by Bill Maher
FLIGHT RISK
New Rule: Jesus is not my copilot. The CEO of Ryanair says he wants to cut costs by eliminating the copilot. And if something happens to the pilot, having a flight attendant land the plane. Unless she’s reading her Dean Koontz novel. In which case the plane will be flown remotely by some guy named Sanjay in Bangalore. Which is all fine. As long as they change their motto to “Ryanair—We Dare You.”
FOLK YOU
New Rule: The only thing worse than Christmas music is Christmas music sung by Bob Dylan. Presenting Christmas in the Heart, holiday favorites as only an elderly, tone-deaf Jew can sing them. Years ago, Bob’s people killed Jesus; now they’re murdering his music. The good news: The profits go to charity. The bad news: The charity isn’t the Bob Dylan Vocal Cord Transplant Foundation.
FOR BEAT’S SAKE
New Rule: You can’t call it house music if no one has ever played it in their house. Call it what it really is, “so shitty you have to take a drug called Ecstasy just to make it bearable” music. We had this when I was a kid—it was called “the record is skipping.”
FORMAL COMPLAINT
New Rule: You can’t tell me you’re making James Bond up-to-date when he’s still wearing a tuxedo to the casino. Have you even been to Laughlin, Nevada? You’re lucky if the player sitting next to you puts his teeth in. You know how you can tell a high roller? His sweatpants are clean. There’s a name for people who wear tuxedos in casinos: magicians.
FUEL ME ONCE . . .
New Rule: You can’t put a windmill in your campaign ad if you voted against every single bill that might lead to someone building one. As long as you’re sending a camera crew to a farm, why not just take a picture of actual bullshit?
HEAVEN CAN HATE
New Rule: Death isn’t always sad. This week, the Reverend Jerry Falwell died, and millions of Americans asked, “Why? Why, God? Why . . . didn’t you take Pat Robertson with him?” I don’t want to say Jerry was disliked by the gay community, but tonight in New York City, at exactly eight o’clock, Broadway theaters along the Great White Way turned their lights up for two minutes.
I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but I think we can make an exception, because speaking ill of the dead was kind of Jerry Falwell’s hobby. He’s the guy who said AIDS was God’s punishment for homosexuality and that 9/11 was brought on by pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, and the ACLU—or, as I like to call them, my studio audience.
It was surreal watching people on the news praise Falwell, followed by a clip package of what he actually said—things like:
“Homosexuals are part of a vile and satanic system that will be utterly annihilated.” “If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being.” “Feminists just need a man in the house.” “There is no separation of church and state.” And, of course, everyone’s favorite: “The purple Teletubby is gay.”
Jerry Falwell found out you could launder your hate through the cover of “God’s will”—he didn’t hate gays, God does.
All Falwell’s power came from name-dropping God, and gay people should steal that trick. Don’t say you want something because it’s your right as a human being—say you want it because it’s your religion.
Gay men have been going at things backward. Forget civil rights, and just make gayness a religion. I mean, you’re kneeling anyway. And it’s easy to start a religion. Watch, I’ll do it for you.
I had a vision last night. The Blessed Virgin Mary came to me—I don’t know how she got past the guards—and she told me it’s time to take the high ground from the Seventh-day Adventists and give it to the twenty-four-hour party people. And that what happens in the confessional stays in the confessional. Gay men, don’t say you’re life partners. Say you’re a nunnery of two. “We weren’t having sex, officer. I was performing a very private mass. Here in my car. I was letting my rod and my staff comfort him.”
One can only hope that as Jerry Falwell now approaches the pearly gates, he is met there by God Himself, wearing a Fire Island muscle shirt and nut-hugger shorts, and saying to Jerry in a mighty lisp, “I’m not talking to you.”
—May 18, 2007
G
GAG ORDER
New Rule: Some celebrity needs to raise awareness about the dangers of autoerotic asphyxiation. Yes, we’ve lost another talent to jerking yourself purple while choking yourself blue, this time the host of a British TV show. So come on, Hollywood, where’s the telethon? We are the world. We are the children. We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s stop masturbating with a noose around our necks.
GAG RULE
New Rule: There aren’t 101 sex tricks. In fact, ladies, there’s only one—it’s called a blowjob. Do it 101 times.
GATEWAY DRUG
New Rule: Stop putting psychedelic screensavers on computers. I sit down to check my e-mail, and the next thing I know it’s three days later, I’m in the desert, I’m banging on a drum, I’m naked, and somebody’s pierced my dick.
GERM LIMITS
New Rule: Don’t put that in your mouth. A new study finds that dangerous drug-resistant staph infections in children have increased tenfold over the past decade. And for you little ones out there, the infection eats you alive, and then you never see Mommy and Daddy again. And you get it from being on a plane and kicking the back of my seat.
RED POISONING
New Rule: If you were surprised that the Chinese don’t care about toy safety, the child who needs protecting is you. Over the last couple of months, American consumers have been learning a shocking lesson about supply and demand: If you demand products that don’t cost anything, people will make them out of poison, mud, and shit.
