Why We Suck

by DR. DENIS LEARY

  Danica Patrick—the much-heralded and publicized and ostracized and cursed-about-by-men female race car driver finally won her first race in 2008. Legions of women all over the earth were quoted in happy, feminist quotes about female power and female challenges and equal rights and equal abilities. Danica cried as she accepted her trophy and was photographed in all of her glory and joy. But the picture that was most often seen the next day was Danica in a bikini. From her pages in Sports Illustrated ’s Annual Swimsuit Issue. In which she looked very very hot. Now—we can all agree or disagree about that picture and its placement and why she took it and are women objectified and blah blah sexist blah—but the truth is if you ask most men if they are attracted to a woman who can drive faster than them you will get either a no or a big fat maybe. But if you ask most men if they mind a woman who looks like Danica does in a bathing suit beating their brains out on the track? The answer is—not at all. Especially if she’s WEARING the bikini while she drives. Hell—I’ll sign up right now and ride shotgun. As a matter of fact—I wish there were a whole race of female race car drivers who drove like cheetahs on crack and looked fine in a swimsuit issue—I think the ratings would go through the roof.

  But that will NEVER happen.

  If you are a woman reading this, odds are Danica will win another few races but not you. Or your daughter. Danica is an anomaly. You and your daughter most likely are not. Even if you somehow managed to convince yourself that you were Danica Part Deux and passed every physical and mental challenge in your path and got sponsored and suited up and officially entered and placed on the track—you would never win a single IndyCar—EVER. Even if all the other male drivers were involved in an incredible crash that left them literally without the wherewithal to circle the track, you would be unable to maneuver around and between all the burning and airborne debris fast enough to see the checkered flag.

  Especially if you have or plan on having kids.

  Why?

  Because there’s an instinct built into the female DNA—if a woman is still of natural child-bearing age—to protect herself and not risk the future of her children, whether they exist in egg or embryo or live germ-factory form. Potential kid, kid in the oven or kid already running around. It’s why most women don’t wish to get into fistfights or shoot animals or fly airplanes into tall buildings—unless it’s to protect or feed or avenge the lives of their own children. You wanna win the Daytona 500? We would have to strap your firstborn into the shotgun seat of a lead car driven by a crazed ex-boyfriend on a revenge ride from hell or your current lover while he was under chemical influence and give either of them a fifteen-second head start and then and only then would you be headed for a victory lap. And the winner’s circle celebration would probably involve breast instead of bottled milk.

  It’s absolutely commonsense fact: girls like to dance and boys like to hit. That’s why girls become cheerleaders and boys become football players.

  Girls play mommy and boys pretend to kill each other. Girls like pretty clothes and boys like fire trucks.

  For women, their list of hot men includes a dad who waits at the corner bus stop with his toddler son and places him on the bus with a kiss atop the head and waves goodbye as the bus drives away. This man could be thirty pounds overweight and wearing a goofy hat. Women will still find him sexy.

  For men—a mom doing the same thing—placing her toddler on the bus with a loving kiss and a wave—would be just as hot and sexy. As long as she was built like Giselle Bundchen and wearing a leopard-print thong.

  I know it’s awful. I know it’s incredibly simple and stupid and sad.

  But it’s true.

  As a matter of fact—you could skip the kid and the bus and just have Thong Mom walk down to the corner and stand there—same difference for straight men.

  A recent online poll by Woman’s Day magazine came up with these results:

  When asked which they would rather have—Jennifer Aniston’s body or a million dollars—78 percent of the women chose the money.

  If you had asked men—78 percent would have chosen Jennifer Aniston’s body—as long as they could press it right up against their own.

  As a matter of fact—if they had asked men—they would have found that most men WITH a million dollars would gladly give it up for the CHANCE to touch Jennifer Aniston’s body. Or just to see her naked.

  Maybe that’s the difference between men and women.

  One of them, anyway. Here’s another:

  Ninety-four percent of the people in this country who visit, pay and place heavy stock in psychics and what they have to say are women. The other 6 percent? Gay men.

  Women go to psychics to find out what the future might hold for them in terms of true love, their children, former lives they may have lived, where their dead father/boyfriend/best friend might be.

  Straight men? If psychics are capable of seeing into the future—why the fuck can’t they give us the score to next year’s Super Bowl.

  That’s it for men. Very cut and dried, very black and white. We’ll discuss that and many other issues between men and women between these covers.

  By the way—bipolar? Bullshit. Every single woman I have ever known has been bipolar for SOME part of her life—one week here, nine months there, ever since her mother stopped calling—something. When I was a kid, bipolar meant either the twin axis ends of the earth or maybe a bear who swung both ways. Now it’s an excuse for every other girl whose hormones are conducting a human body remake of Raging Bull.

