by Bill Maher
—June 19, 2009
LAMEY POLLER
New Rule: If the guy who makes up the poll questions at CNN doesn’t want to do it anymore, he should just quit. This is an actual recent poll question: “Would you like to live on the moon?” And the shocking results: No, as it turns out, we would not like to live on the moon. This is the cable news equivalent of being in a dead-end relationship with an idiot. “What are you thinking?” “I dunno, honey. I guess I was just wondering how many Americans would like to live on the moon.”
LA TOYA STORY
New Rule: The Jacksons must trot out at least one family member who doesn’t make us all ask, “What went on in that house?”
LEAKY CONDIMENT
New Rule: Someone has to make a mustard container that doesn’t squirt out yellow water before it gets to the actual mustard. I get all excited for lunch, and then Grey Poupon pees on my sandwich. I suppose I could shake the bottle first, but fuck you, I’m an American consumer. Not only should your mustard be pre-blended to my specifications, it should also whiten my teeth.
LETTER RIP
New Rule: You don’t need a paper shredder. I’ve seen your mail—it’s not that interesting. What are you worried about, that the magazine from the auto club might fall into the wrong hands? I hate to break it to you, 007, but the Victoria’s Secret catalog isn’t actually a secret.
LIGHT MY IRE
New Rule: Bring back lamps where the switch is on the actual lamp and not three feet down the cord. How come we used to be able to make lamps with an on/off switch where you’d naturally look for it . . . You know, on the part I like to call “the lamp” . . . but now it’s on the cord? Did we lose the technology? I’m going to fight this. I’m going to bring back the lamp with the switch where it belongs. Or my name’s not Andy Rooney.
LILO & SCOTCH
New Rule: Now that I’ve collected all four mug shots, someone has to tell me how I get my free drink at SkyBar.
LIQUOR ASS
New Rule: We can’t have fraternities and also sell whiskey in a can. Yes, there’s a new offering from Scottish Spirits—eight shots of whiskey, straight up, in a can. Or, as they call it in Ireland, “A cool one.” Look, it won’t be long before some rich fraternity asshole is shot-gunning this thing, crushing it against his forehead, and then collapsing and dying. So on second thought, New Rule: The whiskey can is cool with me.
LOSER FRIENDLY
New Rule: Apple’s next device must be a computer that you control with your tongue. Thanks for eliminating the keyboard and the mouse, but pointing and pushing at things already seems too complicated and tiring. We’re Americans—and until you free our hands from the computer entirely, we can never attain our ultimate goal: Web surfing while eating and masturbating.
LOWENBRAU HUMOR
New Rule: Just because you’re drunk and it’s October, it doesn’t make it Octoberfest. When you drink in November, it’s not Novemberfest. It’s just Thanksgiving, and you hate your relatives. Besides, we already know what happens when people get drunk and start acting like Germans:
LUST DESSERTS
New Rule: Women have to stop having food orgasms. I’ve heard many women ask, “Why don’t they make a Viagra for women?” They do. It’s called an M&M. There’s nothing more humiliating than being in bed with a woman, and she calls out another man’s name, and it’s Willy Wonka.
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MOURNING IN AMERICA
New Rule: All the good news stories have to stop breaking while I’m on vacation. I go away for a mere three weeks to work with my charity, Hot Tubs Without Borders, and Karl Malden dies. But also Michael Jackson, the most famous white lady to die since Princess Diana. And one question gnawed at me the whole time: Why? Why did America lose its collective shit over Michael Jackson? And then, like Michael’s father, Joe, it hit me: Michael Jackson is America. We love him so much because he reflects our nation perfectly: fragile, overindulgent, childish, in debt, on drugs, and over the hill.
Now, let me state, I don’t wish my country was all of these bad things, I just don’t want to be like one of those people Michael Jackson had around him, the ones who just tell you you’re great and that your destructive behavior is totally normal, and they give you whatever you want—you know, doctors. So let’s go down the list and see if I’m crazy or if indeed America is unfortunately all the things that Michael Jackson was.
• Is America fragile? What do you think would happen if there was another terrorist attack here? We’d repeal the rest of the Bill of Rights, forget about health care, elect Toby Keith president—and fire me. Are we fragile? The stock ticker in Times Square yesterday said, “What the fuck are you looking at?”
• Overindulgent: I defy anyone to watch ten minutes of My Super Sweet 16 on MTV and not want to strap on a vest and blow up that little snot’s birthday party. Did you know that a third of children in America are overweight? Michael Jackson didn’t have a heart attack, his playdate rolled over on him.
• Childish: Well, we think Harry Potter is literature and Batman movies are profound meditations on the human condition. Our morning coffee has become a milk shake with whipped cream, and sixty-four percent of the population believes Noah’s Ark actually happened. And what could be more childish than what our news media chooses to cover? My God, since this Michael Jackson thing happened, I have no idea what’s going on with Jon and Kate.
