by Bill Maher
PINHEADS
New Rule: If bowling passes for high school athletics, then maybe it is time for a draft. That’s right, bowling, an activity that requires rolling a ball without spilling your beer, is America’s fastest-growing high school sport. “Congratulations, Tad, you just lettered in fucking off.” On the upside, there’s nothing like polyester pants and a Ban-Lon shirt to help a guy honor his abstinence pledge.
PLAY D’OH!
New Rule: Don’t let the guy who wrote Glengarry Glen Ross remake The Diary of Anne Frank. David Mamet is writing Anne Frank. He’s a great playwright, but I don’t need to hear Anne tell her mother, “Fuck you I’m staying in this attic, you fucking fuck.” Although Pacino could play the hell out of the part.
PORKY DIG
New Rule: Canadian bacon isn’t bacon. It’s ham. In addition:
Stop letting fifth-grade boys name hot sauces. Is it possible that I might be able to enjoy a touch of habañero without having to read about ass rape, the devil, or death? I’m flavoring my soup, not camping out for tickets to Ozzfest.
POSTPARTUM OBSESSION
New Rule: When I ask how old your toddler is, I don’t need to know in months. “Twenty-seven months.” “He’s two” will do just fine. He’s not a cheese. And I didn’t care in the first place.
PRO-BUSH
New Rule: You’re not posing nude unless I can see your genitals. A peek at Scarlett Johansson’s rump isn’t good enough, especially when I’ve had Jake Gyllenhaal’s ass in my face twice this year. Which is weird, because I haven’t seen Jarhead or Brokeback Mountain.
ROVERRATED
New Rule: If America can’t get off its back and get something done, it must lose the bald eagle as our symbol and replace it with the YouTube video of the puppy that can’t get up. As long as we’re pathetic, we might as well act like it’s cute.
And I’m sorry, we are pathetic. Inert and lethargic. Unable to end bad things—like wars, farm subsidies, our oil addiction, sixty thousand troops still in Germany, the drug war, useless weapons programs. And unable to initiate anything good—and even when we do address a problem, the plan is always half-assed, and it can never start until years later. Like the climate-change bill in Congress now: It mandates a whopping seventeen percent cut in the greenhouse gas emissions that are killing us . . . by 2020. Who’s in charge of this program, FEMA? No, really, fellas, don’t rush, only the whole western half of the United States has been on fire for a month.
We might pass new mileage standards, but even if we do, they wouldn’t start until 2016. In that year, our cars of the future will glide along while achieving a breathtaking thirty-five miles per gallon. My goodness, is that even humanly possible? You socialist dreamer.
“What do we want!? A small improvement! When do we want it!? 2016!”
When it’s something for us personally, like a laxative, it has to start working now. My TV remote has a button on it now called On Demand. You get your ass on my TV screen right now, SpongeBob, and make me laugh now!
But with big, important things, we’re that puppy. The president has said about health care, “If we were starting from scratch, then a single-payer system would probably make sense.” So let’s start from scratch.
Instead, we have a crappy lobbyist-written blowjob-to-corporate-America bill, and it doesn’t even kick in until 2013, during which time close to two hundred thousand people will die because they’re not covered, and three million will go bankrupt from hospital bills. I have a pretty good idea of the Republican plan for the next three years: Don’t let Obama do anything. What kills me is: Apparently that’s the Democrats’ plan, too.
We weren’t always like this. In 1965, President Johnson signed Medicare into law, and eleven months later, seniors were receiving benefits. In World War II, FDR converted car companies to making tanks and planes virtually overnight. In one eight-year period, America went from JFK’s ridiculous dream of landing a man on the moon to landing a man on the moon.
This generation has had eight years just to build something at Ground Zero. An office building, a museum, a Pinkberry, I don’t care anymore. America: Home of the Freedom Pit. Which, ironically, is spitting distance from Wall Street, where they knock down buildings a different way—through foreclosure.
That’s the ultimate sign of our lethargy: millions thrown out of their homes, tossed out of work, lost their life savings—and they just take it. Thirty percent interest on credit cards? Are you kidding me? It’s a good thing for the banks the Supreme Court legalized sodomy.
I still like the president; I can’t help liking the president—but what happened to “change,” and when did “the fierce urgency of now” become “Your call is important to us, please continue to hold”?
—September 25, 2009
PROGNOSTIC-HATER
New Rule: Americans must choose: Either they believe in science or they believe in Punxsutawney Phil. You don’t believe in evolution or global warming? In that case, you have to base every decision in your life on a rodent coming out of a hole and seeing its shadow. “Should I get that lump in my testicle looked at? Punxsutawney Phil says no!”
PROJECT SAFEWAY
New Rule: The outside world is not your house. Is it me, or will people wear just about anything to the supermarket? You hear that announcement over the PA: “Cleanup in aisle seven”? They’re talking to you! It’s heartwarming that you held on to those comfy gym shorts from high school, but I can see your balls. Which reminds me, I’m out of kiwis.
