New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer (14 page)

BOOK: New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer

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Let TV shows die a natural death. Fans of the cancelled TV series
Star Trek: Enterprise
are trying to raise enough money on their own to pay for another season. It’s either that or go outside. So far they’ve raised $3 million, largely by not dating. Hey, Trekkies, if you really want to donate money to a lost cause, try
MoveOn.org
.

Sin-a-Plex

NEW RULE

T
here’s no such thing as Hollywood values. In honor of the Oscars, let me just say that every time I see some pundit say Hollywood is out of touch, I just want to take my big screen plasma TV, march it right down to the end of my private road, and throw it over the big iron gate!

“Hollywood versus America” is a tactic that works well as conservative red meat, a continuation of the “Red State vs. Blue State” theme of the last election, where blue staters were convinced everything between New York and L.A. was one giant forest where Ned Beatty is constantly being sodomized by hillbillies, and red staters were told that people like me spend all our time performing abortions and figuring out new ways to desecrate the flag. Please, they’re just hobbies.

Politically, it’s always been advantageous to divide people—to make America a place of warmongers versus wimps, elitists versus morons, gun nuts versus people with normal-size penises. Only problem is, it’s not true. Hollywood isn’t your cesspool, America; it’s your mirror. We made all those movies with the smirking sex and the mindless violence and the super-heroes beating the shit out of zombies because that’s what you wanted.

It’s what the whole world wants. Movies are the one thing about America the rest of the world still actually tikes—America’s last export. I mean besides the torture. And even the ones being tortured are like, “Cool, this is just like in
The Deer Hunter.”

So to those who think that if we just put
Leave It to Beaver
back on, the gay people would come to their senses, I say this: Stop worrying. Hollywood won’t turn your daughter into a nymphomaniac or get her hooked on drugs. I will. And she’ll still be better for it—because I’ll teach her that there’s more to values than reciting things, praying, and voting for Bush, that being moral actually involves making choices guided by principles like fairness and tolerance.

For example, there was a woman in Alaska who cut off her husband’s penis and flushed it down the toilet. Based on that, I would agree, our morality is in decline, because 10 years ago, when Lorena Bobbitt cut off her husband’s penis, she didn’t flush it down the toilet, where it
could
never be retrieved. She threw it out the window of a moving car, where it could be retrieved and was. So, come on, America, admit it: When it comes to Hollywood, you love us, you really love us!

BILL MAHER
J

NEW RULES

Jersey, Sure

NEW RULE

Let the Mafia protect New Jersey. Terror experts say that the deadliest, most vulnerable 2 miles in America is the unguarded chemical corridor in New Jersey that gave the state its reputation for smelling like a sweat sock. Arizona has the Minute Men; let New Jersey have the Mafia. They all live there anyway.

Jet Blew

NEW RULE

After the plane lands, airlines must stop saying, “Thank you for choosing us.” There is no choosing anymore. I took the only flight that left within 8 hours of when I wanted to go, by the only airline that went there. Nobody chooses Southwest—Southwest chooses you. If I need to be in Spokane, Washington, by tomorrow morning, I either take the flight I’m given, or I mail myself in a Fed-Ex box.

Ji-Hard

NEW RULE

I
f we really want to stop terrorism, we have to get Muslim men laid. Five
British Muslims who were recently sent home from our prison at Guantanamo accused their American captors of bringing in prostitutes to taunt them. It turned out that most of them had never even seen a woman naked before. This naturally made me wonder how many members of al-Qaeda have ever even dated a girl and what would happen if we hired women to infiltrate al-Qaeda cells and have sex with them.
I’ll bet you things would change quickly after this covert operation. Because young Muslim men don’t really hate America—they’re jealous of America. We have rap videos, the Hilton sisters, and magazines with titles like
Barely Legal.
You know what’s barely legal in Afghanistan?
Everything.
Young men need sex, and if they don’t get it for months on end, they wind up cursing the day they ever decided to go to Cornell.
Have you ever wondered why the word from the “Arab street” is so angry? It’s because it’s a bunch of guys standing in the street! Which is what guys do when they don’t have girlfriends; when they’re not allowed to even talk to a girl. Of course they want to commit suicide—unlike in this country, where it’s the married guys who wanna kill themselves.
But here, there’s always hope that if you can at least talk to a girl, she might be crazy enough to go for you. Or you could get rich and buy one, like people do in Beverly Hills.
The connection between no sex and anger is real. It’s why prizefighters stay celibate when they’re in training: so that on fight night, they’re pissed off and ready to kill. It’s why football players don’t have sex after Wednesday. And, conversely, it’s why Bill Clinton never started a war.
So to paraphrase the sign in his old war room: It’s the pussy, stupid. We need the Coalition of the Willing to be
really
willing. We need to mobilize two divisions of skanks, a regiment of hos, and a brigade of girls who just can’t say no—all under the command of Colonel Ann Coulter, who’ll be dressed in her “Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S.” uniform.
Forget the Peace Corps; we need a Piece-of-Ass Corps. Girls, there’s a cure for terrorism, and you’re sitting on it.

BILL MAHER
K

NEW RULES

K-9 Jelly

NEW RULE

Gay marriage won’t lead to dog marriage. It is not a slippery slope to rampant interspecies coupling. When women got the right to vote, it didn’t lead to hamsters voting. No court has extended the equal protection clause to salmon. And for the record, all marriages are “same sex” marriages. You get married, and every night, it’s the same sex.

Krystal Not

NEW RULE

Stop saying anybody or anything is like the Nazis. Republicans aren’t like the Nazis. Neo-Nazis aren’t even like the Nazis. Nothing is like the Nazis. Except for Wal-Mart.

Kidiots

NEW RULE

L
eave the children behind. Leave them behind at least until they’ve learned something. A new survey finds that only half of America’s high schoolers think newspapers should be allowed to publish without government approval, and almost one in five said Americans should be prohibited from expressing unpopular opinions. Lemme tell you little darlings something: This is my livelihood you’re screwing with now, so learn the Bill of Rights, or you don’t deserve Social Security.

Now, to those of you who think I’m overreacting here, yes, I understand that when you are in high school you are still very young and no one really cares what kids say anyway—after all, it’s not like priests are dating them for their brains. But the younger generation is supposed to rage against the machine, not for it; they’re supposed to question authority, not question those who question authority—and what’s so frightening here is that we’re seeing the beginnings of the first post 9/11 generation, kids who first became aware of the news under an “Americans need to watch what they say” administration, kids who’ve been told that dissent is un-American and therefore justifiably punished by fine, imprisonment, or loss of your show on ABC.

President Bush once posed the question “Is our children learning?” No, President Bush—they isn’t. And so a more appropriate question might be “Is our teachers teaching?” In 4 years, you can teach a gorilla sign language—is it too much to ask that in the same amount of time, a teenager in America be taught what those crazy hippies who founded this country had in mind?

I know the Morals & Values folks want us to take time out of every school day for praying, memorizing the Ten Commandments, abstinence training, and learning at least two theories of evolution (the one agreed upon by every scientist in the world and also the one involving a naked lady and a snake)—but lest we forget, the people of Iraq risked death and danger to send us one simple, inspiring message: America, get out of our country. But also, we want the freedoms you take for granted.

I didn’t mind being on the losing side of the last election, but as a loser, I guess I have some “unpopular” opinions—and, if you don’t mind, I’d like to keep them. I’d even like to say them right out loud on TV, because if I just sit here every Friday night and spout Bush administration-approved talking points, that’s not freedom or entertainment. It’s Fox News.

Hitting below the Beltway