Since April, approximately seventeen million toys in the United States, all of them made in China, have been recalled. Which is amazing, considering that no one in the Department of Justice can recall a thing. Now, believe me, I was devastated when Mattel recalled almost everything in my Barbie Dream Closet, although I had suspected something when Ken discovered a lump on his testicle.
Until recently, I never worried about being harmed by the Chinese, unless they were in the left-hand turn lane. But then we found out that their dog food was deadly and they were making toothpaste out of antifreeze. And that the number 62A over at the Szechwan Palace is beef with bronchitis. They don’t care if your precious little Britney sucks a little lead. Because in China, their kids aren’t playing with the toys. They’re the ones in the factory all day making them.
Now, I know you’re saying, “But, Bill, I don’t have time to ponder whether these $12 jeans are the product of child labor. I just know I’m an American on a budget, and our lifestyle is a blessed one, and I want to look nice while standing in line for my iPhone.”
But there is something to be said for thinking about why these bargains are such bargains. Walmart is the most American thing in the universe, but all it sells is crap from China. Walmart wouldn’t exist without the American consumers’ endless thirst for the cheapest stuff China has to offer, like $30 DVD players and Jackie Chan.
In America, there is nothing more sacred than a bargain, and that even includes the war. There’s too much lead in the kids’ toys but not nearly enough on the Humvees in Iraq.
Let’s have a war and cut taxes! What could go wrong? Let’s give mortgages to the homeless! Sounds like a plan! Let’s buy toys from a communist police state. You just know they’ll put in a little extra love. Speaking of which, do you know why today’s modern Chinese capitalist puts lead in the paint that goes on toys? Because it makes colors brighter. You gotta love America: a country that’s literally being killed by the stuff that makes objects shiny.
—August 24, 2007
G.I. FAUX
New Rule: Marine recruiting ads have to stop it with the rock climbing and dragon slaying. I’m no stickler for truth in advertising, but this is like marketing Doritos as a douche. What’s wrong with advertising what Marines really do? They get
to protect America, shoot bad people legally, and serve as the advance team for Halliburton.
GLENN SCARY GLENN LOST
New Rule: Since Glenn Beck is clearly onto us, liberals must launch our plan for socialist domination immediately. Listen closely, comrades. I’ve received word from General Soros and our partners in the UN—Operation Streisand is a go. Markos Moulitsas, you and your Daily Kos–controlled army of gay Mexican day laborers will join with Michael Moore’s Prius tank division north of Branson, where you will seize the guns of everyone who doesn’t blame America first, forcing them into the FEMA concentration camps. That’s where ACORN and I will re-educate them as atheists and declare victory in the War on Christmas.
GOD ’N’ PLENTY
New Rule: If an Evangelical tries to use Halloween to pimp Jesus to kids, they get to egg his house. On Halloween, the president of the American Family Association urged his flock to hand out a Christian-based comic book instead of candy. Excuse me, Halloween isn’t a time to push your beliefs. You don’t see me handing out pot to kids . . . Okay, well not the little kids.
GOD SAVE THE TWEEN
New Rule: The boys’ room at Chuck E. Cheese’s must install a condom machine. A thirteen-year-old in the UK just became a father, bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase “baby daddy.” You know you’re too young to be a dad when your excuse for not getting up for the midnight feeding is “monsters under my bed.”
GORY HOLE
New Rule: The White House doesn’t have to release the dead Bin Laden photos, but don’t pretend we can’t take it. We’ve seen pictures of Britney Spears’s vagina getting out of a car. Television has desensitized us to violence, and porn has desensitized us to people getting shot in the eye.
THE GRAPE ESCAPE
New Rule: The Napa Valley is Disneyland for alcoholics. Be honest, you’re not visiting twenty wineries in four days because you’re an oenophile, you’re doing it because you’re a drunk. It’s the only place in America where you can pass out in a stranger’s house and it’s okay, because it’s a B&B and you paid for it.
GRECIAN, EARN
New Rule: President Obama must not bail out Greece. Besides democracy, philosophy, geometry, poetry, architecture, and drama, what have they ever given us? Greek president George Papandreau came to Washington, begging for money. To which I say: Screw you, Zorba, and the horse you came hidden inside of. You want our hard-earned tax dollars? Come back when you’re an insurance company.
GRIDDLE ME THIS
New Rule: Stop lying to me about your pancake mix. The back of the box says 1½ cups makes ten to twelve pancakes. Really? ’Cause I get four. Who’s your cook, Jesus?
GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT
New Rule: 7-Eleven doesn’t need its own brand. I don’t come into 7-Eleven because of the allure of the name. I come into 7-Eleven to steal rolling papers while the clerk’s stocking the cooler. Here’s a marketing tip, 7-Eleven: Take that time you put into product development and clean the microwave.
GYM CARRY
New Rule: Joggers have to leave the Batman utility belt at home. You’ve got two water bottles, a protein shake, an iPod, an odometer, headphones, car keys, pepper spray, and some gizmo that uploads your heart rate onto your Twitter page. Meanwhile, those German women who win every marathon can run thirty miles uphill drinking only the sweat that drips from their mustaches.
