I Rant Therefore I Am

by Dennis Miller

  But, you know something, I hope we never end up actually making contact with alien life-forms. Okay, let's suppose there is life elsewhere in this solar system. Do you have any idea of how fucked we'd be if they're anything like us? Well, if you don't, just head down to your local casino tonight and ask the American Indian who's dealing you blackjack about how much fun it is to meet new friends from faraway places.

  Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

  The Backlash Against the Wealthy

  Y ou know, nobody gives the wealthy a bad name like "the Barely Adequate Gatsby," Donald Trump. But I'm not sure that Trump is an accurate representation of all affluent people. As a matter of fact, Donald Trump is to great wealth what John Wayne Gacy was to great art.

  Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but lunch-pail America's current relationship with the rich is so complicated, it makes the ending of 2001 look like the burnt pie episode of "Mama's Family." There's a backlash against wealthy people in this country, ironically a country built on the belief that anyone and everyone can get as rich as they want to if they work hard enough, and the aforementioned backlash is gaining momentum like Roger Ebert snowboarding down a double black diamond trail.

  Now, truth be told, lurking deep inside the id-infested batcave of every human psyche is the unspoken belief that each and every one of us deserves to be obscenely rich, right now! And that whoever got there before we did must have cheated. Therefore our interior monologue regarding the wealthy is more fragmented than the liner notes from Quadrophenia being read under a strobe light.

  Look, the rich aren't all that different from anyone else. They just happen to drive better cars, live in bigger houses, have cooler stuff, and sleep with more attractive people than the rest of us. So why all the ill will?

  As someone who has paid his dues by putting in many many grueling eight-hour work weeks and has amassed a modest pile of green purchasing rectangles myself, I wouldn't say I'm rich. Rather, I prefer to think of myself as superduper middle class.

  Now, now, perhaps you're thinking it's blatantly selfserving for a defense of the rich to come from me, Dennis Pierpont Bouvier Miller III. You might think, in your quaint proletarian way, that my vast holdings in the famed Miller family fruitbat guano empire have caused me to lose touch with the people. But nothing could be further from the truth! From the moment I sit down at my rhino-tusk-inlayed breakfast table and ask Hasbro, my personal cereal-scooper, to serve me some Beluga Flakes, to the moment my longtime driver. . . Driver Guy... takes me to work, I'm always thinking about how to reinvent capitalism into an economic model that appeals to man's higher calling and sense of charity and community, because deep in my heart, I realize, if I did so, I could really make a shitload of money.

  Now, whatever America as a whole might think, I am not afraid to come out and say it: I love the rich. I'm glad they have more money than I do. In most instances, I believe, they earned it. I realize this is a brave stand to take. I know you face incredible risks whenever you take the side of the wealthy and powerful against the poor and the dispossessed. But some hard truths must be spoken. Even though I'm fully aware of the danger involved in embedding my lips so deep into the ass of the Forbes 400, I'm going to look like an anteater with collagen injections.

  And the rich guy I love the most is Bill Gates. Just look at him. Haircut with plastic safety scissors. How many billions is he worth and he's still hittin' the irregular Ban-Lon table in the middle of the aisle at Wal-Mart. Can you imagine what an unending carnival of wedgies his adolescence must have been? Is there anyone in the world who looks forward to high school reunions more than Bill Fucking Gates? Huh?

  Well, I say, "God bless him." God bless Bill Gates. Look, maybe Bill Gates is an impossibly rich geek, but he's amassed his fortune by performing a valuable service to mankind: crushing other geeks.

  But now with the Justice Department scrutinizing Gates the way a stoner eyes a box of Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies, you've got to wonder if the Feds are really out to shut down his alleged monopoly or just get their own piece of the silicon pie. Because, you see, ofttimes bringing down the rich is nothing more than a clever ruse to make new people rich.

  Look, don't get me wrong, a bohemian approach to life has its place ... Bohemia! I've been broke more in my life than I've had money, and when I was broke I had kinda convinced myself that I was a cool can't-be-bought idealist, tooling around in my rusted-out primer-colored Plymouth Valiant that had all the directional stability of a twenty-yearold shopping cart being pushed by Crispin Glover wearing an eye patch. In my own ketchup soup days, I used to somehow tell myself that the clueless moron who pulled up next to me at a light, blabbing into the cell phone of his Porsche Targa Carrera convertible was just being pathetic in his vain attempt to compensate for the lack of anything of real value in his shallow existence. And that he was really missing out on the deeper, more meaningful experiences in life like the one I had staying up last night counting out change from my Hills Brothers coffee can that was sitting on a dresser made from cinder blocks next to my futon, so I could buy Ramen noodles for breakfast. But I was just bullshitting myself, because I wanted to be rich, too.

  Listen. No one should feel guilty about wanting more money. If you don't like it, well, sorry, comrade. Because complaining about this country's obsession with getting rich is like stepping onto a baseball diamond and bitching that nobody's playin' soccer. Trying to get rich is our national pastime. So pick up a bat, baby, and start swingin'. Because let's face it, folks, in this country we are all sailboats, and money is wind, and with enough of it, well, you can just about get blown anywhere.

  Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

  Affirmative Action

  Affirmative action. Stay with me, folks. This subject is tougher to sort through than Marv Albert's laundry.

  Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but thirtyodd years ago affirmative action definitely had its place in this country because when it came to hiring practices, minorities had a harder time getting through the door than Brando coming out of an airplane bathroom. As a matter of fact, let's not mince around here.

  In the history of this planet, no one group has inflicted more barbaric oppression on other groups than the white man. Ah, the white man. Pastius suppressus. Immediately after landing on these shores and tying up their boats, white European explorers' first instinct was to round up the quaint locals and force them to do the grunt work.

  With that blueprint in place, for many years white Americans continued to do the wrong thing by playing a continent-wide game of keepaway with the good life. And anybody who tells you that racism is a thing of the past has his head buried deeper in the sand than an armless clamdigger.

  All that being said, affirmative action cannot be the solution to our problems. Now, before you raise your pen to paper to demand my head, let me ask you this. Surely you're not insisting that individuals be given preferential treatment, based solely on the color of their skin. And certainly, you're not going to advance the position that minorities aren't as qualified as everybody else and need the booster chair to sit up at the big table. No, of course not. I didn't think so. Nobody's misguided enough to sell that wrongheaded spiel nowadays.

  And that's exactly why affirmative action is a mistake. It works on the theory that what you are is more important than who you are, while slyly reinforcing the hideous notion that women and minorities can never advance without special permission.

  Sure, I realize affirmative action was intended as a compensatory push to help fix the pendulum at a fair and equal center point, but more often than not in this country, when a good intention becomes institutionalized, the end result is further off the mark than the Boston Pops doing a Motorhead tribute album.

  Affirmative action, left unchecked for the last thirty years, has resulted in one of the greatest plagues of our millennium. Yes. That's right. Vanilla Ice.

  Now, it's true, I've never felt
the numbing sting of knowing my application for a job was put in a different pile, my request for a bank loan was specially dog-eared, or a prospective landlord passed on me after peering through the peephole of the apartment I was hoping to rent. But I can't imagine that being accepted merely because of my race would sit with me any better than being denied because of it.

  Now, being against affirmative action doesn't mean I am for discrimination. No sir, not one bit. I detest discrimination in all its forms and have tailored my writing staff accordingly. I have a skirt, a Spanish guy, a couple of Jews, and the rest are normal people, just like me.

  But don't tell me I don't know what it's like to experience discrimination. For many years I was on the outside looking in until a court order forced HBO to institute hiring quotas for cynical little pricks.

  Hey, it's up to us to decide if we want to live and work within a system that's based on merit or based on guilt. And while "diversity in the workplace" is certainly a desirable and noble goal, isn't "qualified people doing a good job in the workplace" even more important?

  Wouldn't it make more sense to level the playing field when it can really do some good and give everybody the same opportunities at the beginning of the game instead of midway through? Christ, have you taken a look at an innercity public school lately? Why not take all the time, money, and effort that's being misused on filling employment and university quotas and put them into ensuring that every little tadpole out there gets to make the same-sized splash in the job pond?

  C'mon, should the son of a wealthy black businessman really be admitted to a law school over the equally qualified son of a white cab driver? No. Neither one should get in; this country already has enough goddamn lawyers as it is.

  I'm sorry, but the bottom line is if I'm doing seventy-five mph on the freeway and I have to stop suddenly, I'm not wondering if a disabled black female Hispanic made my brakes, I'm wondering if they're gonna fucking work. Okay?

  And when I put my life in the hands of a doctor, I want the person who scored the highest on the tests, did the best research, and knows what they're doing. I don't care if they're Black, White, Male, or Female. As long as they're Asian.

  Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

  Hypochondria

  Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but an increasing number of people seem to be exhibiting identical symptoms: uncontrollable whining, ceaseless complaining, and persistent worrying. Concerned medical experts have diagnosed this problem as an epidemic outbreak of... yes, that's right, hypochondria, the all-in-yourhead cold.

  Now, like the Supreme Court's description of pornography, hypochondria is impossible to define, but you know it when you see it. It's a collection of real and imagined symptoms that add up to the fact that you are more obsessed with your health than Humbert Humbert would be with Marsha Brady.

  Hypochondria is essentially an upper-middle-class disease. You rarely see a poor guy blowing a paycheck on a specialist because he thinks the crisscross pattern he got on the backs of his legs from sitting on lawn furniture is the flesheating bacteria.

  Despite nearly two thousand years of medical knowledge, doctors have yet to come up with a fix for hypochondria. And really why should they? It's easy money. They have as much motivation to cure hypochondria as Peter Tork does to cure nostalgia.

  Those who are not worried about their health would say that hypochondriacs have their heads up their ass. Well, of course they do—because they're checking for polyps.

  Now, one easy way to gauge this boy who cried Epstein-Barr epidemic is to peruse your local magazine kiosk. You've got Health, Men's Health, Women's Health, Michael Jackson's Health, Prime Health, Natural Health, Alternative Health, and the newest one, "Hey, Jimmy, What's That on Your Face?" These magazines lure their neurotic reader base into the psychosomatic tent with teaser headlines like: SITTING OR STANDING, WHICH IS WORSE?; TOOTHPASTE, THE SILENT KILLER; and WHY YOU MUST NEVER BLINK AGAIN.

