Ranting Again

by Dennis Miller

  I know what you're saying. You're saying, "Dennis, you were never in the military, how can you criticize it?" Well, first, neither was the commander in chief, but that doesn't stop him from running it. Second, I, like the rest of you, am paying for it. And third, because my grandfather was the guy Patton slapped in that tent. You know, my grandfather on the other side had a military connection too. He was LeBeau's lighting stand-in on Hogan’s Heroes.

  Now, the first thing they do when you join the armed forces is strip you of any personal identity and make you indistinguishable from everybody around you. It's sort of like getting a sitcom on network television.

  For many people the military provides an option for a career when you can't figure out the fryolater at Denny's. You aren't doing that well in school, you're in trouble with the law, and you need some discipline.

  So the recruiter drops by the high school you're at and shows you the brochures about shooting big guns and going to exotic lands. The next thing you know, they're shaving your head at an indoctrination center in Twiddle- Your-Ball-Sack, South Carolina, getting you up at four A.M. to take ten-mile hikes in the rain with a pack on your back containing a hyperactive midget while the drill instructor screams at you that he's about to rip your eye out and fuck the socket. By the way, the Socket Fuckers happens to be the name of our show's softball team. Trust me, you don't even want to see the mascot.

  Now, the military's called the "armed" forces, but you know, with all the scandals of late, perhaps there's a more appropriate appendage to use as a description.

  If the recent deluge of sexual-misconduct incidents is any indication, behind the spit-shine pomp of the military facade, the armed forces is just one big Benny Hill sketch with everybody chasing each other around in double time with their pants around their ankles. Christ, the stories oozing out of the Pentagon these days couldn't be more libidinous if the Joint Chiefs of Staff were Larry Flynt, Bob Guccione, Billy Idol, and Caligula.

  A question that's been bandied about a lot the last few years is "Should there be gays in the military?" Now, first, there are already a lot of gays in the military. I mean, you don't get that many men all living together to be that neat and tidy just by discipline alone. Okay? And secondly, forget the gays, lately the heterosexuals have been the ones, uh, shall we say, firing their weapons at unauthorized targets.

  Besides, there's a long, proud tradition of gays serving in our military. I saw those looks Captain Binghamton was always giving McHale all along. That look that said "You know, I'm mad at you, Clint, but I can't stay mad at you." If you think McHale's Navy was a sitcom about a group of misfits defying authority, you're wrong. It was a love story, Fuji.

  Military service offers great opportunities for women. Where else can you be raped by your commanding officer and then be court-martialed because while it was happening you didn't call him sir? You know, from Tailhook to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, women have fared about as well in the military as a balsa-wood chair in Luciano Pavarotti's dressing room. And it's not surprising when you take into account the fact that for thousands of years, and up until very recently, females were categorized in the military mind under the heading Spoils of War, mere objects to be carried off and defiled as proof of your forces' superiority. Undoing centuries' worth of conditioning, as recent events have borne out, is going to be as easy as getting Janet Reno into a size four catsuit.

  And this recent episode with Lieutenant Kelly Flinn being discharged proves that men aren't responsible for all the sexual shenanigans in the service. Kelly Flinn was stupid. If she wanted to get away with adultery, she should have fucked a general. Okay?

  So why has the military gone completely to hell lately? Well, one big problem is that I think the names army, navy, air force, and marines are just too tame, too old-school. To perk things up a bit, may I suggest the following more impressive and scarier name changes: army—Murder, Incorporated; navy—Aqua Kill 3000; air force—The Dead Foreigner Squad; and the marines—The Fighting O.J.'s.

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

  Smoking

  You know, they say every cigarette you smoke makes your life seven minutes shorter, and I know that's true because I had an uncle, and the first cigarette he ever smoked was on an airplane. Smoked the cigarette, and he immediately dropped dead of a heart attack. Seven minutes later, the plane crashed into a mountain.

  Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but America's attitude about smoking has become more hostile than a militia member at a tax audit. These days even the Philip Morris employee cafeteria has a no smoking section. If you walked into a restaurant and loudly demanded that they serve you a charbroiled live puppy, you'd probably cause less of an outcry than you would by simply sitting down and lighting up a smoke.

  When I say "smoke," I'm talking mostly about cigarettes, although I guess with the increasing popularity of cigars, we have to include them in this discussion. For years, cigars concerned only half the population, but their usage is growing more prevalent with the fairer sex. For women, smoking cigars is like going to Chippendale's: You're basically saying, "Look, guys, we can be just as big a bunch of assholes as you can."

  Now, it's been proven that tobacco company executives' sworn congressional testimony concerning the addictive properties of nicotine had all the sincerity of a defense attorney's tie rack. But who can possibly be shocked by this?

  Tobacco companies will stop at nothing to win the smoking wars. Now their scientists are saying some of the smoking research data is no longer valid because the contemporary mores dictate that rats have to step outside their mazes to have the smoke.