PROPPYCOCK
New Rule: Next year, someone has to put an initiative on the ballot that bans all ballot initiatives. Can you follow these things? “Vote yes to say no to the people who support the opponents of Prop 13 by voting no on Prop 11, which says yes to energy independence and not no to our teachers and firefighters.”
PUBIC’S TUBE
New Rule: This better not be a device that allows women to pee standing up. Okay, it is, and it’s called the Go Girl. The manufacturers say it’s much more sanitary than sitting on a public toilet seat . . . unless you consider the fact that you’re walking around with a piss-soaked funnel.
PUMPING IRONER
New Rule: California Republicans shouldn’t be mad at Arnold for betraying family values by screwing the maid. They should be mad because he’s from Austria, and he was making an anchor baby. I’m not sure what an Austrian/Mexican fifth-grader would sound like, but I think I talked to one when I called AT&T to change my cell-phone plan.
PUMPY LOVE
New Rule: If your blood flow is such that you have to choose between maintaining an erection or your heartbeat, it’s time to take off the Snuggie. A new study finds men who sit around and don’t exercise are much more likely to have a heart attack during sex. And the heart attack, it turns out, doesn’t come from the exertion but from the surprise that anyone is willing to have sex with you.
PUPPY LOVE
New Rule: “Screwing the pooch” is just an expression. A Washington state woman told police she looked out on her back porch to find her husband going at it with the family pit bull. Ooh, that’s gotta be a blow to a woman’s ego: “My wife/the dog . . . Here, boy!” When will men get it through their heads? Not everyone you buy dinner for has to put out.
JUST SCREW IT
New Rule: Stop saying “sex addict” like it’s a bad thing. In the wake of Tiger Woods’s heartfelt apology that he gave to his fans, his friends, his foundation—and, just to be safe, Elizabeth Edwards—the media has been interviewing sex addicts: on CNN, one addict said, “The day Mount Saint Helens blew up, everyone was talking about it. But I didn’t even know it happened, because I was having sex all that day.” Oh, the humanity! Please get this man some professional help soon, before he has a hot three-way and completely misses a tornado.
Now, I haven’t commented on Tiger Woods much, because, well, he’s just a golfer, and it took me this long to give a shit. But all this talk about sex addiction now—please—sex addiction is just s
omething Dr. Drew made up because he had no other way to explain Andy Dick. And that’s not just me saying that—it’s also the American Psychiatric Association, which does not list sex addiction in its manual; it does not regard it as a real psychological syndrome, like delirium or bipolar disorder or any of the other things Glenn Beck suffers from.
But before Tiger moves on, there’s one more apology he really should make, and that’s to Buddha, for dragging him into this mess and proving once again that whenever something unspeakably tawdry, loathsome, and cheap happens, just wait a few days. Religion will make it worse.
Now, usually, when famous cheaters are looking for public redemption, they go to Jesus, but Tiger went old school and claimed that sleeping with two-thirds of the waitresses in America had made him a failure as a Buddhist. He said Buddhism teaches you the way to inner peace is letting go of desire—and if that doesn’t sound like marriage, I don’t know what does.
Personally, if I were a golfer, I’d go with Jesus—because he’s a Trinity, so when you walk with him, you’ve got a foursome.
Christianity is for rubes. Buddhism is for actors.
And it really is outdated in some ways—the “Life sucks, and then you die” philosophy was useful when the Buddha came up with it around 500 B.C., because back then life pretty much sucked, and then you died, but now we have medicine, and Pinkberry, and TiVo; we have Vegas and Skype—our life isn’t all about suffering anymore.
Tiger said, “Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves” makes us unhappy, which confirms something I’ve long suspected about Eastern religions: They’re a crock, too.
Craving for things outside ourselves is what makes life life—I don’t want to learn to not want; that’s what people in prison have to do. Buddhism teaches that suffering is inevitable. The only thing that’s inevitable is that if you have fake boobs and hair extensions, Tiger Woods will try to fuck you.
And reincarnation? Really? If that were real, wouldn’t there be some proof by now? A raccoon spelling out in acorns, “My name is Herb Zoller, and I’m an accountant” . . . something?
—February 26, 2010
Q
QUIET RIOT
New Rule: The sad mime at every protest has to give it a rest. One sign you’re a major annoyance: when you haven’t said anything and I still want to tell you to shut the fuck up.
HOLLYWOOD RETORTER
New Rule: Conservatives have to stop complaining about Hollywood values. It’s Oscars time again, which means two things: (1) I’ve got to get waxed, and (2) talk-radio hosts and conservative columnists will trot out their annual complaints about Hollywood: We’re too liberal; we’re out of touch with the Heartland; our facial muscles have been deadened with chicken botulism; and we make them feel fat. To these people, I say: Shut up and eat your popcorn. And stop bitching about one of the few American products—movies—that people all over the world still want to buy.
Last year, Hollywood set a new box-office record: $16 billion worldwide. Not bad for a bunch of socialists. You never see Hollywood begging Washington for a handout, like corn farmers, or the auto industry, or the entire state of Alaska.