  Another cause of hypochondria is the demystification of medicine. Doctors used to be these godlike figures who came down from Mount Stethoscope to cure our afflictions with their Hippocratic magic. But now, with a cure for most common illnesses on the supermarket shelves right next to the Slim Jims, any shithead who gets "Quincy" on cable thinks he could've saved the world with a pipe cleaner and some baking soda.

  Personally, I take exception to the label "hypochondriac." I prefer to think of myself as spectacularly selfabsorbed. I have been to so many doctors' offices for the past thirty years that I can identify the tribe of naked Pygmies in National Geographic by the color plate in their lips. Sure I wash my hands fifty times a day. But that's not because I'm afraid of catching a cold. I just can't get them clean. Really. I did something horribly, horribly wrong, many years ago, and I can't get them clean...

  My wife and I have a simple system to deal with what she calls "my problem." I tell her I'm not feeling well and she tells me to shut the fuck up.

  Of course, I'm not alone. Talking about our ailments has become a national pastime, more popular than going to the movies, playing baseball, or blowing the President while he eats a piece of apple pie.

  But just because we all kvetch about our health to one degree or another, it doesn't make it right. Let's face it, life is a gift even more fleeting than the career of the Fine Young Cannibals. And you can't enjoy the ride if you're constantly checking the dashboard for warning lights.

  But there are some definite signs that you might be a hypochondriac. Like if your medical ID bracelet says: EVERYTHING. Or if you feel fine and then worry that your complete and utter lack of symptoms is the first sign of an incredibly rare medical condition called Anti-Symptomiasis. If you've read Kafka's Metamorphosis and thought, "Hey, I have that." And most importantly... if you find yourself automatically turning your head to cough in the middle of a handjob.

  Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

  Where Is the Presidency Headed?

  You know what the problem with the presidency is? We only pay the guy 250,000 bucks a year. You know, even NBA white guys make more than that.

  Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but what is to become of our beloved presidency?

  President Clinton's popularity is through the roof. All right, some of it's stuck on the ceiling. But it is through the roof. Partly because we like the job he is doing and partly because most Americans view those numbnuts in the Senate and the glass House of Representatives like they're the uptight frat guys from Animal House.

  To me, the most interesting revelation to come out of the whole Lewinsky affair is that after a year in which the entire executive branch was supposedly hamstrung, the American people got along very nicely without it, thank you. Our Founding Fathers could never have predicted the absolute stability of our rudderless ship of state.

  Oh and by the way, we have to stop viewing the presidency through the Rose Garden-colored glasses of the Constitution. Okay? Quit beating me over the head with this rolled-up 210-year-old "things to do" list.

  Yeah, some of it's great. And some of it's just antiquated bullshit. Okay? Listen, if Thomas Jefferson were alive today and you drove him out to Washington National Airport in a BMW 700 series, put him on the Concorde, and gave him a laptop and a cell phone to fool around with for the three and one half hour flight to Europe, and then told him we were still running the country strictly according to the precepts he and his friends scribbled on a cocktail napkin once at a party in 1787, well, do you not think Jefferson would look at you in disbelief and say, "What the fuck are ye thinking?"

  "Flip it over. See, it says right there, 'Feel free to change this every couple centuries or so, asshole.'"

  Look, the office of the President has always functioned much like a frilly toothpick on a deli sandwich: It serves no nutritional purpose, but it looks good and holds things together.

  For better or worse, a President embodies the sentiment and spirit of his time. And Clinton? Well,
yeah, okay, compared to Clinton, eels are Velcro. But reprehensible as he is, we identify with him. Clinton's insatiable need to be loved, constantly undermined by his own self-destructive tendencies, is a larger-than-life parallel to our own inner turmoil. Ironically enough, it's now we who feel his pain.

  In the near term, what will happen to the presidency depends on who we put into office. If we elect A1 Gore, the President will be a dull, ineffectual figurehead from Tennessee. On the other hand, if we elect George Bush, Jr., the President will be a dull, ineffectual figurehead from Texas. See, that's why it's so vitally important that you vote. Because the letters after the "T" in the state they come from start to get different...

  Hey, the presidency is not a Crisco orgy, but it's also not a platform for canonization, either. Okay? It's a job. And up until recently, it was one that respectable public servants might aspire to. And until we stop putting the chief executive's personal life under more scrutiny than lyra Banks in a tae-bo class, the prospective pool of qualified applicants is going to be shallower than Jennifer Love Hewitt reciting some of her own poetry at the Virgin Megastore Cafe.

  Look, folks, I hate to burst anybody's patriotic bubble, but there are no heroes anymore. The times we live in won't allow them. The very process of running for President is so debasing, it's guaranteed to squash whatever noble or idealistic impulses a candidate is naive enough to entertain in the first place. I look at presidents the same way I do the guy who trims my hedges. All I ask is that he does his job, and doesn't rip me off, or stare too long at my wife. That's it.