  Hey, don't blame the cigarette makers. Tobacco companies are being sued way too much. I admit they're evil poison-mongers who give other evil poison-mongers a bad name. Yes, they lie about the addictive nature of their products and get rich doing it. But come on, tell the truth, we knew they were lying all along. If you're saying you didn't know cigarettes were bad for you, you're lying through that hole in your trachea. Of course it causes lung cancer. Of course it causes emphysema. It's fucking smoke. Would you build a campfire and every hour stand real close and take deep breaths? How could you not know smoking is bad for you? Is having teeth the color of caramel corn normal? Is coughing up your lungs one smoldering loogie at a time normal? God gave you two lungs, so don't be an asshole. Think. Use one lung for smoking and the other one for breathing.

  Here are some signs that it might be time to quit smoking:

  1. Before lighting up, you wrap a nicotine patch around your cigarette.

  2. Your newborn twin sons are named Benson and Hedges.

  3. You name each cigarette and have a personal conversation with it while you smoke.

  4. You're at Arlington Cemetery, paying your respects to JFK, and you lean over and light one up off the eternal flame.

  5. You shit pure tar.

  Listen, the bottom line on cigarette smoking is it's really just the way you interpret things. I mean, they say smoking gives you cancer. Sure, you can be negative and look at that as a bad thing, or you can see that smoking gives you cancer. It gives it to you. It's a present. Here, here's cancer ... Why, thank you very much, Mr. Cigarette.

  You know, when I find myself in a room where everyone's smoking, and it gets too intense, you know what I do? I don't start waving my hand around and fake coughing; I don't start rattling off heart disease and lung cancer stats like some autistic surgeon general; I don't lecture anybody about their lifestyle choices ... I leave the room, okay? My acceptance of smokers is one of the compromises, one of the little negotiations that one must make if one is to live in modern urban society.

  I don't know why people complain about secondhand smoke. At nearly two dollars a pack, don't you realize how much money they're saving you?

  Plus, if you smoke, you get to read matchbook covers and learn about the exciting career opportunities awaiting you in cartooning.

  And hey to all you militant ant
ismokers whom I see screaming at strangers for lighting up: If you were that concerned about your lungs, what in the fuck are you doing living in L.A.?

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

  Acting

  There are plans in the Los Angeles area to open three new oxygen bars where people can unwind and breathe pure oxygen. Yeah, that's just what people in L.A. need, more air in their heads.

  Christ, everybody in L.A. is either an actor or allowing one to sleep on their couch. Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but as I tee off on acting, it's not an across-the-boards condemnation. Meryl Streep is a genius. Paul Scofield is an artist. I'm not talking about them and people like them. I'm talking about bad actors who take themselves way too seriously. You know, the ones who refer to their bodies as their instrument. Instrument, my ass ... Believe me, you'll know bad acting when you see it. Acting is bad if while you're watching it you're thinking, "Did I leave the iron on?"

  With all the tedious, humiliating, stupid ways there are to make a living in this world, why do so many people choose acting? Maybe they didn't get enough attention as a child, maybe they watched too much television, or maybe they saw a movie I was in and said, "Come on, Miller does it, how hard can it be?" Acting is a constant exercise in humiliation. A "how low can you go" limbo game where it helps to have a double-jointed ego because it's going to be bent, stretched, and forced into positions a lanky yogi on roofies couldn't manage. You come to Hollywood to ply your craft and you get a job waiting tables at Der Wienerschnitzel in Culver City so you can network with Sony interns as they ask you to refill the relish tub.

  You join an improv troupe called Can o' Nuts and perform in the basement of the Unitarian Church in Van Nuys with the half son of the guy who was the voice on the intercom in Rhoda. Eventually, you audition for Tom Arnold's new sitcom, and the director is Anson Williams, who played Potsie on Happy Days, and he believes you need to tighten up your skills a little. So you take an acting class from the guy who ran the bookstore in Banacek. You like the class so much, you exhaust your nest egg taking it and eventually you end up back home, where you teach a movement theory class at the local community college. And in Hollywood, that would be considered "making it." Okay?

  Now, if you're a woman in Hollywood, it's off to the plastic surgeon for, of course, a breast reduction. Because, as everyone knows, there are no acting jobs for women with large breasts.

  Male Hollywood producers are among the most cultured, refined, and spiritual men in the world. They don't want to see how you look in a bikini or a white tube top or even topless doing jumping jacks. They just want to see if you can act. And acting, if nothing else, is living in the "now." For most aspiring actors, it goes something like this: "Now I'm broke. Now I'm still broke. Now I'm going to sell my blood so I can buy some ramen noodles." A lot of people will say after seeing my movies that I don't act, I just play myself. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's just that the characters I create are so transparent, you can see me inside of them. Actually, acting is all about pretending, and in my case I pretend that I know how to act.

  After I get the part, how do I approach the script? The first thing I do is ask myself what does this character want? Of course, that's an impossible question to answer, so I have to ask myself what do I want? And that answer is very simple. I want to get home before six. So then I essentially ask myself, what does this guy have to do and say in order for me to be already in my undies by the time SportsCenter starts.