PHARMERS MARKET
New Rule: If you believe you need to take all the pills the pharmaceutical industry says you do, then you’re already on drugs. Yes, it’s that time in the campaign where all the candidates are presenting their health-care proposals. But none of the plans address the real problem: We won’t stop being sick until we stop making ourselves sick.
Because there is a point where even the most universal government health program can’t help you. They can’t outlaw unhealthy food or alcohol or cigarettes. Just pot, sadly. The government isn’t your nanny. They’re your dealer. And they subsidize illness in America. They have to; there’s too much money in it. There’s no money in healthy people. And there’s no money in dead people. The money is in the middle—people who are alive, sort of, but with one or more chronic conditions that put them in need of Celebrex or Nasonex or Valtrex or Lunesta.
Fifty years ago, children didn’t even get type 2 diabetes. Now it’s an emerging epidemic, as are a long list of ailments that used to be rare and now have been mainstreamed—things like asthma and autism and acid reflux . . . arthritis, allergies, adult acne, attention deficit disorder—and that’s just the A’s.
Doesn’t anyone wonder why we live with all this illness? I’ll tell you why: At the L.A. County Fair, they were serving something called “fried Coke.” My first thought was, “Gosh, what a waste of a perfectly good eight ball.” But no. They actually pour the Coca-Cola syrup into the deep fryer, then put it in a cup, and top it with sugar and whipped cream, and a cherry—you know, because fruit is good for you. Would it really be that much more unhealthy to get molested by one of the carnies?
In Hillary Clinton’s health plan, the words “nutrition” and “exercise” appeared once. The word “drugs”? Fourteen times. Just as the pharmaceutical companies want it. Their ad weasels love to say, “When diet and exercise fail . . .” Well, diet and exercise don’t fail, a fact brought home by a new Duke University study that showed exercise—yes, exercise—to be just as effective a cure for depression as Paxil and Zoloft. So, ask your doctor if Getting Off Your Ass is right for you.
—September 28, 2007
H
HAIL BARRY
New Rule: It’s okay for the president to play ball in the house. It’s easy to judge and say this scene detracts from the dignity of the White House—until you consider the end zone is between Clinton’s semen stain and where Bush OD’d on a pretzel.
HAIRPORT
New Rule: There are worse things on airplanes than terrorists. Virgin Airlines is promoting the power outlets on their planes with this ad of a woman blow-drying her hair at thirty thousand feet. After washing it in what, the blue liquid in the toilet? Air travel is bad enough without turning it into a flying locker room. “Let’s see, twenty minutes before landing, I’ve got just enough time to shave my balls.”
HAIR’S JONNY!
New Rule: There’s just something about a crew cut that says, “You can trust me.” This is Montana Senator Jon Tester. I don’t know much about him, and I don’t need to. His hair says it all: “I’m friendly. . . . I’m dependable. . . . I’m literally levelheaded.” If hair could smile, it would look like this. And most important, it’s hair that says, “You will never, ever find me snorting meth with a gay hooker.”
HAMPER PROOF
New Rule: If the doctor makes you take off your clothes, he has to provide somewhere to put your clothes. It’s bad enough I have to sit in this cold exam room wearing a paper dress; I also have to cradle all my clothes in my arms like I’m boarding the train to Auschwitz. You’ve got a million dollars’ worth of equipment in there, Doc—how about a hook on the wall. Yes, I could pile my clothes on top of the hazardous-waste container, or the table where dozens of men get their prostate exams every day, but on second thought . . . I’ll just hold them.
LEVI ON A JET PLANE
New Rule: If we can’t, after all is said and done, make this election go the right way, at least we can save one man. I’m talking about young Master Levi Johnston. He’s the eighteen-year-old Alaskan hockey enthusiast who knocked up Sarah Palin’s daughter, and the National Enquirer describes him as “a boozing pot-smoker who doesn’t want to get married”—and John McCain thinks he found his soul mate!
We’ve all seen how evil henchmen of the Republican party captured this poor innocent out of his natural habitat and forced him into a shotgun engagement because when the seventeen-year-old daughter of the vice presidential candidate is “out to here,” it’s just better that Levi was introduced as the “fiancé.” Looks a little less white-trashy.
But that does
n’t change the fact that Levi is America’s number-one political prisoner. But, Levi, you don’t have to be—this is the twenty-first century, at least in the blue states. You don’t have to do this—you have options. You can pull a Juno—fuck, you live in Juneau! Or you could do what most people do with an unwanted child: Give it to Angelina Jolie.
And if you’re worried about the baby, don’t. Let’s get real, dude, the way you are at eighteen, a baby’s better off not being around you—you’ll wind up losing it, or shooting it, or it’ll be on the bottom of your skate or something. Just let the Palin womenfolk look after it for a while. One more infant in that Mormon compound they call a house won’t bother anybody—they’ll barely notice another kid at the table, and soon they won’t even remember whose seed it was that produced young Trink or Truck or Puck, or whatever fucked-up redneck name they give him.