Narrator: From the creators of "That 1870's show" and "Who Wants to Blow the President", ESPN14 proudly presents the World Championships of Philosophy. And now, here are your hosts, Skip Eisenreich and Jeff Jones!
SE: Welcome to ESPN14's coverage of the World Championships of Philosophy. I'm Skip Eisenrich, and my partner is the Don Quixote of sports reporting, Jeff Jones. JJ: I liked it better when you called me the Doctor of Love.
SE: Jeff, you know I save that for our "special nights". JJ: Whenever the Brewers play, right? SE: You got it. Well, there was a lot of action last night, but then the Bucks-Pacers game ended, and we got stuck with this crappy assignment. So let's get right into the philosophizing.
JJ: In the most interesting first round matchup, Immanuel Kant took on France's Rene Descartes. The debate raged well into the night, before Kant asked Descartes if he wanted to quit. Upon saying "I think not", Rene disappeared and Kant moved on by default.
SE: Our biggest upset of the night comes from the 2-15 matchup, where Saint Augustine knocked off Thomas Hobbes in short fashion. This is not a surprise to the crew here at ESPN14, though... as we explained in our Preview show, John DeWolfe is writing this thing, and he HATES Thomas Hobbes.
JJ: Another lower seed advancing was number 11 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who knocked off Freidrich Nietszche. Oddly enough, in a post-game interview Nietszche admitted that the loss neither killed him, nor made him stronger.
SE: Confucius, the number 14 seed, moved on when tournament officials disqualified John Stuart Mill for breaking the Golden Rule.
JJ: And, in other first round action, number 1 Plato moved past Jean-Paul Sartre, Aristotle showed a mean streak in beating Voltaire, Karl Marx had the key to beating John Locke, and Thomas Jefferson edged Adam Smith.
SE: In an expected quarter-final match between two German rivals, Marx defeated Kant, avenging his loss at the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics.
JJ: When will they make philosophy a full medal sport, Skip? SE: I don't know. I just don't know. But, in any event, Kant sought to dismiss the loss afterwards, saying he didn't see it as "imparative" to win the tournament.
JJ: Number 11 seed JJ Rousseau made himself the Cinderella of this tournament, knocking off Confucius with a buzzer-beating contention about the origin and foundations of inequality. I haven't seen a comeback like this since Paul Lawrie won in a playoff at the '99 British Open.
SE: In the other two quarter-final matchups, Plato moved past his protege, Aristotle, while Tommy Jefferson knocked off Saint Augustine. In an interview at halftime, NBC's Jim Gray asked Jefferson "Why he didn't just admit he was a slave-owner", so that the ban the American Political Philosophy Hall of Fame has on him might be lifted.
JJ: That's just not an approriate time to ask that question.
SE: Moving on to the semi-finals, first seed Plato finally met his match in the form of #4 Karl Marx. JJ: Well, what do you expect of Marx... he's facing a cartoon dog. SE: No, that was Pluto. JJ: I thought he was some sort of Greek god? SE: Well, he was Greek, anyway...
JJ: Moving along, Thomas Jefferson beat Rousseau in the other semi-final, in a struggle reminiscent of the Hamilton-Burr duel. (Editors note - if you got that reference, give me a call.)
SE: That set up a Marx-Jefferson final. JJ: I always liked Richard Marx. SE: That's wrong on two levels. First, it's Karl Marx, not Richard Marx. Secondly, no one liked Richard Marx.
JJ: My bad. In a preview of the Cold War, the man partly responsible for founding American political ideology faced off with the man partly responsible for founding Soviet political ideology. It was, as expected, a titanic(tm) struggle, but in the end the Evil Empire won out.
SE: So Marx won? JJ: No, he lost. SE: Oh, of course. Well, that's all the time we have for our World Championships of Philosophy coverage. Congratulations to our champion, Thomas Jefferson, and good night from our fantastic venue, Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.
JJ: Before we go, I should also thank our great sponsor, the new Gilette "Mach 7", the only seven-bladed razor for men too lazy to shave properly. (Editors note - guilty as charged)
SE: I'm Skip Eisenreich... JJ: And I'm Jeff Jones, saying thanks for watching! Stay tuned for exciting bowling action, as ESPN14 and the PBA present the Home Hardware Ten-Pin challenge, live from Assfuck, Saskatchewan! go back
