New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer (15 page)

BOOK: New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer

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NEW RULE

Y
ou can’t be a Washington outsider if you’re already the president. Hearing President Bush constantly complain about “the politicians” and the “Washington mind-set” and saying things like “I got news for the Washington crowd” is like hearing Courtney Love bitch about junkies.

“Washington Insider” is by definition a function of one’s proximity to the president. That’s you, Mr. Bush. When you’re given check-writing privileges by the Federal Reserve, you just might be a Washington Insider.

Put it this way: You’re not the Mr. Smith in
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
—you’re the Washington part. We need a Mr. Smith to fuck with
you!
You’re not on a mission you reluctantly accepted, like the old farts in
Space Cowboys
—you campaigned for it. So it’s a little late to be selling yourself as some fish-out-of-water cowboy visiting the big city on assignment. You’re not Mc-Cloud. For 17 of the last 24 years you’ve had a key to the White House. The last thing that happened in Washington without you Bushes getting a piece was Marion Barry’s crack habit.
The Exorcist
happened in Georgetown, but Satan had to run it by Jim Baker first.

BILL MAHER
L

NEW RULES

Lassie, Stay Home

NEW RULE

No more dog shows. Prodding and grooming and training an innocent animal to fit some arbitrary human definition of perfection is abuse, plain and simple. There’s only one proper way to show a dog she’s adored—ask her to marry you.

Last Writes

NEW RULE

You can’t write your own obituary. There’s this hot new trend now: writing your own death notice before you die. It’s a nice new way of saying “I may be dead, but I can still monopolize the conversation.” You’re dead. Worms are eating you. Let someone else talk.

Law and Order: SUV

NEW RULE

You might think this one is self-evident, but: Don’t watch TV when you drive. A man is on trial for a fatal crash that happened while he was driving and watching
Road Trip.
A moving automobile isn’t a theater. It’s a place for eating, drinking, talking on the phone, doing your hair, checking your makeup, and getting blown.

Lemon Law

NEW RULE

I don’t need an annoying little sticker on each individual piece of fruit. Let me get this straight: Our borders aren’t secure, but we’re still going through the plums by hand? The stickers are the opposite of appetizing—especially the ones on kiwis that say, “Don’t these things kind of look like your balls?”

Let Freedom Jiggle

NEW RULE

Lap dancing is a First Amendment right. The L.A. city council has banned lap dancing. What’s next—burning books? Lap dancers, or “imagineers,” as I like to call them, are artists, drawing you into their fantasy world much like a skilled novelist does—that is, if novelists had perfectly waxed bikini lines. But more important, lap dancers are expressing an idea—an idea called hope: the hope that someday, a skinny young woman with artificial breasts and a navel piercing will want to have sex with you. And without that hope, millions of American men might just as well throw themselves into the sea.

Lipstick Thespians

NEW RULE

Go back to calling actresses actresses, not actors. Every word we say doesn’t have to be gender neutral. And by the way, it’s not a hate crime to say that Madonna is a bad actress, not a bad actor.

Lite Remark

NEW RULE

Having “no carbs” doesn’t necessarily make something good. This New Rule has no carbs and it’s not funny.

Lost Verizon

NEW RULE

I don’t need my cell phone to play video games or access the Internet or double as a walkie-talkie—I just need it to make a phone call. Why is getting to level four of Tomb Raider no problem but to have a simple conversation I have to stand on a hilltop with my nuts wrapped in tinfoil? When it comes to cell phones, I just need the basics: something that rings at inappropriate moments, interferes with airplane safety, and gives me a brain tumor.

Love Thy Neighbor

NEW RULE

Don’t try to talk to me about
Desperate Housewives.
If I had the slightest interest in other people’s sex lives, I’d be a Republican.

Super Bull

NEW RULE

T
he Super Bowl must stop pretending it doesn’t take advocacy ads. In turning down ads from certain charities like PETA, CBS and the NFL claim they don’t accept advocacy ads, which is ridiculous because every Super Bowl ad is an advocacy ad, and what they mostly advocate is eating fried food and drinking beer until you explode.
Not that they care if you die from food, because death by eating is always acceptable in America. Apparently death by fucking is a different matter. There was a watch-out-for-AIDS ad during the last pregame, which is all well and good, except AIDS doesn’t even place in the Top 15 of the things that kill people in this country—but what does place all over that list is food and drink: Almost twice as many Americans die from liver disease as from AIDS. Where’s the Super Bowl ad with a
Will and Grace
cast member telling us to pull a condom over our Bud Light bottle?
Four times as many die of diabetes versus AIDS; 47 times as many from heart disease. We’re kidding ourselves to think it’s not the toxicity in our food supply that’s doing us in. The nutritional guide at KFC is a card that reads “You’re kidding me, right?” Guys watch the Super Bowl while eating an entire tub of guacamole and then announce, “Hey, it’s the good kind of fat.” No, the good kind of fat is J.Lo’s ass.
And I’ll have no part of the argument that McDonald’s and Fritos prevent AIDS because they make you so fat, nobody wants to have sex with you. You can’t even sell sex anymore without making it sound like food. How do you think they came up with “booty-licious?”
Speaking of which, you know who else is sponsoring the Super Bowl? Levitra, Viagra, and Cialis. No, those aren’t three black chicks I know—okay, they are—but they’re also the names of three boner pills, because let’s face it: What every woman in America wants on Super Bowl Sunday evening is a gassy, flabby, face-painted drunk coming after her with a raging hard-on.

BILL MAHER
M

NEW RULES

M*A*S*H Note

NEW RULE

North Korea doesn’t need nuclear weapons—it needs Ritalin. It’s not a nuclear superpower. It’s more like a 4-year-old who won’t stop showing people his penis. There, we’re all paying attention to you. Now put that away. Maybe the real problem is being the little brother with the hand-me-down name,
North
Korea. Why don’t we change its name to something nice, like Really Really West Hawaii?

Magazine Racks

NEW RULE

Stop dressing up porn as mainstream media. The
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue is there to give people fodder for masturbation, which is a noble calling, but it does mean you’re in the same business as
Penthouse, Hustler, Assbusters, Black Tail, Celebrititties, Barely Legal, Shaved Asian,
and the
New York Review of Cooze.

Makeup Artist