  They didn’t have bipolar when I was growing up. If they did—my mom would’ve been called TRIpolar. She could smack one kid with a wooden spoon, ask a second kid if she was retarded and give a third kid a sweet little kiss on the head—all within four and a half seconds. And ya know what? Each one of us almost always deserved what we had coming.

  And that’s another thing I don’t wanna hear ever again—dysfunctional families. That one is officially off-limits. Done. Retired forever. Has anyone ever heard of a FUNCTIONAL family? Who? When? Where? The Jacksons? Nope. The Osmonds? I don’t think so. You wanna know what a functional family is? One where no one ends up killing everyone else. You can’t have four or five or fifteen people live together in one place WITHOUT war and envy and greed and anger and theft and every other available weapon.

  You disagree?

  Then you gotta be a chick.

  Open vagina—insert head.

  I told you this book was gonna tick you off. Let’s face it—the raw truth hurts.

  Like this fact: I don’t know a living man on this planet who DOESN’T have attention deficit disorder or spends at least twelve hours of each day thinking about his penis.

  I didn’t know the guy personally but I would bet my left ball that even Jesus thought a lot about his johnson. Hey—he could probably make his do special tricks. If I was the Son Of God, special dick tricks would probably be the second or third thing I’d be spending my time on after I found out about my secret identity.

  That’s a lie.

  Who am I kidding? It’d be the first.

  Here’s another lively topic:

  It says somewhere in the piece of paper that this great country of ours was founded upon that all men are created equal.

  Bullshit.

  All men are created equal as long as they don’t wanna blow each other.

  And then decide to keep on blowing each other long enough to fall in love.

  And then suddenly express a desire to formalize that relationship by getting married.

  It’s apparently okay to have sex with other guys as long as you keep it secret and have a wife who somehow doesn’t know AND you are either the pastor of a church or a sitting senator or both. In Larry Craig’s case the term “sitting senator” will more than likely get a laugh out of you—as will the term “wide stance.”

  Yup—there is a real fear in America that gay marriage will somehow upend heterosexual unions and throw the entire moral fabric of the countr
y into a tailspin—no pun intended.

  I know several gay men and gay women involved in very committed and honest relationships with other gay men and gay women that would put a lot of straight married couples to shame. They are monogamous and caring and devoted and affectionate.

  Besides—why shouldn’t they get married? Why should straight married couples be the only ones who never have sex, argue incessantly over what to watch on TV and walk around on a daily basis harboring a deep and bottomless well of resentment and anger pieced together brick by murderous brick over years and years of both real and imagined slights and emotional warfare and wallpaper choices? Shit—I say marry every gay and willing couple off right now. Mark my words—just like the rest of us—within eighteen months at least half of them will come running back to court begging to be released from such an endlessly mind- and libido-numbing fate.

  Open ass—insert the Bill of Rights.

  Here’s another inarguable factoid:

  Racial and ethnic stereotypes exist because they are TRUE. For instance—don’t tell me the Irish don’t love to drink. I AM Irish. We invented whiskey, for crissakes. You know what whiskey means in Gaelic? Water of life.

  I rest my case.

  Of whiskey.

  On YOUR politically correct goddam lap.

  Years ago I wrote a piece for the New York Post about the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in which I made fun of the fact that most of the Irish and a few Puerto Rican guys I knew would annually—which means every single fucking year—spend the unofficially holy day painting their faces green and getting drunk and then beating the living shit out of each other after an argument broke out over who had better pitching, the Yankees or the Mets.

  The Irish Defamation Society threatened to file a lawsuit against me for perpetrating an awful and ruinous myth about Irish Americans.

  Several weeks went by and no lawsuit emerged. Why?

  Because they soon realized that all I had to do was call up any local news channel and request footage from ANY St. Patrick’s Day Parade held since the invention of the television camera and there in front of our eyes would be green-faced Irish Americans in a drunken punch-up with their own cousins and best friends and actual brothers—many times right in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The Puerto Ricans and the New York Mets didn’t enter the equation until they both started playing baseball during the 1960s. Otherwise?

  Case closed.

  The right to bear arms and the right to vote and the equal rights amendment and freedom of speech and every other piece of paper evidence you wanna throw onto the pile may guarantee you the right to spout stupidity (see Newt Gingrich, Mel Gibson, Barry Bonds et al.) but it also guarantees that the rest of us don’t have to buy into it.

  Ya wanna build a giant fence to keep all the Mexicans out? Fine. Who’s gonna build the fence? Where are we gonna get our cheap Mexican weed? Who’s gonna host The Dog Whisperer?

  Our country has been so driven into debt by a drug-addled, inbred, dry drunk of the Republican revolution—a man who ran an oil company into the ground (do you know how hard it is NOT to make money off of oil? My daughter’s Chihuahua could pull it off)—that we are now borrowing money from China.

