Ranting Again

by Dennis Miller

  Here is the single most noticeable phenomenon of daytime talk shows: unbelievably grotesque men, men where you can literally see the dog-shit fumes coming off their hair, surrounded by two somewhat attractive women who don't mind sharing him.

  The entire multibillion-dollar industry of daytime talk shows is predicated upon one simple subtext: I can't believe anybody is actually fucking that person.

  And then there're the game shows. I always derive a cathartic moment when I watch a Chicklet-lobed Moor- lock on Wheel of Fortune who opts to buy an "O" when the puzzle topic is body of water and the puzzle reads M blank S-S blank S-S blank P-P blank. Look, there's a reason Wheel of Fortune is on right after Jeopardy! Once you've been forced to choke down the foul-tasting tequila shot of your own abject ignorance, it's nice to be able to bite into the refreshing lime wedge of other people's incredible fucking stupidity.

  Listen, bad television is three things. A bullet train to a morally bankrupt youth. A slow spiral into an intellectual void. And, of course, a complete blast to watch.

  Much as bad TV may remind us of a terrible accident that you just can't look away from, there's nothing accidental about its badness.

  Unctuous hosts, nonexistent production values, freakazoid guests, drekky theme music ... all serve a complex, calculated purpose: They feed our dark and covert need to feel superior to others.

  Folks, we can point fingers all we want, but it's the finger pushing the button on the remote control that is calling the shots. Face it, we are moths, and bad television is the porch light we've been slamming our heads against for decades now.

  Not because it affords any illumination but because it barely beats eating socks.

  Bad TV is part of our culture and harmless enough when properly abused. You know what? I say we should push it even further and wring the bad TV chamois for every last drop of stupid juice it contains.

  Am I the only one who thinks they should put a laugh track on the show Cops? How's about shoplifter's week on Supermarket Sweep? What about Susan Powter as Sergeant Carter in the Gomer Pyle remake? How's about O.J. and Kathie Lee? Huh? Let's sew a tiny third arm onto Richard Bey's forehead. And finally, what about unwilling contestants on American Gladiators? Turbo, Laser, I believe you know Mr. Limbaugh.

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

  Feminism

  Ah, feminism in the nineties, what a "what is yours what is mine field."

  Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but the feminist movement of the nineties is going off in more directions than Don King's hair in an electrical storm. You know, to be an uberfrau in the nineties is to be as confused as A1 D'Amato on Celebrity Jeopardy! Current-day feminists are slapped with more labels than a telephone pole in front of a coffeehouse at Wellesley and draw more enmity than Linda McCartney at a Tony Roma's. You know, they're stereotypically portrayed as humorless, multiple-cat-owning viragos wearing shapeless home-tie-dyed dresses and Karloffing around in Doc Martens while hosting their own public-access cable shows called the No-Fly Zone.

  Which is unfair because despite the Janet Reno-sized strides over the past twenty years, there are still gender inequities in our society that are more glaring than a freshly buffed diamond tiara on the Bonneville Salt Flats at high noon.

  Having drinks bought for you and being able to cry your way out of a speeding ticket don't make up for lower wages, date rape, pickup trucks with naked women silhouetted on the mud flaps, no affordable child care, happy-handed bosses, not being called on in class even when you know the answer, and having to take most of the responsibility for birth control. Recently, we're seeing women's rights violated in places as disparate as a condo in Brentwood, California, and a Mitsubishi plant in Normal, Illinois. Hey, listen, everyone's got a right to work at their job without being bullied and humiliated.

  And as long as there are people out there who are so threatened, so consumed with hatred and fear that they have to use what little power they have to take those rights away from women, you can bet your sensible boots there's gonna be a feminist movement.

  And there will always be men who are threatened by that movement. Feminism in the nineties has left in its wake a gaggle of men more flustered than Les Nessman reporting live from the MTV Malibu beach house.

  And no man is more threatened than Rush Limbaugh, who is the quintessential male antifeminist. Now, anybody who hasn't even seen his own penis in the past ten years is bound to be antiwoman.

  But while it has been slow in coming, men are, they finally are in the process of divesting themselves of much of their undeserved and unwarranted power. Guys, we had to give it up. It was time to share the power because we were ruining everything. For the survival of our species and our planet, evolution reclaimed our crown and made us share it, because, quite frankly, leaving the planet Earth in the hands of only men is like asking Moe Howard to baby-sit a colicky infant.

  Anyway, while I agree with the majority of the feminists' causes and I admire their passion and commitment, oftentimes their approach leaves much to be desired.

  But before the earth goddess SWAT team comes and takes me away to the Reprogramming Camp for the Estrogen Impaired, where I'll learn to become a more nurturing, sensitive man with a developed feminine side who can bake bread and then perform foreplay for five hours at a pop ... before that happens, may I put forth the following suggestions ...

  One. If you want your message heard, leave the rage to Alanis Morrisette, okay? Because when you're strident, you remind us of our moms yelling at us and we do to you what we did to them ... we ignore you.

