New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer (17 page)

Win One for the Groper
 
NEW RULE
 
L
et the two men America really wants to see run for president run for president. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher has introduced a constitutional amendment suggesting immigrants like—oh, I don’t know—Arnold Schwarzenegger be allowed to run for president. Fine, but then you have to let Democrats run Bill Clinton again. Each tribe gets its greatest warrior. Why aren’t we doing that anyway?
Where is the twisted logic to the 22nd Amendment, which says you can’t be president if you’ve done it twice? Reese Witherspoon’s done two
Legally Blonde
movies—next time, does it have to be Lil’ Kim?
And in a nation of immigrants, we tell immigrants they can’t run? Sorry, Amie, you can take that what-a-country, immigrant‘s-dream, anything’s-possible crap and put it where it belongs—in a speech nominating a former town drunk from Texas.
Not to be cruel to the fine candidates who are already running for president in 2008, but why are we preventing ourselves from selecting from the top of our political gene pool? Even under general anesthesia, Clinton is more exciting than anyone else the Democrats have. A debate between Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger? You could put that on Pay-Per-View. Hell, you could put it on the Spice Channel.
And that’s the beauty of this matchup: They’d have to stick to the issues because the personal stuff would just be too devastating. The mudslinging would have to get very nuanced: “I never lied
under oath
about the asses I grabbed!” We’re talking about two dudes who’ve smoked pot and love cigars and hummers. It would be the “you don’t want to go there” election. So that’s my proposal: The 22nd Amendment, for Article II, and then we can bring it on—the Terminator versus the Sperminator. Conan versus Onan.
Alien
versus
Predator.
 
BILL MAHER
N
 
NEW RULES
Name Dropping
 
NEW RULE
 
Stop leaving messages on my answering machine saying “It’s me.” I already have a “me” in my life—me. And, frankly, if we were that close, I’d have given you the number of the phone that I answer.
Navy Seals
 
 
NEW RULE
 
No exploiting animals for the war effort. The military is using trained dolphins and sea lions to root out underwater mines. I remember when balancing balls on your nose got you kicked
out
of the Navy.
Newsweak
 
NEW RULE
 
News organizations have to stop using the phrase “We go beyond the headlines.” That’s your job, dummy. You don’t see American Airlines saying “We land our jets on the runway!”
No Big Thing
 
NEW RULE
 
When the penis-enlargement pills you bought fail to enlarge your penis, don’t file a lawsuit. Yes, I’m talking to you, Michael Coluzzi of Burlington, New Jersey. You see, Michael Coluzzi, lawsuits are in the public record and now everyone in Burlington knows you, Michael Coluzzi, have a shameful secret.
No-Coin-Do
 
NEW RULE
 
Tipping is for waiters, bathroom attendants, and lap dancers only! What is it with Starbucks, delis, even dry cleaners, all having little jars on the counter? Hmm, what’s 15 percent of “blow me”? Waiters get tips because they wait on you. If your job involves standing behind a counter cutting bagels in half, you’re not waiting on me—I’m waiting on you!
No Free Crunch
 
NEW RULE
 
Homeless shelters don’t need gyms. Los Angeles just opened a new homeless shelter with a library, hair salon, and gym. Now, I’m fine with the library and the hair salon—like most people, I like my crack whores well read and groomed—but a gym? If you’re pushing a loaded shopping cart around all day, you don’t need a StairMaster. I know gay guys who became homeless just for the abs.
Nookie Monster
 
 
NEW RULE
 
No puppet fucking. The movie
Team America
features graphic sex scenes between marionettes. If I had any interest in wooden sex with strings attached, I’d get married.
The Crying Games
 
NEW RULE
 
O
ne of the guy networks like ESPN has to broadcast an old-school version of the Olympics that leaves out all the “Hallmark moments” and just shows sports.
Adolf Hitler once used the Olympics to demonstrate that Aryans were strong; NBC uses them to show the world that Americans like to cry a lot. Look, I understand that everything nowadays has to be rendered bloated, syrupy, dumbed down, and sentimental—this is America, after all. But for those of you out there who may be too young to remember a time before Oprah ruined everything: In the old days when we watched the Olympics, it wasn’t continuous sob-sister profiles interrupted by the occasional sporting event—it was just the events. There was none of this stuff about the heartbreak and pain it took to become the best damn kayaker a man can be. It was enough just to watch a man throw a long stick or a big iron ball. His mom’s chemotherapy, his sister’s glass eye, and his dog, a wounded combat vet—they never entered into it. We weren’t told whose grandpa was paralyzed in a tractor accident or that the decathlon guy has a cleft palate and overcame a lifetime of bed-wetting to go for the gold, because if someone had told us that, we would have said, “Hey, if I wanted to sit through hours of melodramatic personal backstory, I’d pay attention to my date.”
Take Nancy Pitts of the US women’s wrestling team. Two years ago, the unthinkable happened to Nancy—she was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Happily, it was caught in time, and she was able to go back to her usual training regimen: 3 hours of weight lifting, followed by an hour of shaving.
Somehow the press now gives the Olympics the sort of coverage once reserved for a war, though actual wars are treated like sporting events. NBC aired 1,200 hours of Olympic coverage, 400 times more than they gave the Democratic convention, but what the heck, that was just about war and peace in the nuclear age—the Olympics are about swimming. Oh, if only they were! If only we could get the swimming without the three-hankie immigrant parents, the latchkey kids, the single moms, and all the brave athletes who rose before dawn and traveled hours in the frosty silence of the Iowa winter just to meet their drug dealers.
The Olympic Games are that rarest of events, a coalition of a great variety of nations coming together for a purpose other than killing Iraqis. So please, media barons, just give us one channel where it’s simply about the competition and the belief that how high a man can hop is also a measure of who has the best country.
And this way you can keep the focus-group-approved drivel disguised as in-depth analysis where it belongs: in the coverage of presidential elections.
 
BILL MAHER
O
 
NEW RULES
 
Only Begotten Sony
 
NEW RULE
 
If you have to set up a big-screen TV and show the Daytona 500 to get people into your church, as one church in Fredericksburg, Virginia, does, then your flock is not worshipping Jesus; they’re worshipping Dale Earnhardt Jr. And there’s a difference: One is the son of god, and the other died on a cross for your sins.
Ooh la Lame
 
 
NEW RULE
 
Someone must stop the Cirque du Soleil. If we hate the French so much, how come we gave them Las Vegas? There are now six Cirque du Soleil—related shows on the Strip. Six! Who wants to spend 2 hours watching a bunch of French chicks fold themselves in half? You know what, scratch that. New Rule: We need more Cirque du Soleil. 147
Operation Dessert Storm
 
NEW RULE
 
Ice cream should stay nonpartisan. Some right-wingers started an ice cream company to counteract the lefties at Ben & Jerry’s with flavors like I Hate the French Vanilla, Iraqi Road, and Smaller Govern-Mint. I know, I know, anything to get Ann Coulter to eat. But they’re missing the whole point of Ben & Jerry’s—hippie ice cream is fun because you eat it when you’re stoned.
Osama Been Hidin’
 
 
NEW RULE
 
The president must stop saying that Osama Bin Laden “can run but he can’t hide.” Boy, can he hide. We can’t find him with cruise missiles, satellites, or million-dollar bribes—although, oddly enough, he is reachable through
Classmates.com
.
Oscar Nod
 
NEW RULE
 

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