New rules polite musings.., p.9
New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer, page 9
NEW RULE
If you’re surprised to find out that baseball players use steroids, we need to find out what drugs you’re on. It was a dead giveaway when Jason Giambi gained 24 pounds in his mandible. It’s time to get the performance-enhancing drugs out of baseball and back where they belong—in some octogenarian’s testicles.
Row v. Wave
NEW RULE
God hates cruise ships. After years of punishing them with simple fires and plagues, he finally hit one with a tidal wave—a personal tsunami. Folks, climb off. They’re filth. You could get the clap from their postcards. If cruise ships weren’t damned by God and all that’s holy, why would Disney own one?
Rx Shun
NEW RULE
Enough with the boner pill ads. These pills were intended to be marketed toward those with a medical necessity, not as Love Potion #9. If you have occasional trouble getting it up for the wife, try the natural method: Close your eyes and pretend she’s the babysitter.
Hypocratic Growth
NEW RULE
No one has their shit together at age 22.
Yes, like many others, George Bush avoided serving in Vietnam, but the truth is, I don’t really care if our president showed up for all of his National Guard jumping jacks in 1973. We all made mistakes when young and chasing a buzz—Bush blew off his calisthenics, Saddam gassed his own people, I bought the John and Yoko album where they just farted for an hour into a tape recorder.
The phrase “youthful indiscretions” is redundant because how many discreet young people do you know? The people you need to worry about are not the ones who sowed their wild oats but the ones who didn’t. Michael Jackson had to wait till he was an adult to have a childhood, and I think we all see how well that turned out.
Go back far enough in any great man’s life, and you will eventually get to the stuff he did or said before he was great or even a man. Don King started out life in Cleveland as a corrupt, murderous thug, but then—okay, bad example.
But the point remains: Trying to define a person’s current self by their past self is the worst kind of gotcha. Our mistakes from the past are just that—mistakes, and most of the time it was necessary to make them in order to become the wiser person we then became. You never got drunk and pissed yourself? Or sold drugs to schoolchildren? Or panicked when you couldn’t get it up at a bachelor party and killed a hooker?
Yes, if only hindsight could come without having to mess up first. And believe me, I have the platform shoes to prove that one. But to exploit youthful mistakes for political gain is—well, let’s just say, when you get older, you might look back and regret it.
BILL MAHER S
NEW RULES
Sabbath Schmabbath
NEW RULE
Presidents must work weekends. In 2004, the Democratic contenders for president moved a debate in South Carolina to the evening because, here in the 21st century, Orthodox candidate Joe Lieberman can’t do anything on Saturday until the sun goes down. Making the schedule even tighter, the debate had to wrap up by midnight because Dick Gephardt is a werewolf.
Santa Pause
NEW RULE
No Christmas movie ads until after Halloween. Enough with this holiday creep. Give us a few more weeks of no stress before the hellish Season of Peace begins. If I wanted to hear about Jesus 365 days a year, I’d have voted for Bush.
Saving Private Cryin’
NEW RULE
Soldiers have to follow orders. In World War II, there was none of this “We’re not going because we don’t have the right equipment.” You want equipment, join the Swiss Army. If your order is to ride a skateboard through a minefield to deliver a Zagnut bar to Donald Rumsfeld, I’m sorry, that’s the deal with the army. You know what happens to soldiers who disobey direct orders? That’s right—they become president of the United States.
Scary Gobblin’
NEW RULE
Halloween is child abuse. One day every year we lose our minds and send our children out into the night to talk to strangers. And then when they get home, we throw away the one healthy food item—the apple—because it might have a razor blade and keep the big sack of processed poison.
Sciatica Night Fever
NEW RULE
John Travolta must stop dancing in his movies. Sorry, John, you don’t look cool anymore. You look like that creepy uncle at a wedding who’s dry-humping the bridesmaids.
Shot/Ale Diplomacy
NEW RULE
Next time the Irish prime minister comes to the White House on Saint Patrick’s Day, the president has to get drunk with him. I don’t care if he relapses and has to find Jesus all over again. When an Irishman flies all the way across the pond on Saint Paddy’s Day, the least you can do is knock back some Guinness, sing a few songs, and let him punch you in the mouth.
Sickey D’s
NEW RULE
No McDonald’s in hospitals. I’m not kidding—they’re putting McDonald’s in hospitals! Hello? You’re doctors. You’re not supposed to be in the “repeat business” business. I’m sorry, Fast Food Nation, but we already figured out a way to screw patients—they’re called HMOs.