  Number two—opposed as I am to violence against women, would somebody ask Oddjob to please take Ca- mille Paglia and her leopard-trimmed Humvee out to the junkyard and place them in the compactor?

  And three. Sisters, let's be more inclusive of different approaches. Many of today's younger women have become alienated from the feminist movement because of the extreme messages being sent by its more vociferous leaders. No one likes to be told they're a traitor because they quit their job to stay home with a baby or like to wear high heels and makeup. You can't spend every nanosecond of your life trying to elevate the gender. There has to be room for compromise, for allowing for differences between women. We need to respect Shannon Faulkner and Shannon Tweed.

  Now, look, I'm not trying to sell you a carton of Virginia Slims here. But listen to me: Yes, women still find doors shut tighter than a Jehovah's Witness approaching Mark Fuhrman's house.

  And, yes, most corporate headquarters have more glass ceilings than Carl Sagan's town house. But for women to fixate only on what they haven't accomplished without stepping back to marvel at how quickly and far they have advanced in the past twenty years is going to make them feel more fucked over than lining up for two hours to see a taping of Mike and Maty only to discover that Maty's been sidelined by the flu.

  You know what I want? I want to live in a world where women are allowed to fail as badly as men and then get a better job and a raise just like men. And I'm hoping that you'll remember that I said that, and I was always on your side, 'cause I don't want to be hurt in the coming revolution. And by the way, don't you all look sexy in your little uniforms.

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

  Washington, D.C.

  , Washington, D.C. Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but it's more obvious than Marlon Brando in a Day-Glo thong that our nation's capital runs on the kind of you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll- scratch-yours mentality that one rarely sees outside of Ed Asner in a burlap tube top.

  The stories of corruption that manage to leak their way out of Washington barely hint at the degree of venality, the positively Byzantine intrigue, that fuels day-to-day doings along the Potomac. Special-interest groups, PACs, lobbies ... there's more palms being greased on any given day in D.C. than there are in a boys' dorm during MTV's The Grind. You know, if Frank Capra took a look at today's Washington, Mr. Smith would have stay
ed home. Let's face it, our nation's capital is more self-serving than Ikea, and our lawmakers get more perks than Jerry Lewis in the twenty-third hour of the fucking telethon.

  Washington, D.C., is no longer an honored and revered institution commanding the respect of its republic, but a soap opera circus, a tabloid dart board, a Hollywood with better acting, a bemusement park called Punditland, where the rides are four years long and the popcorn is a billion dollars for a small bucket.

  Washington was built on a bog. And in a scant two hundred years it has grown from a dirty swamp into a bureaucratic quagmire. At one time Washington actually meant something. But now it's about as relevant as Bob Dylan's tuning fork.

  The main problem with Marion Barry's District of Colombian is that it just ... it seems like nothing ever gets done there. It's like an Etch-A-Sketch that gets shaken every fourth November, just never hard enough to completely erase that residual maze of dangling connections and stairs to nowhere.

  The average American works about three hours each day to pay taxes to keep Washington, D.C., humming. Go to Washington and see what that gets you. You won't see that much cash being pissed away at Vitamin Expo '98.

  Washington is clubbier than an LAPD-sponsored baby seal hunt and more insular than the Freemen compound under quarantine for the Andromeda strain. It's a system in which the demands of survival cancel out the qualities one would expect in a public servant, like intelligence, integrity, and selflessness. Instead, those who are most successful in public office have got a jones for power and influence that makes Naked Lunch read like The Velveteen Rabbit. It's the only town where the phenomenally untalented, boorish, and downright stupid can Quayle their way up the ladder and into the national spotlight.

  A1 D'Amato ... A1 D'Amato? I mean, did the entire state of New York get drunk one day and elect him just for a goof? A1 D'Amato is a waste of an apostrophe. Allowing this guy to chair an ethics committee is like having Kevorkian teach you the Heimlich maneuver.

  Newt Gingrich? Newt Gingrich is so cold, when he opens his mouth a light goes on. This guy's further to the right than the part in Sam Donaldson's hair.

  Strom Thurmond's birthday cake has more candles than a Sting video. This guy used to baby-sit Bob Dole, for chrissake.

  You know, folks, some are born great, others achieve greatness, and still others have greatness thrust upon them. And then there's Washington, D.C. There, a good man is harder to find than Montel Williams's cowlick.

  We're talking about a group of people who wouldn't know greatness unless it donated a large sum of money to their reelection campaign and asked for only a small favor in return.

  But maybe there's some light at the end of the reflecting pool. Voters are getting tired of the name-calling and back-biting that goes on in politics. There's more labeling going on on Capitol Hill than in a Wal-Mart the night before the Labor Day weekend. Political philosophies and platforms are now quartered into inside or outside, left or right. It's like we're calling pitches. Clinton, to the left and inside, Dole to the right and inside. Ross Perot? High and outside. Buchanan? Hit the fucking batter.

