Scientists who have been closely observing Willard “Mit” Romney on the campaign trail have isolated the mechanism responsible for his increasingly erratic behavior.
“Mr. Romney’s constant flip-flops, gaffes and misstatements, which we in the hard sciences refer to as lies, have been found to be the result of the battle between matter and antimatter,” said Dr. Hubert Fennel, the Irwin Corey Professor of Physics and Rhetoric at Dixie College.
“Our team of researchers believes Mr. Romney may be the first human being in recorded history in whom the collision of matter and antimatter is being played out in the public arena. As every school child knows, the matter/antimatter annihilation phenomenon was initiated by the Big Bang, and with matter emerging as the victor by just a slight margin, with matter weighing in with one more particle per billion than antimatter.
“Normally,” continued Dr. Fennel, “that asymmetry, that extra particle per billion, is enough to keep antimatter from barging into our material world and wreaking havoc with the delicate equilibrium of the natural world, in which I include all of God’s creatures.
“Now with Mr. Romney being one of the finest of God’s specimens, we would expect that his matter would be keeping a firm hand on the rudder of his being. Instead, his antimatter seems to have stormed the barricades. In the great battle between Mr. Romney’s subatomic particles, the antimatter has for the moment evened the score. Thus the flipping and flopping, with matter saying one thing one day, and antimatter saying the exact opposite the next day.”
Dr. Fennel and his colleagues have charted the flip-flopping, using the scientific notation of Mitty and Antimitty to keep track of his changing positions. (According to Dr. Fennel, intimate friends of Mr. Romney use “Mitty” as a term of endearment.)
“But we find ourselves in a conundrum,” said Dr. Fennel, shaking his extra-large cranium in puzzlement. “Is it Mitty, or Antimitty, who is pro-choice? Is it Mitty, or Antimitty, who is against abortion? Is it Mitty, or Antimitty, who is in favor of a health-care mandate? And vice versa, et cetera, et cetera. On any issue, we have two equal and opposite positions from Mr. Romney. Gay rights, health care, abortion, minimum wage, Vietnam, Reagan conservatism, federal aid, global warming, varmint hunting—you name it, Mr. Romney flips and flops.”
Dr. Fennel predicts a massive showdown between Mitty and Antimitty is in the works.
“In the past, it took Mr. Romney sometimes a few years, sometimes a few months, sometimes a few weeks to change his position on any particular issue. But our scientific notations show an alarming trend. The flip-flops are accelerating, from months to weeks to days. Then just last week, Mr. Romney changed his position on the Blunt Amendment—an attempt by Republicans to stick their noses into the contraception business—within one hour. Mitty (or was it Antimitty?) told an interviewer he was against the amendment at 10:06 a.m., and by 10:58 Antimitty (or was it Mitty?) was saying he was, of course, for the amendment, claiming he was fooled by the clever interviewer.”
But it’s not merely the accelerating flip-flops that concerns Dr. Fennel. “We have physical evidence, as well, that Mr. Romney is on the path to a ginormous cataclysmic event. Have you noticed that his herky-jerky body language has gotten even herkier and jerkier? And look at the stammering and nervous laughing. These are all signs of huge upheavals of conflict on a subatomic level, what we in the discipline call the Crazy Quark Condition, in which those spoiled little particles are pretty much throwing tantrums night and day, causing the mama neutrons and papa protons to tear their hair out.
“Not only that, the quarks are the foot soldiers in the Battle Between Mitty and Antimitty, and as they engage in hand-to-hand combat they produce catalyzed nuclear pulsations that totally screw up Mr. Romney’s rhetoric, resulting in his wacky gaffes and inexplicable lies. Firing people, right-sized trees, multiple Cadillacs, watching parades from the Pre-Existence and so forth.”
According to Dr. Fennel, if you plug the numbers of the accelerated flip-flops and burgeoning gaffes and mounting mendacities into the well-known Schrodinger wave equation, you come up with the inescapable conclusion that Mr. Romney’s annihilation is imminent.
The collision of Mitty and Antimitty will come like a great crashing of cymbals, and as the decibels fade, so will Mr. Romney. One moment he will be there, and the next he will not.
D.P. Sorensen writes a satire column for City Weekly.
