began to sulk. “Forty-one and Forty-three,” he muttered, “with el presidente Zero. I hate family gatherings.”
“It’s obvious that the elephant is very like a wall,” said the second of the blind men loudly, as he ran his hand up the great beast’s flank.
“I am super smart and super rich,” he boasted, “so I know that on the other side there are rapists and drug dealers, and I suppose some good people too. I’m gonna make them all pay for this elephant. Here, have a red or white baseball cap.”
In the corner the third blind man, a former neurosurgeon, babbled insanely to himself.
“This elephant is worse than Hitler, the Holocaust, abortion, and slavery,” he mumbled. “It’s even worse than breaching the Second Amendment. If you want help, just ask the guy behind the counter.”
Nearby, a small, dark Hispanic man, blinded equally by greed and ambition, felt his way carefully around the elephant’s knee.
“It’s bent in supplication,” he observed. “And I know to whom and why and especially how.”
He groveled and scraped in the dirt, then held out his grubby little paw. Dollar bills from Las Vegas and other dark sources magically came flying in. The young man unhesitatingly sold out his people, his senate seat and above all his soul.
“This beast is like a big, strong, manly, nuclear missile,” said the next blind man, stroking the elephant’s long, hard tusk. A slender figure with pretty blue eyes and an attractive southern drawl, he added: “Five, four, three, two, one, lift off!”
The fifth blind man grabbed the elephant roughly by its ear. “This pachyderm blows too easily in the wind,” he snarled. “In Texas, we cook our bacon on our guns, and that applies to elephants meat too.
“In fact, our state elephant does whatever we want it to without even being told. We just say ‘Guns and God’ and he obediently rolls over on his right side.”
The cross-eyed Texan continued: “If this new elephant critter wants to go anywhere it better stop flapping in the cross breeze and start moving, and I mean backwards. Oh, the places you’ll not go! You get me, Sam I Am?”
Meanwhile, the near-sighted old crone had been peering and prodding under the elephant’s hairy tail.
“Well, its primary function appears to be very like the HP Deskjet SuperLaser ColorTru 3000,” she twittered, as the great beast’s rear end suddenly began spewing an unending stream of warm, aromatic manure.
“Or is it,” she briefly wondered, hating to get her hands dirty, “more like a power-mad CEO shedding 30,000 jobs in one go?”
Then she swiftly pulled back, as the realization of what she’d actually done hit her.
“No, wait a minute,” she gagged, “it’s more like Fox News. Hey, it is Fox News! Let me jump in, please!”
The three sightless evangelical Christians in the group simultaneously, and as if by instinct or unbreakable habit, found their way directly to the elephant’s lengthy member. Blinded by faith, none was able to objectively describe what they all felt.
“Damn thing is nothing but a repellent, nauseating, sinful, revolting, filthy, repulsive, detumescent dick,” insisted the one with cute dimples. “So it has to be Bill O’Reilly.”
But the other two stubbornly argued for Dick Cheney. “People don’t call him Dick for nothing,” they pointed out.
After a few moments of further bickering, the trio agreed that the elephant’s abhorrent member actually resembled all of them lumped together, including Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and radio-host Mark Levin who was, they assumed, the smegma oozing from beneath its foreskin.
“You can tell by the smell,” dimples noted poetically.
The agitated Gang of Ten continued to argue in blind ignorance about the nature of the beast, its history, its temperament, and above all its destiny.
Then one of them pointed out that it seemed more like a rino (sic) than an elephant, and the relatively calm discussion disintegrated into general fighting.
The Blind Men and the Elephant
by John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me!—but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!”
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried: “Ho!—what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ’tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!”
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a snake!”
The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
“‘Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!”
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
So, oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!