• In debt: Please. The deficit—that’s just what we run up for the year—is over one trillion dollars. To give you an idea how much that is, take what your home is now worth and add . . . one trillion dollars.
• On drugs: If you don’t think America’s got a drug problem, you must be high. Children are on Prozac, athletes are on steroids. The pharmaceutical industry sold $291 billion worth of pills last year—and that’s not counting the potheads and the drinkers—yes, America is on drugs! And by the way, people also do just as much coke as they ever did, they just don’t share it anymore.
• And finally: Is America over the hill? I don’t know. I hope not—but Monday is the fortieth anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s first setting foot on the moon, and I can’t think of any ambitious goal we’ve reached since then. It’s sad when your peak was a moonwalk that occurred decades ago.
So America faces a choice: We can go the Michael route and keep living on debt and the world’s affection for our early work, or we can get our shit together like Britney Spears, put on our circus costume, and go out there and show the world we can still bring it.
—July 17, 2009
MALLOW DRAMA
New Rule: Someone must x-ray my stomach to see if the Peeps I ate on Easter are still in there, intact and completely undigested. And I’m not talking about this past Easter. I’m talking about the last time I celebrated Easter, in 1962.
M.D. PROMISES
New Rule: Sometimes it’s better to just stay sick. Doctors say they can cure some intestinal diseases by inserting a healthy person’s feces up your butt. Or, as John Travolta calls it, dating. The only thing that’s worse than this procedure is asking someone to donate. How do you bring this up on the golf course? Hey, remember that time I loaned you a hundred bucks?
MEANY BOPPER
New Rule: Fashion models must lose the disinterested sneer. That look doesn’t say “pouty mystique”; it says “I have rectal itch.” I know it sucks to be sixteen and stuck on a runway in Milan in a Versace original, but consider the outfit you could be wearing:
MEH AT WORK
New Rule: When I see one of those road signs for the Recovery Act, I should also see people in hard hats building shit. Dig a hole and fill it up with dead bodies, I don’t care. I’m just getting tired of passing these randomly placed signs while the gaping potholes shake the fillings out of my skull. It’s this kind of crap that makes me want to join the Tea Party. Then I remember I have a high school diploma, a functioning penis, and a black friend.
MEMORY LAME
New Rule: No. The only person who eve
r missed you is the Iraqi guy who threw the shoe.
MEXICAN’T
New Rule: If Latino immigrants want to be taken seriously, they have to stop wearing the giant hats. The civil rights marchers in the ’50s didn’t dress like Buckwheat and carry watermelons. You’re a proud immigrant demanding his rights, not the Frito Bandito.
MEXICO SHITTY
New Rule: Mexico is closed until further notice. I don’t wanna say that country is too dangerous, but the new warning to travelers is: “Don’t drink the water—use it to clean your stab wounds.” Even Mexicans are frightened of Mexico. At last weekend’s sex show in Tijuana, the girl asked the donkey to just hold her.
MILEY HIGH
New Rule: Miley Cyrus must stop wasting our time and just skip to the part where she gets pregnant, loses the baby weight, finds Jesus, gains it all back, switches to Christian rock, goes into rehab, marries her driver, plays Rizzo in Grease, and takes her shirt off in the reboot of Leprechaun, Leprechaun 2031: The Terror of the Trailer Park.
MOCK BLOCKER
New Rule: You can’t use sarcasm about people who think you’re an idiot if you’re an idiot. Britney Spears went on a sarcastic screed about people who think she needs help. Then her dress fell off, she carved a swastika into her forehead, and ran over her tits with a car. Which raises a question that’s been bothering me for some time: Can you un-masturbate to someone?
MOSH WIT
New Rule: TV networks must combine all of their cooking contests, dieting shows, and talent competitions into one huge reality show that people would truly want to see.
MOURNING WOOD
New Rule: Someone needs to explain to the eighteen-year-old Russian girl who’s dating Ron Wood that he’s not Mick Jagger. It’s an honest mistake, Ekaterina Ivanova, and you’re not the first part-time model from Moscow to make it. If you girls would just buy the CDs instead of downloading them illegally, you’d know what the Rolling Stones looked like.
MOZZARELIC
New Rule: Pizza joints must stop hanging pictures of Z-level celebrities on their walls. It doesn’t impress me that twelve years ago 21 Jump Street’s Richard Grieco stopped in for a slice. Especially since he’s working here now.
MY FAVORITE MARTIN
New Rule: Someone has to decide whether it’s okay to say “Happy Martin Luther King Day.” Is it a somber remembrance or an excuse to take the day off and get hammered? Like Memorial Day. And let me remind those who fought it that MLK Day is a real holiday, and not just something black people made up. That’s Kwanzaa.