What makes it even more inappropriate for conservatives to slam Hollywood is that they more than anybody lose their shit over any D-lister who leans right to the point that they actually run them for office. Sonny Bono? Fred Thompson? And let’s not forget that the modern conservative messiah is a guy who costarred with a chimp. That’s right, Dick Cheney.
I’m not trying to say that when celebrities are conservative they’re almost always lame, but if Stephen Baldwin killed himself and Bo Derek with a car bomb, the headline the next day would be “Two Die in Car Bombing.”
The truth is that the vast majority of Hollywood talent is liberal, because most stars adhere to an ideology that jibes with their core principles of taking drugs and getting laid. The liberal stars that the right is always demonizing—Sean Penn and Michael Moore, Barbra Streisand and Alec Baldwin and Tim Robbins, and all the other members of my biweekly cocaine orgy—they’re just people with opinions. None of them hold elective office, and liberals aren’t begging them to run. Because we live in the real world, where actors do acting, and politicians do . . . nothing.
We progressives love our stars, but we know better than to elect them. We make the movies here, so we know a well-kept trade secret: Those people on that screen are only pretending to be geniuses, astronauts, and cowboys.
So please don’t hate on us. And please don’t ruin the Oscars. Because honestly, we’re just like you: We work hard all year long, and the Oscars are really just our prom night. The tuxedos are scratchy, the limousines are rented, and we go home with eighteen-year-old girls.
—May 3, 2010
R
RACEBOOK
New Rule: We must scour the earth to see if there is anyone more white than Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. It’s like a trust fund had sex with the J.Crew catalog, and this is what happened.
RACK-U-WEATHER
New Rule: And I never thought I’d say this, but the arms race to supply us with hotter, bustier weather women must stop. Either that or at least give me time to reach a climax before you throw to the bald sports guy. I used to tune in to see if I needed a raincoat. Now I wear a raincoat while I’m tuning in.
RAGE AGAINST THE REGIME
New Rule: Anytime you get two million Arabs in a public square and the headline isn’t “Hundreds Trampled During Religious Festival,” that’s progress.
RAPTOR’S DELIGHT
New Rule: If you make a plane like the F-22, and they cost $350 million each, and then you have three wars, and you still don’t use it, you have to admit that the defense budget is really a jobs program. Did we buy this plane as a favor to someone in the office? Is it a supersonic Girl Scout Cookie? Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya . . . Who are we saving it to fight? The Transformers?
READY-TO-SCARE
New Rule: If there really is such a thing as ghosts, they have to be naked. I’ll give you that a ghost is a dead soul, returned to torment the living. That makes perfect sense. But how’d he get to keep his pants? Did they die, too? Were his pants also bad in life, and condemned for their pant sins to never find eternal peace? I simply can’t accept that any pants could commit a sin so grave that God could not forgive. Except acid-wash jeans.
RENTAL DAMN
New Rule: Netflix has to stop hassling me with e-mails. “Have you received your DVD?” “Have you mailed your DVD yet?” “How was the picture quality of your DVD?” “How would you rate your DVD?” Enough already; Netflix is like a bad girlfriend—always asking pointless questions, and takes two days to come.
RIGHT SAID PED
New Rule: Stop telling me your toddler is going to be a “heartbreaker” or that she’s “flirting” with me. It’s just creepy. And it makes me regret having lunch alone at a Chuck E. Cheese.
LEARN NOTICE
New Rule: Let’s not fire the teachers when students don’t learn—let’s fire the parents. Last week President Obama defended the firing of every single teacher in a struggling high school in a poor Rhode Island neighborhood. And the kids were outraged. They said, “Why blame our teachers?” and “Who’s President Obama?” I think it was Whitney Houston who said, “I believe the children are our future—teach them well and let them lead the way.” And that’s the last sound piece of educational advice this country has gotten—from a crackhead in the 1980s.
Now, I know what you’re saying: “But Bill! What do you know about raising kids? You don’t have any.” Yeah. I also don’t have any fish, but I know not to fill their tank with Mountain Dew. Or to enter a kid in a beauty pageant. Or to let them be an altar boy. And what you do with your spawn affects me. They’re the ones who run me over while they’re texting, because they’re using an online dictionary to spell “Where U at?”
Yes, America has found its new boogeyman to blame for our crumbling educational system. It’s just too easy to bla
me the teachers, what with their cushy teachers’ lounges, their fat-cat salaries, and their absolute authority in deciding who gets a hall pass.
But isn’t it convenient that once again it turns out that the problem isn’t us, and the fix is something that doesn’t require us to change our behavior or spend any money. It’s so simple: Fire the bad teachers, hire good ones from some undisclosed location, and, hey, while we’re at it, let’s cut taxes more. It’s the kind of comprehensive educational solution that could come only from a completely ignorant people.
Firing all the teachers may feel good—we’re Americans; kicking people when they’re down is what we do—but it’s not really their fault. Now, undeniably, there are some bad teachers out there. They don’t know the material, they don’t make things interesting, they have sex with the same kid every day instead of spreading the love around . . . But every school has crappy teachers. Harvard has crappy teachers—they must, they gave us George Bush.