by Bill Maher
But according to all the studies, it doesn’t matter what teachers do. Although everyone appreciates foreplay. What matters is what parents do. The number-one predictor of a child’s academic success is parental involvement. It doesn’t even matter if your kid goes to private or public school. So save the twenty grand a year and treat yourself to a nice vacation away from the little bastards.
It’s also been proven that just having books in the house makes a huge difference in a child’s development. If your home is adorned with nothing but Hummel dolls, DVDs, and bleeding Jesuses, congratulations, you’ve just given your children the gift of duh. Sarah Palin said recently she wrote on her hand because her father used to do it. I rest my case.
When there are no books in the house, and there are no parents in the house, you know who raises the kids? Television. So maybe the problem isn’t the teachers. Maybe it’s the nannies:
—March 12, 2010
RIND RAGE
New Rule: If you’re too lazy to peel your own fruit, get scurvy and die. Hoping to appeal to teenagers who say they’re too busy to peel oranges, Sunkist is introducing a new pre-cut, pre-peeled snack version. Not to be outdone, Baskin-Robbins has created a new coneless ice cream that your mother pre-chews and spits down your throat.
ROBO POP
New Rule: Sci-fi nerds must finally accept that if it really was possible for a heartless robot to go back in time and prevent someone from being born . . .
. . . Arnold totally would have done it.
ROCK SUCKERS
New Rule: Coal companies have to stop calling coal “energy.” That’s like a lumber company calling wood “fire.” Or Budweiser calling beer “urine.” Okay, that one kind of makes sense.
ROGER & MEA CULPA
New Rule: Michael Moore has to be given a lifetime achievement award to make up for all the members of the Academy who booed him in 2003 for accusing George Bush of going to war based on a “fiction.” To all the people that night who said, “Michael picked the wrong place and the wrong time,” I say, “So did George Bush.”
ROUGH TRADE
New Rule: Ain’t no party like a Wall Street party, ’cause a Wall Street party don’t stop. If we’re really going to reform Wall Street, can we start by figuring out a better way to do business than having a bunch of sweaty guys screaming and waving pieces of paper with numbers on them? This is supposed to be the most sophisticated financial system in the world, and they look like they’re trying to lay bets at a cockfight.
RULES OF ENRAGEMENT
New Rule: Stop telling me not to do things I wasn’t thinking of doing. Really—we don’t add water to soup anymore? There’s no smoking on airplanes? Gosh, you take a quick twenty-five-year nap and they change everything on you! I’d better get out there and learn about this brave new world, right after I eat one of these fancy mints that came with my new DVD player.
BI-FURIOUS
New Rule: You can’t use the statement “There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year” as a threat if there was no cooperation in the first half of the year. Here’s a word President Obama should take out of his teleprompter: bipartisanship. People care about that only in theory, not in practice. The best thing that happened this year was when Obama finally realized that and said, “Kiss my black ass, we’re going it alone, George W. Bush–style.”
Two months ago, conservative Fred Barnes wrote, “The health care bill, ObamaCare, is dead with not the slightest prospect of resurrection.” Well, if it’s dead, you just got your ass kicked by a zombie named Nancy Pelosi.
And yet even before the Democrats got to take a single victory lap they were being warned not to get drunk with power. I disagree. All you Democrats: Do a shot, and then do another. Get drunk on this feeling of not backing down and doing what you came to Washington to do.
Don’t listen to the people who are now saying nothing else big should be attempted for a while, because health care was so rough. Wrong—because I learned something watching the lying bullies of the right lose this one: When they’re losing, they squeal like a pig. They kept saying things like the bill was being “shoved down our throats” or the Democrats were “ramming it through.” The bill was so big they couldn’t take it all at once!
And I realized listening to this rhetoric that it reminded me of something: Tiger Woods’s sext messages to his mistress, in which he said, and I quote, “I want to treat you rough, throw you around, spank and slap you and make you sore. I want to hold you down and choke you while I fuck that ass that I own. Then I’m going to tell you to shut the fuck up while I slap your face and pull your hair for making noise.” Unquote.
And this, I believe, perfectly represents the attitude Democrats should now have in their dealings with the Republican Party: “Shut the fuck up while I slap your face for making noise—now pass a cap-and-trade law, you stupid bitch, and repeat after me: ‘Global warming is real!’”
The Democrats need to push the rest of their agenda while their boot is on the neck of the greedy, poisonous old reptile. Who cares if a cap-and-trade bill isn’t popular; neither was health care. Your poll numbers may have descended a bit, but so did your testicles.
So don’t stop: We need to regulate the banks; we need to overhaul immigration; we need to end corporate welfare, including at the Pentagon; we need to bring troops home from . . . everywhere; we need to end the drug war; and we need to put terrorists and other human rights violators on trial in civilian courts, starting with Dick Cheney.
