New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer (24 page)

 
NEW RULE
 
Republicans need anger management training. I talk to young people all the time, and over and over again, they have the same complaint: that I’m out of Schnapps. But their other big gripe is that there’s really no difference between the two parties. Not true: The Republicans are much more pissed off. Look at John Bolton—if you can. Now, I don’t know if this man has human relationship issues, but I do know two things: One, his hair’s not speaking to his mustache. And two, The Republicans actually like the idea of our most sensitive diplomatic post being helmed by a raging psychopath. Asking John Bolton to represent you at the UN is like asking R. Kelly to chaperone the Miss Teen USA Pageant—you know someone’s gonna end up pissed.
Like Mr. Bolton, what Republicans need is to find a channel for their anger; I mean a channel besides Fox News. In the last 10 years, they’ve taken the White House, the Congress, the courts, and what’s left of Zell Miller’s mind—and it’s only made them madder.
Therefore, tonight, as a solution, I would like to suggest that as a national policy, we encourage the reestablishment of the old Soviet Union. Sure, it was an evil empire, but at least it kept the Republicans
busy!
Who has time for gay marriage or activist judges or brain-dead bulimics when you’ve got a real bogeyman to freak out about?
The problem with American politics today is that one party has the monopoly on all the anger. To be a Republican is to walk around all day madder than Paula Abdul with a fistful of Vicodin and nothing to wash it down with. And to be a Democrat means—I dunno, your guess is as good as mine.
It seems like ever since Michael Dukakis was asked how he’d feel if his wife got raped and he said “whatever,” the Democrats have been the party that speaks softly and carries Massachusetts. When Dick Cheney says “Go fuck yourself,” they say “How hard?” In the last election, George Bush called John Kerry a coward, a liar, a wimp, a flip-flopper, and a war criminal, and Kerry got so incensed he almost fell off his Windsurfer. It’s bad when the person in your party with the biggest balls is named Teresa.
Democrats would do well to remember this: Anger can be good. Anger can be cleansing. Anger can be a force for change. Anger is what made America what it is today—a hulking pariah whose only friends are toadies and sheiks.
BILL MAHER
Y
 
NEW RULES
 
Yawn Jockey
 
NEW RULE
 
This year, instead of running a new Kentucky Derby, Kentucky must skip the horse abuse and just show an old one. No one will know the difference. They’ve been showing the same NASCAR race since 1994, and no one seems to mind.
You, Too?
 
 
NEW RULE
 
Bono is not a banker. Not long ago, Treasury Secretary John Snow suggested U2’s Bono was on a possible short list of future presidents of the World Bank. Now, as much as Bono cares about relieving Third World debt, he should always remember that a rock star’s place is in the studio or on the stage, not in a bank. Unless it’s Axel Rose filling out a loan application for a used car.
Hard Cell
 
NEW RULE
 
Y
ou can make fun of Lynndie England if you want, but when it comes to prisons, we’re all holding the leash. America’s anti-sweetheart, Private Lynndie England, has finally faced justice for her part in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal—or as Rush Limbaugh calls it, “the sleepover.”
Now, a lot of people think Abu Ghraib happened because, as Americans, we’re comfortable asking our horny hillbillies to fight our wars. And we are. But we’re also comfortable pretending that anyone in America who winds up in prison for whatever reason somehow deserves not just loss of freedom but a brutalizing, terrifying trip to hell.
It’s no mere coincidence that the guard described as the ringleader in the Iraq prison scandal, Charles Graner, worked before the war... where? In a prison. In America. He didn’t learn to torture from the CIA or Special Ops; he picked up his abuse skills right here and took them to Iraq—outsourcing at its worst!
In a way, we are all Lynndie Englands because we know what’s happening in our prisons and we clearly don’t care. We tell ourselves the convenient lie that anyone who bears the label “criminal” or “terrorist” is irredeemable, subhuman psycho scum, and so whatever happens to them behind bars is justified, when the truth is that millions of nonviolent Americans have been traumatized for life in our prisons simply because they either did drugs or made a bad judgment, usually when they were young, stupid, and drunk—you’d think President Bush could relate.
There are more than two million Americans locked up, and that is not including the people who work at Wal-Mart. America, the nation that always has to be number one, is number one in terms of percentage of its citizens in jail: two million people total. It costs $40 billion to house this many prisoners. Do you know how many countries that had nothing to do with 9/11 we could attack for that kind of money?
In conclusion, if your response to this is “not my problem,” remember this: There are monsters and animals in our prisons, yes, but most didn’t go in that way, but it is how they’ll come out.
Or to put it another way: If you think Martha Stewart had an attitude before ...
 