  It's time to get past the labels and check the contents within the package, that in many cases has settled all too comfortably at the bottom of the legislative bag.

  Look, if our nation's capital is a monster, we're not only the angry, torch-carrying taxpayers looking to cut its head off, we're also Dr. Frankenvoter. We went into the booth that stormy night, we pulled the lever, and screamed, "It's alive." Well, guess what, pal? It is, and it's incumbent upon us to realize that ultimately we're the Hazelwood on this D. C. Valdez, and if we keep trying to sleep through our shifts and letting the other guy steer, we're going to end up on the rocks spewing wasted democracy.

  The solution is very simple. Move election day to April 15. Pay your taxes and hold elections on the same day. See if any of these duplicitous sons of bitches would try to get away with their crap if we paid their salaries on the same day as we voted for them. I don't think so. Storm the Bastille.

  Let us eat cake and let them eat me. Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

  The Royal Family

  The Kennedys are the closest thing we have to a royal family. What is this morbid fascination we have with the concept of someone automatically born to be better than we are? Leave it to us to sail away from England's tyrannical rule, only to be completely fixated on the royals.

  Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but for a country that regards Americans in approximately the same light as Murray held Ted Baxter, the comportment of England's royal family these last few years would probably get them banned from Billy Idol's tour bus. Much like major league baseball, the throne of England has deteriorated from its grand and glorious past into an infighting, badly behaved, exorbitantly expensive institution that nobody can really remember the point of anymore.

  At one time in history, it made perfect sense that a country's leaders should have absolute power and reign over their subjects as God's proxy. And, at one time, burning witches and dying of smallpox made perfect sense too. Come on, everybody knows that the concept of the divine right of monarchs is nearly as dated as the outfits on the roller-disco episode of CHiPs. And yet the English accept without question the pomp and circumstance that accompany the crown, even though at this point in time it all seems to have about as much meaning as a collection of feminist essays by Anna Nicole Smith. Sure, you hear some discontented Johnny Rotten rumbling from time to time, but for all intents and purposes the British monarchy is as entrenched as Rush Limbaugh in a hammock.

  You know, in a modern world, what purpose do these members of the unbelievably lucky-sperm club serve other than to make jug-eared, needle-nosed commoners feel better about their looks? My God, the royal families of Europe have been inbreeding for so long, their genealogy chart has fewer branches on it than Charlie Brown's Christmas tree.

  The current-day role of the queen is as a hood ornament in a bad hat, an overpaid plaster-of-Paris deep-sea diver at the bottom of a very deep and stagnant fish tank. She's a figurehead, a title holder, a face to put on the money. She's got about as much impact on how Britain is run as the kid wearing the Dopey costume at Disneyland has on what Mike Eisner orders for lunch. And now that the sun has set on the British Empire, her kids have nothing to do until she dies except ski, play polo, screw like rabbits, and squander the royal subjects' money.

  The sex lives of the royals have always made Larry Flynt's screening room look like an ashram. They are a drooling band of libidinous flesh-happy boff monkeys who have stopped pulling their sword from the stone and started plunging it into everything else on the planet. What's the point of being king if you can't plow the serfs and commoners once in a while, huh?

  And if the royal bloodline is supposed to produce progeny that are physical specimens worthy of the throne, then how do you explain those Jethro Bodine cereal bowls Prince Charles calls ears? I haven't seen acoustic organs that big since the last time I went to an Argent concert. And you know he'll probably get mad when he hears all this stuff I'm saying, and I don't mean on TV or from someone else, I mean he can hear me right now.

  I think that if any good has come from the field day that the media has had with the trials and tribulations of the royal family, it's that it exposes them for what they are—human. And rather unimpressive humans at that.

  When it comes down to it, I'm a hundred times more impressed with the guy who invented Post-it notes than I am with the whole royal family combined. I mean, at least he created something.

  In fact, I think the Post-it note guy should have been the one sucking on Fergie's toes.

  You know, this bullshit would never play over here in the colonies. Unlike the Brits, we turn over our royalty every four to eight years. Stateside we have a term for people who want to be king: paranoid schizophrenics.

  So why do our orthodontically challenged cousins fall for it"? Well, when the British taxpayers foot the bill for the royal
clubfoots, what they're really paying for is their fairy tale. They want to think their money is being spent on glass slippers and pumpkins that turn into carriages and all sorts of handsome prince paraphernalia. Proletariat life over there is so dreary that they just want that fantasy, that dream.

  So when they find out their money's being spent on soccer players who do use their hands, rubbers, and long distance calls to discuss Zen and the art of tampon reincarnation, well, naturally their approval rating is gonna drop faster than a pair of tube socks on Kate Moss.

  You know, as governments evolve to provide the greatest good for the greatest number of people, the royal family has become a vestigial organ. Indeed, the royal family is Britain's appendix. And I say that as long as it doesn't flare up, you might as well keep it. But right now the royals are throbbing and provoking a radiating distraction. So send the surgeon in and be done with it.