Democrats in America were put on earth to do one thing: drag the ignorant hillbilly half of this country into the next century, which, in their case, is the nineteenth—and by passing health care, the Democrats saved their brand. A few months ago, Sarah Palin mockingly asked them, “How’s that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?” Great, actually. Thanks for asking. And how’s that whole Hooked on Phonics thing working out for you?
—March 26, 2010
S
SCARE PIE
New Rule: Domino’s Pizza must be renamed The Pizza of Last Resort. Everyone’s got their favorite place downtown. If that’s closed, you’ll go with the frozen one in your freezer. Out of those? You’ll make your own pizza out of English muffins and an old bell pepper. It’s late, you’re drunk, and you’ve locked yourself out of your apartment? Ah, screw it. Let’s order Domino’s.
SCHLITZ FOR BRAINS
New Rule: We don’t have to play a drinking game—we can just drink. Really. And besides, if I’m hoping your balls land in my beer, I’m already hammered.
SCHLOCK THERAPY
New Rule: Scientists must explain why people will watch crap on Netflix streaming that they would never otherwise watch in a million years. It’s like the movie version of picking up some random stranger at a bar at closing time. The whole time you’re thinking, “Why am I doing this? I don’t even like this movie. I’m a better person than this.” And when it’s over you take a long shower and tell yourself, “Never again.” And then you watch a documentary about lobsters.
SCHNOOKS ON A PLANE
New Rule: If you’re stuck on a plane that’s not moving for more than five hours, you get to punch a baby.
CARTOON NUTWORK
New Rule: Although America likes to think it’s number one, we have to admit we’re behind the developing world in at least one thing: Their religious wackos are a lot more wacko than ours. When South Park got threatened by Islamists incensed at their depiction of Mohammed, it served—or should serve—as a reminder to all of us that our culture isn’t just different than one that makes death threats to cartoonists. It’s better. Because when I make a joke about the Pope, he doesn’t send one of his Swiss Guards in their striped pantaloons to stick a pike in my ass. When I make a Jewish joke, rabbis may kvetch about it, but they don’t pull out a scimitar and threaten an adult circumcision.
It’s true: When it comes to scary-ass religions, extremist Muslims are like Godzilla, and we’re like Are You There God? It’s Me, M
argaret. Sarah Palin is an evil dingbat who thinks God opens doors, but she never tried to poison-gas a girls’ school—as the Taliban does in Afghanistan.
Think about the craziest religious wackos we have here in America. The Mormons. I’m kidding, that’s not a religion. No, take the “Christians” who bring their “God hates fags” signs to soldiers’ funerals. Now multiply that by infinity and give it an army—that’s the Taliban. I’ve been known to make fun of Christians, but I have the perspective to know they’re a lot more evolved than people who target girls for going to school. Why, the worst thing our priests ever do is smother children with kisses.
Even with the latest Catholic horror story, Muslims could teach Christians a clinic in how to be fucked up about sex. That’s because Muslims still take their religious leaders seriously, whereas we have the good sense to blow them off. Catholics, for example, don’t follow the Pope—in overwhelming numbers they divorce, have premarital sex, and masturbate. And unlike the Koran, no one here seriously considers following the Bible literally—guys don’t look over their fence on Sunday morning and see a neighbor mowing the lawn and think, “Working on Sunday? I really should kill him.”
Now, Christianity, of course, went through a period like that, where religion had too much influence—it was called the Dark Ages. For centuries, either you joined the Church or you were killed. Nowadays, when a Jehovah’s Witness comes to the door, you turn the garden hose on them.
Now, it should in fairness be noted that in speaking of Muslims, we realize that of course the vast majority are law-abiding, loving people who just want to be left alone to subjugate their women in peace. But civilized people don’t threaten one another. We sue one another. Threatening is some old-school desert shit, and I’m sorry, you can’t bring that to the big city. I’m very glad Obama is reaching out to the Muslim world, and I know Muslims living in America and Europe want their way of life to be assimilated more. But the Western world needs to make it clear some things about our culture are not negotiable and can’t change, and one of them is freedom of speech. Separation of church and state is another—not negotiable. Women are allowed to work here, and you can’t beat them—not negotiable. This is how we roll—and it’s why our system is better, and if you don’t get that, and you still want to kill someone over a stupid cartoon, please make it Garfield.
—April 30, 2010
SEA MINUS
New Rule: In order to save the government some money, let’s get rid of the Coast Guard. We already have someone guarding our coast. They’re called the Navy. The rest of your job consists of trying to keep Cubans, Haitians, and pot from reaching our shores. And you know how we know you’ve failed at that? Florida.
SEAT ME
New Rule: Restaurants can’t make you wait until the rest of your party has arrived. Any restaurant that makes you wait is calling you a liar. They’re saying, “You have five friends? Yeah, we’ll see.” Listen up, Miss Drunk-with-Power restaurant hostess: When I say my friends are on the way, they’re on the way. So either show me to a table now or this is the last time I celebrate my birthday at Johnny Rockets.