NEW RULE
No answering the phone during sex. According to Ad Age magazine, 15 percent of Americans have answered their cell phone during sex. This is not only rude, it is also dangerous because it interferes with your driving. Trust me, when a woman is screaming “I’m coming, I’m coming!” she doesn’t want to hear “I’m breaking up, I’m breaking up.”
Skeletal Refrains
NEW RULE
In fat-ass, stomach-stapling America, stop focusing on the three people in the country who don’t eat enough! There’s a term for Lara Flynn Boyle’s condition: It’s called being a skinny chick. It’s just her body type ... as seen in this childhood photo.
Smooth Saline
NEW RULE
No, you can’t have a boob job for your birthday. Record numbers of teenage girls are seeking breast-augmentation surgery—or, as they call it, “liberating a rack.” Let’s get back to the good old days when your daughter announced she was getting Ds—and she was talking about her report card.
So-Duh
NEW RULE
There’s no such thing as “flavored water.” There’s a whole aisle of this crap at the supermarket—water, but without the watery taste. Sorry, but flavored water is called a soft drink. You want flavored water? Pour some scotch over ice and let it melt. That’s your flavored water.
Softening Dick
NEW RULE
Keep Dick Cheney in seclusion. I liked it better when the vice president was always tucked away in an undisclosed location. He’s like the creature in the cradle at the end of Rosemary’s Baby: It’s more frightening when all we see is the rattle in its horrible little hand. Stick to your original strategy: Only bring out Dick Cheney when you’re trying to make Rumsfeld seem human.
Sour Kraut
NEW RULE
“Eat me” is just an expression. Another German man has been convicted of killing and eating someone, the second such case in a year. You can always tell a German cannibal because he says things like “I’m so hungry I could eat a Horst.”
Square Dunce
NEW RULE
Country music stars can’t be authors. Charlie Daniels’s book Ain’t No Rag: Freedom, Family, and the Flag is a collection of musings by noted white trash icon Charlie Daniels on subjects ranging from American flags to American flag bumper stickers to what to do to a hippie if you catch him trying to burn an American flag. Before this book, I was ambivalent on the issue of flag burning. Now, I find myself reconsidering the question of book burning.
Star Bores
NEW RULE
No more referring to your acting role as “this wonderful journey.” It wasn’t a journey. You just mixed the wrong pills in your trailer and then went to the set and acted like someone slightly less fucked up than you.
Statue of Limitations
NEW RULE
Keep the Statue of Liberty closed. Since 9/11, the statue has been off limits for security reasons, and some people are outraged. Why? It’s a sacred symbol of our principles, not a StairMaster. Everything doesn’t have to be interactive. People go to church; they don’t take turns up on the cross. You’re not allowed to fill the Liberty Bell with nachos or wear it as a hat. You want to lose yourself inside an American icon? Have sex with Shelley Winters.
Statuette of Limitations
NEW RULE
Best sound editing is not a category at the Oscars. Ditto sound mixing. Talkies have been around for 70 years. Hollywood, you nailed the sound thing. The only part that matters about movie sound is that it’s really, really loud. Otherwise, I’ll be able to think, and if I think, I’ll realize I’m a college-educated adult watching a movie about a Spiderman.
Stiff Up Her Lip
NEW RULE
There’s no explaining love. If Charles and Camilla prove one thing, it’s that she must be the greatest lay in history. She must do things to him that make Carmen Elektra look like your hand. Love is inexplicable, so let’s not put any laws about marriage in our Constitution.
Storm Frontin’
NEW RULE
Hurricane names should be scary. It’s bad enough we can’t name hurricanes after women anymore because it’s sexist; now they’re all getting Waspy names like “Alex,” which is the least effective approach. Can you imagine how much faster the Carolinas would evacuate if they announced that “Ludacris” was headed their way?
Orifice Politics
NEW RULE
Fucking around at the office is not a reason to lose your job. If it was, the unemployment rate in America would be 80 percent. You may have heard that the CEO of Boeing—or as it’s now known, Boing!—had to step down because he was having an affair with the nice lady from accounts receivable. Who gives a damn?
I know what you’re saying: “Hey Bill, that attitude may be fine for you, leading your ‘single, libertarian lifestyle’—but when a 68-year-old airline executive named Harry Stonecipher bones somebody in the supply closet, what do we tell the children?”
Right, “the children,” who look up to geriatric arms dealers and obviously don’t want to think of their government buying Apache helicopters from a fornicator. “At Boeing, we will not tolerate sneaking around! Now get back to work on the Stealth bomber.”
In other countries, a CEO committing adultery isn’t even called a “scandal.” It’s called a “business trip.” Why are there so many puritans in this country, and why can’t the rest of us make them go away? When did we get to be such a nation of busybodies? Oooh, who’s Harry Stonecipher fucking? I gotta know.