BILL MAHER
Z
 
NEW RULES
 
Zip It
 
NEW RULE
 
Don’t talk to me while I’m peeing. We’re not sharing a moment; we’re just sharing adjacent urinals. So just stare straight ahead in awkward silence. Same goes for when we’re on an elevator. And especially don’t talk to me when I’m peeing on an elevator.
Muddle Ground
 
NEW RULE
 
P
olitics is about compromises—really stupid compromises. That’s how we got such laws as: Blacks are three-fifths of a person; slaves are property, unless they make it to Ohio; interning the Japanese, but not the Germans; slaughtering the Indians, but letting the ones who survived run the keno parlors; porn, but no hardcore porn; booze, and then no booze, and then booze again. But no pot. Except medical—which is legal to possess, but
illegal
to obtain. You can’t have stem cells, except the ones you already have.
In this spirit, I would like to offer a few compromise suggestions for one of the knottiest issues we face today: same-sex marriage. Why not this: It’s okay to be gay if you’re already gay—but no new gays. We’ll grandfather you in if you’re already an organ grinder, but that’s it.
Or how about we let gays marry but not own homes—come out against “gay mortgage.”
Or maybe the answer to this is as plain as the nose in my lap. With both sides so set—one being all for gay marriage, and the other side completely against it—how about we just let the lesbians marry? Come on, marriage is a chick thing anyway. Monogamy and marriage were invented by women and the Church as a way to address female insecurity and to stamp out oral sex as we know it. And don’t give me some line about how two women can’t reproduce. As long as David Crosby is alive and can swallow a Viagra, that’s not a problem.
Plus, let’s face it, when people talk about homosexuality being “not natural” and “an abomination,” they’re not talking about the women—they’re talking about the men. Nobody seems to find anything abominable about Britney Spears tonguing Madonna, or Gina Gershon in bed with Jennifer Tilley, or anything else on the third shelf of my “library.” But here in America, when a man puts something in another man, it had better be a bullet.
So, isn’t it time both sides compromised a little on this issue: The statistics tell us that anywhere from 2 to 10 percent of people in America are gay... although it certainly seems higher at my bathhouse. So look, all you conservatives, I know you’re sincere, and you think you’re doing God’s work, but in 100 years people traveling by jet pack to Mars are not going to be tripping on gay marriage. The whole issue is just gonna be a joke—on you. So my advice is simple: They’re here, they’re queer, get bored with it.
 
BILL MAHER
NEW
NEW RULES
 
Air Sickness
 
NEW RULE
 
Let’s wait a full month before the next chick-gets-chased-around-a-plane movie. Let’s pretend they already made it, and it was called
Aisle Seat
and no one saw it, and it sucked.
Celluloid Zeroes
 
 
NEW RULE
 
If you’re going to insist on making movies based on crappy television shows, then you have to give everyone in the cineplex a remote so we can see what’s playing on the other screens. The reason something was a television show in the first place is, the idea wasn’t good enough to be a movie.
Du-Bye-Bye
 
 
NEW RULE
 
Don’t have your birthday party in Dubai. Record producer Dallas Austin, who flew to Dubai for Naomi Campbell’s birthday party, instead found himself in a Dubai prison, charged with possessing illegal drugs, which, in Dubai, is anything stronger than Flintstones Chewables. I feel sorry for the guy, but come on—bringing drugs into Dubai? Even Pete Doherty isn’t that stupid. Listen up, 24-hour party people: Dubai may have lots of shiny hotels and Europeans in Speedos, but it’s still an Arab nation, and if Habib finds the happy powder in your Louis Vuitton bag... well, let’s just say what happens in Dubai, stays in Dubai ..
.forever.
FEMA Impersonator
 
NEW RULE
 
The term CPT, which stands for Colored People’s Time, based on the belief that blacks are often late—must now be renamed FGT, for Federal Government Time.

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