SEVENTH-INNING KVETCH
New Rule: Don’t name your kid after a ballpark. Cubs fans Paul and Teri Fields have named their newborn son Wrigley. Wrigley Fields. A child is supposed to be an independent individual, not a means of touting your own personal hobbies. At least that’s what I’ve always taught my kids, Panama Red and Jacuzzi.
SHELL-SHOCKED
New Rule: You don’t have to put the shells in with the clams. You don’t put the banana peel in the banana cream pie, or the eggshells in an omelet. I’ll take your word for it, you got the clams from the ocean. I don’t need a plateful of sand and the medical waste to prove it.
SHOCKER MOM
New Rule: Pop star . . . or parent—but not both. We all know that Britney Spears drives with her baby bungee-corded to the roof rack. And this week, Madonna revealed that her daughter is “obsessed” with gays, and asked Madonna if she was gay, because of her infamous smooch with Britney Spears. No, honey, Mommy’s not gay—gay is everyone who still goes to Mommy’s concerts.
SHORT FUSELAGE
New Rule: Supermodels should not speak to flight attendants. That’s what supermodel May Andersen did, and she was deemed “unruly,” and got arrested upon landing. Look, supermodels, it doesn’t matter what you’re saying: “Can I have a pillow?” “I like your shoes.” What the flight attendant hears is, “I’m a supermodel and you’re not. Let’s fight.”
SÍ FOOD
New Rule: Instead of feeding your kids the new spaghetti tacos, why not save some time and just dress them in black and send them out to play on the freeway at night?
SÍ MINUS
New Rule: Anti-immigration people have to admit that speaking Spanish is okay when you want something from Latinos. Americans have no trouble taking the time to learn the Spanish words that we like, such as: tequila . . . margarita . . . sangria . . . marijuana . . . and coochi.
SIS BOOM BRA
New Rule: You can’t kick a cheerleader off the squad for working at Hooters. But a cheerleader at East Tennessee State was. Hello? That’s like call girls looking down on street whores. You’re a cheerleader. What part of the Hooters experience is beneath you, the wings? You both wear skimpy outfits and bounce up and down to get the sports fans excited. Just accept what you are: a farm team for strippers.
SIZE MATTERS
New Rule: Food companies must face the facts: One container equals one serving. Look, we’re Americans, and that means once we open the bag, there’s no stopping us until we’re licking stray bits of powdered cheese off the carpet. So stop trying to give us nutritional information based on a fraction of the package. It assumes a talent for two things that we’re really not capable of: restraint and math.
SLACKS LIKE ME
New Rule: The L.L.Bean catalog doesn’t need to have a black guy in it. I know you’re trying to be inclusive, but not once in our nation’s history has a black man put on a turtleneck and wrinkle-resistant chinos, slipped on his moose-hide slippers, gone out to the mailbox, and proclaimed, “Yes! The L.L.Bean catalog is here! Now I can get that canoe I’ve always wanted!”
SLALOM CEREMONY
New Rule: No more ski-slope weddings. Let’s remember what a ski-slope wedding, or a skydiving wedding, or an underwater wedding, says: “My love for you is so strong it doesn’t warrant a day off from my hobby.” On second thought, what better way to celebrate marriage: heading downhill and feeling frigid.
SLAP ON THE BECK
New Rule: Liberals have to stop gloating about Glenn Beck’s falling ratings. Just because he’s lost a million viewers in six months doesn’t mean America is wising up. His average fan was eighty-nine, weighed 250 pounds, and had the blood pressure of the Deepwater Horizon. They didn’t tune out, they died.
SLAY STATION
New Rule: Stop saying that violent video games are making our kids violent. It’s just not true. Although they are making our kids fat, useless assholes with the social skills of mole rats. But don’t worry, little Bobby’s not going to take the ax in the garage and slaughter his entire family . . . That would involve getting off the couch.
SO SEUSS ME
New Rule: Conservatives must get back to their core principle of shitting on everything the first lady does. It’s been literally hours since Michelle Obama read The Cat in the Hat to a bunch of schoolchildren. Where’s the backlash? What’s the matter, did the batshitmobile break down? She was indoctrinating our kids with her Marxist feline feminazi rainy-day socialist funtime propaganda! Come on, wingnuts, this story has everything you hate: powerful black women, public schools, and books.
PEE-PEE WRONG STALKING
New Rule: If a woman rejects your first dozen advances, don’t up the ante by sending her a picture of your penis. This week, we found out that Vikings quarterback Brett Favre allegedly tried to get with a young woman by sending her Myspace messages, voicemails, a
nd notes through a friend, and when none of that worked, and it was third and long—though, not as long as most of us would have imagined—he decided to sext her pictures of Little Brett to close the deal. Brett, I get it: Your dictionary doesn’t include the word “quit” or “retire” or “married,” but you’ve got to at least understand “punt.” You know the worst part about having sex with Brett Favre? He keeps saying he’s finished, and then he comes back to drag it out for another year.