Just to put things into perspective, Boeing Company is our second largest defense contractor. They make things like the F-15, and we’re at war, with soldiers’ lives at stake, so I gotta think the smooth, uninterrupted management of the Boeing Company might be important—but apparently not more important than stopping Harry Stonecipher from grappling naked in a burlesque of lust with 52-year-old Gloria Hormth.
Not long ago, we found out there’s nine billion of our dollars missing in Iraq—not misspent: lost. You heard me: $9 billion. But in the age of Bush, anything that involves money is legal, and the only scandal is sex. Gross, disgusting, AARP, early-bird-special sex with Harry Stonecipher. As if a 68-year-old man having an office romance should be a shock in the aerospace industry—it shouldn’t; it should be a high five in the pharmaceutical industry. This sort of event shouldn’t be condemned it should be applauded.
Harry Stonecipher’s extramarital affair is the first time Boeing ever deployed an obsolete missile system and you and I didin’t have to foot the bill for it.
BILL MAHER T
NEW RULES
Tallowed Be Thy Name
NEW RULE
Jesus is not a candle. A company in South Dakota is selling candles with the scent of Jesus. You light one, and your friends say, “Christ, what’s that smell?” It’s true, the formula comes straight out of the Bible—it’s from the little-known Letter of Paul to the Aromatherapists. But if Jesus really smelled so great, how come everybody was always offering to wash his feet?
Tart Reform
First Amber Frey was mad that Scott Peterson was married. Then she was mad that he had killed his wife.
NEW RULE
There’s just no pleasing some people.
1040 BS
NEW RULE
That computer setup in your home where you play video golf at night and your wife has sexy cyber chats with strangers during the day is not a tax-deductible “in-home office.” It’s a chair in your family room, facing away from your family.
The Book of Moron
NEW RULE
If Utah gets to edit Hollywood, then Hollywood gets to edit Utah. Four Utah-based companies are taking popular movies, editing out parts they don’t like, and then selling them to other sexually repressed squares. Let me ask you this, Spencer: How’d you like it if we went through the Book of Mormon and took out all the bullshit? You have your fantasy world—it involves celestial marriage and magic underpants—and we have ours: It involves Sin City and a half-naked Jessica Alba. Instead of asking yourself “What would Jesus edit?” accept that maybe Pooty Tang just isn’t for you. You don’t see me adding jokes to Pauly Shore movies. Believe me, it won’t up your street cred when you bring home Dude, Where’s My Bible?
The Guest Wing
NEW RULE
The president can have sleepovers. It turns out President Bush puts up some of his big-name donors in the Lincoln bedroom just like Clinton! And you know what? I still don’t care. If Bush wants to get in his footy pajamas and have CEOs over to play Battleship, fine. If that’s all Bush donors are getting for their money, it’s not called “a scandal”—it’s called “a good start.”
The L-Word
NEW RULE
Stop saying tax-and-spend liberal. That’s what the government does:It taxes and spends. As opposed to the system under Bush/Cheney: Dine-and-dash.
Three Reichs and You’re Out
NEW RULE
George Bush isn’t Hitler. In the 2004 election, MoveOn.org compared Bush to Hitler, ignoring the first rule for being taken seriously by grown-ups, which is: Don’t call everyone you don’t like “Hitler.” Bush is not Hitler. For one thing, Hitler was a decorated, frontline combat veteran. Also, in the election that brought him to power in 1933, Hitler got more votes than the other candidates.
And Hitler had a mustache. So let’s all take a rest from playing the Hitler card. Unless we’re talking about Saddam Hussein. Now, that guy was Hitler.
Tiara Alert
NEW RULE
No more “talent competitions” at beauty pageants. Being hot is a talent. The only reason we endured watching Miss Texas play the xylophone in the first place was because it made her breasts jiggle. The talent contest is just an interminable delay to the whole point of the night: getting date-raped by an athlete.
Till Debt Do Us Part
NEW RULE
Enough with the bitching about the credit card companies. Sure, they’re a bunch of predatory loan sharks, but your credit problems may also have something to do with the fact that you just can’t stop buying stuff. So, set down your $5, double-mocha, no-foam latte and your plasma-screen, Internet-accessible, camera cell phone and face the fact that there’s only one surefire way to erase credit card debt—by picking up a big, shiny pair of scissors ... and cutting your wife in half.
Tit for Tat
NEW RULE
No breast-feeding in public. Some women think it’s okay to openly breast-feed in the restaurant while I’m trying to eat. They say it’s healthy and natural. Well, so is my date’s libido—but you don’t see her blowing me next to the dessert cart.