  China.

  The same country that tried to KILL our dogs with poison dog food three years ago.

  China.

  Where there are seventeen BILLION people and eight automobiles.

  China.

  A country so corrupt that if I lived there and typed the words “CHINA SUCKS” as I did just now? Within a day I would have disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving my wife and the only child we are allowed to have—and our three bikes—to fend for themselves.

  We will delve deeper into each and all of these matters during the next couple of hundred pages.

  And I do so as a doctor, ladies and gentlemen.

  That’s right.

  Dr. Denis Leary.

  You don’t believe me?

  Here’s a photograph of the actual degree I received from my alma mater Emerson College on the afternoon of May 16, 2005.

  Suck on that, Dr. Phil.

  Or as I like to call him—Dr. Full.

  Hey—I don’t know what his actual weight was when he started pushing his diet book, but let’s just say he was more than a little puffy and really not what I would call an authority on that particular subject. Hell—he might as well have written a book on how to stop being bald while he was at it.

  Let me point something out—Dr. Full doesn’t even have a license to practice in the state of California, which is where he tapes his daily talk show.

  Let me point something else out—if I needed to go on a diet, I’d want the guy selling me his diet book to not only be thin but actually be in shape—is that too much to ask?

  But this is America—where if you’re on TV—especially if you appear on Oprah—you MUST be some kind of authority.

  Well, I haven’t been on Oprah but I DO have my own TV show and a degree that calls me a doctor. So here’s my point—if Dr. Full can write a diet book then I can sure as hell write a self-help book. And that’s really all I’m trying to do here—help you to help yourself AND make a shitload of money while I’m doing so.

  Because I really do believe we live in the greatest country on earth but—just like that fixer-upper you get a very good price on—there’s still a lot of work left to do.

  We live in a country that’s still very very young, as countries go, and I think the whole idea of the American Dream has been convoluted and undone.

  We live in a country where the first pictures of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s baby were sold for over four million dollars. Shit—for THREE million dollars I’d sell you the pictures AND the kid.

  We live in a country where Rosa Parks had the courage and conviction to sit down long enough to start a revolution that led to Al Sharpton screaming racism every time Barry Bonds gets indicted for taking performance-enhancing drugs in order to break a home-run record set by a black man who didn’t even have the benefit of Advil.

  A country where—once upon a time—the Presidential Medal of Freedom was given to people who fought for civil rights and equal rights and other matters that made a genuine difference and real contributions to a better future for everyone on the planet. Now it goes to guys who so botched the War on Terror that the president has to accept their resignations before they squirm off into the shadows to lick their wounds.

  We used to honor our living war veterans with respect and bury the dead heroes with dignity.

  George Bush The Second avoided Vietnam through privileged connections, shot down the brave deeds of another privileged son—John Kerry—who volunteered to serve, came home with medals on his chest and made the mistake of thinking the best man might win when he ran against a guy whose administration was caught cremating dead American soldiers from Iraq in a pet cemetery incinerator.

  Because it was cheaper.

  Open ass—insert Oval Office.

  It’s time to tear down the walls of the stupid and the inane and the politically correct and the righteous and the pretentious and the bald and tell them how much they suck and how fat they are and how everything in the Bible is NOT necessarily true and no your hair will never grow back and yes you look much older without it and no—women really don’t find bald guys attractive unless you’re Mark Messier or a multizillionaire or both.

  It’s time to shave your back and pay attention to your kids and buy a bigger-size dress and stop wearing spandex until you lose a hundred pounds.

  Skinny jeans are meant for skinny people. In case you don’t understand the term “skinny”—if your ass doesn’t fit into a seat at the ballpark or hockey rink or football stadium—yer fat. Too fat for skinny jeans.

  What would Jesus say? What I just said. Only louder.

  And his hands and feet would be bleeding so he’d probably be in a very pissy mood.

  So listen up.

  I’m trying to help you here.
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  It won’t be pretty. But it will be goddam funny.

  Strap yourself in.

  It’s gonna be a bumpy-assed, roller-coaster-on-fire type of ride.

  No helmets allowed.

  CHAPTER 1

  WHY EVERYONE HATES US

  Us being America. This is just a partial posting. Many of these subjects will be discussed in much further detail as the book moves along.

  But I wanted to give you a starter kit. A little menu tasting of the who, what and why when it comes to the rest of the world and the things about us that burn their proverbial balls.

  A lot of them are things and people and events that many of us—like our fellow humans in the world—don’t get or support or even have the slightest interest in. But for some reason they fill up our magazines and televisions and radio waves until they are chock full to spilling over with incredible pulsing chunks of unbelievably stupefying activity. And like a train wreck or multicar collision or Mickey Rourke’s most recent face—we just can’t turn our eyes away.