  Actors are always talking about their motivation, that is, what makes their character do the things he does. Well, for all of my plum roles I used a special acting technique for my motivation that I call the check method. See, in every one of my movies, my "character" knew that when the filming was done, I would get a big check, which I would cash in for a stack of green rectangles that I could exchange for food to put in my children's headholes.

  And speaking of children, I'd like to say to any parent out there who's thinking of putting their child in the movies: Fuck you, okay? Don't destroy their lives hauling them from one wretched audition to another just because you don't feel like supporting the family yourself. Anyone who's thinking of putting their kids in the movies, I have two words for you: Mickey Rooney.

  Listen, acting is unique to the human species. Role- playing is often essential to the successful negotiation of a day-to-day life. Acting is dishonesty squared. It is the instinct of deception schooled, practiced, and honed to the point of a journey-level trade, where it is further worked and prodded until it is hopefully raised to an art form. At that moment the irony kicks in, the dog catches its tail, and pure acting becomes one of the most elemental embodiments of human truth. The actor becomes a selfless, agendaless vessel for the thoughts and emotions of a character born of a collision of ink and paper, incorruptible because its ... its .. . because of its ... aw, shit! Line!

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

  Sobriety

  The sobriety craze has got a tighter grip on our collective consciousness than Bill Clinton's hand on a civil servant's ass.

  Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but since when is day-to-day life so goddamn wonderful that we're not entitled to help ourselves to the occasional edge-blurring liquid anaesthetic?

  In the late twentieth century, staying sober has become just as much an addiction as getting wasted. Between therapists, 12-step programs, and Prozac, we buzz-loving Americans approach staying on the wagon with the same over-the-top zeal we use to fall off it. It's gotten to the point that people can't even use moderation in moderation.

  Now, I'm not trying to trivialize the nightmare that is addiction. It's a difficult thing when you start to notice that someone close to you has a drinking problem. You see the little signs, like when they ask the waitress what wine goes with a grand slam breakfast. Or when they go to a liquor store and bring their own handtruck. Or when they walk up and down the bar pointing at people's drinks, asking, "Are you gonna finish that?"

  I realize that some people get dealt a lousy genetic hand. I'm sure there are some physical predispositions to alcohol abuse—maybe lacking certain chemicals in your brain, maybe a problem with your metabolism, maybe just being a Kennedy.

  So I'll agree that there can be a hereditary template for alcoholism. I'll even go so far as to call it a disease, like I'm supposed to. But you know, folks, in all honesty, if you have to have a disease, this is definitely the one you want to have. I mean, what other disease do you get pretzels and chicken wings with?

  Besides, the cause of this disease is not only known, it is the root word of the disease itself, alcohol. If you avoid it, it will avoid you. Hey, face it, wouldn't it be much harder to stir up compassion for lymphoma victims if they got it from years of repeatedly chugging ice cold cans of something called cancer juice?

  Many people go for decades without addressing their steadily worsening problem. Occasional cracks in their armor may leave them shaken but not stirred to action. Others, however, get tired of French-kissing the gutter drain and join Alcoholics Anonymous.

  I think that Alcoholics Anonymous is truly a wonderful, lifesaving organization. And privacy is of the utmost importance in AA and members are very, very serious about protecting their anonymity. If you don't believe me, just tap on the window of someone with a "One Day at a Time" or a "Do It Sober" bumper sticker and ask them.

  But maybe that's an L.A. thing, because it's becoming a tad trendy out here to proselytize about your personal rebirth. I just think regular folk are beginning to tire of stories of celebrities checking into the Betty Ford Clinic for fourteen minutes to undo the damage incurred from years and years of having your ass unduly kissed by everybody around you just because you played Senor Couscous, the wacky neighbor with a dark past and a third nipple, on some shit sitcom for a season and a half.

  In a nutshell, when you join AA, you acknowledge that your life has become unmanageable and you are powerles
s over your addiction. Then you start going to meetings around the clock, drinking so much coffee, Juan Valdez names his fucking donkey after you, and smoking cigarettes like Dennis Leary in the waiting room of the maternity ward. You also participate in a 12-step recovery program, one of the steps being to make amends to the people in your life for the hurt you caused them while you were drinking. Yeah, like I need to be reminded.

  Look, if you're someone I know and you're getting sober and you think you wronged me once and you feel compelled to track me down so you can make amends ... don't, okay? You're not doing it for me, you're doing it for you. And if you absolutely must make amends to me, at least wait until I'm drunk so I won't have to remember any of it the next day.

  Anyone in AA will tell you that first and foremost, you have to admit to having a problem. Here are some blurred signposts that might signal you're weaving down the road to alcoholism.

  1. If you walked out of the movie Leaving Las Vegas early because it made you thirsty.

  2. If Boris Yeltsin asks for your autograph.