FALSE PROFIT
New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. If conservatives get to call universal health care “socialized medicine,” I get to call private, for-profit health care “soulless vampire bastards making money off human pain.” Now, I know what you’re thinking: “But, Bill, the profit motive is what sustains capitalism.” Yes, and our sex drive is what sustains the human species, but we don’t try to fuck everything.
It wasn’t that long ago that when a kid in America broke his leg, his parents took him to the local Catholic hospital, the nun stuck a thermometer in his ass, the doctor slapped some plaster on his ankle, and you were done. The bill was $1.50; plus, you got to keep the thermometer.
But like everything else that’s good and noble in life, some bean counter decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they’re not hospitals anymore; they’re Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. The more people who get sick, and stay sick, the higher their profit margins, which is why they’re always pushing the Jell-O.
Did you know that the United States is ranked fiftieth in the world in life expectancy? And the forty-nine loser countries where they live longer than us? Oh, it’s hardly worth it, they may live longer, but they live shackled to the tyranny of nonprofit health care. Here in America, you’re not coughing up blood, little Bobby, you’re coughing up freedom.
The problem with President Obama’s health-care plan isn’t socialism. It’s capitalism. When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism? Ask not what you could do for your country, ask what’s in it for Blue Cross Blue Shield.
And it’s not just medicine—prisons also used to be a nonprofit business, and for good reason—who the hell wants to own a prison? By definition, you’re going to have trouble with the tenants. It’s not a coincidence that we outsourced running prisons to private corporations and then the number of prisoners in America skyrocketed.
There used to be some things we just didn’t do for money. Did you know, for example, there was a time when being called a “war profiteer” was a bad thing? FDR said he didn’t want World War II to create one millionaire, but I’m guessing Iraq has made more than a few executives at Halliburton into millionaires. Halliburton sold soldiers soda for $7.50 a can. They were honoring 9/11 by charging like 7-Eleven. Which is wrong. We’re Americans; we don’t fight wars for money. We fight them for oil.
And my final example of the profit motive screwing something up that used to be good when it was nonprofit: TV news. I heard all the news anchors this week talk about how much better the news coverage was back in Cronkite’s day. And I thought, “Gee, if only you were in a position to do something about it.”
—July 24, 2009
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NAG THE DOG
New Rule: If you’re one of the one-in-three married women who say your pet is a better listener than your husband, you talk too much. And I have some bad news for you: Your dog’s not listening, either; he’s waiting for food to fall out of your mouth.
NAP/TUCK
New Rule: We don’t need a picture book about plastic surgery. My Beautiful Mommy is the new book written to prepare kids for that magical day when Mommy comes home from the doctor and they don’t recognize her. Which is when Mommy should explain to the kids that after giving birth to them and nursing them, her mommy parts needed a little sprucing up. And since it’s their fault, it’s coming out of their college fund.
NEIGH MEANS NO
New Rule: If you get busted for having sex with a horse and then a year and a half later you decide, “You know what? I’d like to have sex with a horse again,” pick a different horse. Play the field. Literally. All I’m saying is there are plenty of fish in the sea. Not to give you any ideas.
NIX CANON
New Rule: Pick a century! You can’t submit to complete subjugation and be into digital photography. “Remind me to upload these images as jpegs before tomorrow’s stoning.” Or at least stick to a regular film camera. It’s less progressive, and developing the pictures is no problem when you’re wearing a darkroom.
NOM DE GRRR
New Rule: The Pentagon has to stop naming military operations. Libya is Operation Odyssey Dawn. What does that mean? Why name these things in the first place? It’s teenage bravado, like giving a nickname to your penis. Although, ironically, the nickname for my penis is Operation Odyssey Dawn.
NOTES ON A SANDAL
New Rule: Stop wearing plastic shoes. A year ago, only preschoolers and mental patients wore these, but now grown-ups all over America have gone Croc crazy—the latest step in our unending quest to dress as casually as humanly possible. “I used to wear flip-flops, but they’re a little dressy. I want clothing I can hose down.” Admit it, we’re a nation of slobs who won’t be happy until we can go to the mall in a diaper.
NOTHING BUT NYET
New Rule: While you’re telling me how your March Madness bracket is doing, you also must fill me in on your vacation and show me pictures of your kids. That way, I can not give a shit all at once.
NOYZ N THE HOOD
New Rule: Garbage trucks get to back up without beeping. I’m trying to sleep. You’re a giant, churning, groaning behemoth, and when you go backward, it’s at one mile per hour while making the sound of Fran Dre-scher with her hand caught in the blender. If there’s anyone out there who can manage to get run over under those conditions, well, you won’t just be letti
ng me sleep, you’ll be improving the species.